Rep Zach Nunn (R-IA) introduced bipartisan legislation to improve access to high-quality, affordable broadband in rural communities. The ReConnecting Rural America Act—cosponsored by Reps Angie Craig (D-MN), Darin LaHood (R-IL), and Eric Sorensen (D-IL)—makes improvements to the Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect Program, which offers loans, grants, and loan-grant combinations facilitating broadband deployment in areas of rural America that currently do not have sufficient access to broadband. The ReConnecting Rural America Act strengthens the USDA ReConnect Program by: 

• Making the ReConnect Program permanent;
• Authorizing the USDA to make loans, grants, and grant-loan combinations for the construction and improvement of equipment and facilities to provide broadband;
• Establishing requirements for faster, more reliable internet at a 100/100 Mbps symmetrical buildout speed;
• Prioritizing communities with the greatest need for increased speeds by defining unserved communities as at least 75 percent of households unserved at 100/20 mbps speed and prioritizing awards to areas in which at least 90 percent of households lack 100/20 mbps speed;
• Ensuring the program can keep up with the increase in demand by including sufficient funding authorization levels.

We write regarding the Affordable Connectivity Program, an important tool in our efforts to close the digital divide. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided significant funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, which has already enabled 18 million Americans to access the high-speed broadband services they need. However, given the current rate of enrollment, projections indicate that the funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program could be exhausted as early as the first quarter of 2024. Therefore, we urge the White House to repurpose a portion of unobligated emergency COVID relief funds to ensure the continuity of funding for this program, while we explore alternative sustainable funding mechanisms and updated parameters.

The Federal Communications Commission originally budgeted $20.4 billion dollars for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidy program to be spent over ten years. The original RDOF reverse auction offered $16 billion in subsidies. But in a story that is now well known, some entities bid RDOF markets down to ridiculously low subsidy levels, and only $9.4 billion was claimed in the auction. $2.8 billion of this funding ended up in default, including some of the bidders who had driven the prices so low. That means that only $6.4 billion of the original $20.4 billion has been allocated. The question I’m asking today is what the FCC will do with the remaining $14 billion. It seems unlikely that there will ever be another RDOF-like reverse auction. RDOF was meant to bring broadband to areas that were unserved according to the FCC’s broadband maps at the time of the reverse auction – meaning areas where no broadband provider claimed broadband speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps. But since providers are able to claim marketing speeds under the FCC mapping rules instead of actual broadband speeds, many millions of unserved locations were left out of the RDOF process. Now that the states have broadband offices, the easiest way for the states to award the remaining RDOF billions would be to let state broadband offices do the heavy lifting.

There are at least seven reasons why states should consider connecting anchor institutions early in the broadband deployment process rather than at the tail end:

1.  The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) “strongly encourages” applicants to serve anchor institutions. Anchor institutions are more than just an afterthought. If a state ignores anchors, it will not be in compliance with the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) “strong preference” for connecting anchors.
2. The IIJA does not say that states must connect unserved/underserved households before connecting anchors.  It says that states must have a plan to connect unserved and underserved households before connecting anchors. This is a significant distinction, as states can and should include connecting anchors in the same plan as a way to reach unserved and underserved households. 
3. From a practical perspective, most communities have a mix of unserved, underserved households and anchor institutions in the same region. Bringing workers and installation equipment to connect homes to fiber or wireless, only to bring them back two years later to connect eligible anchors in the same community, would be extremely wasteful. 
4. There may be good reason to connect eligible anchors first, not last. A reasonable, economically-efficient, and sustainable build-out strategy is to deploy multi-strand fiber to the anchor institutions first, and then build off of that high-capacity connection with wireless or fiber to connect the surrounding unserved/underserved homes.
5. The BEAD NOFO says that at least 80% of the locations in a project area must include unserved locations. That means up to 20% of the locations do not have to be unserved/underserved homes; they could be anchor institutions.  
6. While last-mile connections are the main focus, the BEAD NOFO says that funding may be used for middle-mile connections if necessary to bring internet service to homes.  In some cases, building middle-mile networks directly to the anchor institutions may be necessary to ensure that backhaul is brought closer to the unserved/underserved homes.
7. Deploying broadband to anchors and homes simultaneously may encourage more Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to participate in the program.  Anchor institutions can be “anchor tenants” on the network, helping to pay ongoing fees to support the costs of operating the network. The more anchors on the network, the more revenue for the ISP, and the more likely the network will be sustainable in the long run.  

