Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau—in conjunction with the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force and the Office of Economics and Analytics—authorize Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (Auction 904) support. For these winning bids, the FCC has reviewed the long-form application information, including the letter(s) of credit and Bankruptcy Code opinion letter(s) from the long-form applicant’s legal counsel.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announces the E-Rate and Rural Health Care (RHC) programs’ funding caps for funding year 2022. The new caps represent a 4.2% inflation-adjusted increase in each program cap from funding year 2021. The E-Rate program funding cap for funding year 2022 is $4,456,460,992. The new cap represents a 4.2% inflation-adjusted increase in the $4,276,833,965 cap from funding year 2021.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announced that it is implementing additional measures to strengthen program integrity surrounding the enrollment of households in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) who also qualify for the Lifeline benefit. Consumer choice and consent are fundamental principles for both the Affordable Connectivity Program and the Lifeline program. No provider should undermine those principles or take advantage of consumers.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Inspector General alerted Lifeline, Emergency Broadband Benefit, and Affordable Connectivity Program consumers and providers to improper and abusive enrollment practices that are part of some providers’ online enrollment processes. These providers impermissibly coerce and deceive applicants for Lifeline service into enrolling in unwanted EBB/ACP service or into transferring their EBB/ACP service away from their preferred provider, contrary to the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s earlier Enforcement Advisory and FCC rules.

On February 22, 2022, the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Data Task Force and Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) announced the filing dates for the initial Broadband Data Collection (BDC) availability data collection. On March 9, the Task Force, OEA, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and the Office of Engineering and Technology released the BDC Mobile Technical Requirements Order, which adopts technical requirements to implement the BDC mobile challenge, verification, and crowdsourcing processes.

This report summarizes information about Internet access connections in the United States as of June 30, 2019 as collected by Federal Communications Commission Form 477. For purposes of this report, Internet access connections are those in service, over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction, and reported to the FCC through Form 477. Total Internet connections increased by about 4.7% between June 2018 and June 2019 to 449 million.