Attempts to pass comprehensive transmission siting reform failed in the recent congressional debt ceiling negotiations. It may be time to explore a different approach to accelerating transmission build-out: encouraging voluntary efforts by developers and stakeholders to create stakeholder-driven transmission corridors. Under this model, identifying transmission routes is an exercise in strategically co-locating transmission with one or more other forms of “linear infrastructure” like broadband, prairie strips or bike trails. Developers would identify the specific route of new high-capacity transmission lines based on landowners’ willingness to host transmission in exchange for access to valuable co-located infrastructure. Routes would mostly traverse rural areas, which often have unmet needs for broadband connectivity for telehealth, online learning and precision agriculture, among other uses. Unmet rural connectivity needs may provide a nexus for building support for high-capacity transmission by letting rural middle-mile broadband demands drive the specific route of new high-capacity transmission. Several conditions make this siting strategy feasible: 

1. Transmission corridor designs can be flexible.
2. Co-location of broadband with a high-capacity transmission line is feasible and inexpensive.
3. Online maps can facilitate the identification of potential willing landowners.
4. Communities that have broadband might want redundancy.

[Robin Allen is a climate fellow at the Niskanen Center]

Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) announced a statewide initiative to increase awareness of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a long-term benefit to help eligible households pay for high-speed internet. Over 348,596 Utah households are eligible for the ACP, while only 16% of those eligible have enrolled. The “ACP Act Now: Utah” initiative unites a broad coalition of 53 partner cities, community-based organizations, and trusted institutions in partnership with EducationSuperHighway, the national nonprofit with a mission to close the broadband affordability gap. The coalition of partners will have access to resources to help them overcome the complex awareness, trust, and enrollment barriers that prevent households in the nation’s most under-resourced communities from enrolling. Resources include email marketing templates, social media content, and a pre-enrollment tool, GetACP.org/Utah. Local community leaders can use these resources to promote the ACP and help eligible families enroll. Six local organizations/entities have been awarded grant funds to conduct ACP outreach.

• Catholic Community Services of Utah has been awarded $135,140 through the National Competitive Outreach program;
• Salt Lake County has been awarded $169,716 through the ACP Navigator Pilot program;
• Santaquin City Library has been awarded $26,760 through the National Competitive Outreach program;
• Utah Community Action Partnership Association has been awarded $400,000 through the National Competitive Outreach program;
• Utah State University has been awarded $400,000 through the National Competitive Outreach Program and $66,689 through the Tribal Competitive Outreach program;
• Utah Paiute Tribal Housing Authority has been awarded $50,000 through the ACP Your Home, Your Internet Pilot program.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) unveiled a legislative framework for regulating artificial intelligence (AI), warning that “Congress must join the AI revolution” now or risk losing its only chance to regulate the rapidly moving technology. Majority Leader Schumer also said that starting in Fall 2023, he would launch a series of “AI Insight Forums” featuring top AI developers, executives, scientists, community leaders, workers, national security experts, and others. Those discussions, he said, will form the foundation for more detailed policy proposals for Congress. Schumer's legislative framework, the “SAFE Innovation for AI” framework, has five central pillars:

• Security: Shore up national security by examining AI threats from foreign adversaries or rogue groups, and ensure economic security for workers, especially low-skilled, low-income workers.
• Accountability: Support the creation of “responsible” systems to address things like misinformation and bias; support creators by addressing copyright concerns and protecting intellectual property.
• Foundations: Require that AI systems align with democratic values at their core, protect elections, promote AI’s societal benefits while avoiding potential harms, and stop the Chinese Communist Party from writing the rules of the road on AI.
• Explain: Companies should share how the AI system arrived at a particular answer in simple and understandable terms so users can better understand why the system produced a particular answer and where that answer came from.
• Innovation: Support US innovation in AI technologies that focuses on unlocking the potential of AI and maintaining American leadership in the technology.