Adoption

The Centri Tech Foundation launched the Digital Advancement Municipal Index (Muni Index), which uses 16 indicators from four categories – technology, socioeconomics, education, and housing – to capture and compare a city's overall prosperity and digital equity metrics across 308 US cities with populations over 100,000 people. The interactive digital tool offers city leaders seeking to achieve digital advancement a clearer perspective on the greatest opportunities to drive impact in their communities.

The Federal Communications Commission voted to seek comment on a proposal to provide additional universal service support to certain rural carriers in exchange for increasing deployment to more locations at higher speeds. The proposal would make changes to the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program, with the goal of achieving widespread deployment of faster 100/20 Mbps broadband service throughout the rural areas served by rural carriers currently receiving A-CAM support. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeks comment on whether and how the FCC could:

Between inflation, rising interest rates and turmoil in the stock market, it’s no wonder fears are rising that another recession might be around the corner. But broadband providers don’t seem all that concerned about how such a turn might impact the sector.

Frontier Communications expects to surpass one million new fiber passings by the end of 2022 – hitting 100,000 to 200,000 additional locations – according to CFO Scott Beasley. The accelerated buildout is mainly due to Frontier’s recent move to boost its liquidity to a total of $4 billion, meaning the company has plenty of cash on hand until mid-2024. “First, it sends a strong signal to overbuilders to build somewhere else if they thought we weren’t going to build [fiber].

Heartland Forward and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society announced the six communities selected to participate in the second cohort of the Accelerate Illinois Broadband Infrastructure Planning Program, which is administered in partnership with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO). The newest cohort of participants include: Bond County, Kankakee County/Pembroke CDC, Kaskaskia College area, Livingston County, Ogle County and Peoria/Woodford (IL) Counties.

This study investigates the impacts of the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, on growth in broadband adoption and use of home telework. We find robust positive impacts across multiple econometric models and methods using census tract-level data in first differences. Across models and methods, the estimated average impact of BIP is in the range of 1.1–3.0 percentage point increase in the share of households adopting broadband and 0.2 to 0.4 percentage point increase in the share of workers using home telework.

AT&T and DISH have entered into a distribution agreement that will allow DISH to offer AT&T Internet services, including AT&T Fiber with Hyper-Gig speeds, to prospective, new and existing DISH customers starting May 18, 2022. Telecompetitor reports that the DISH deal is for AT&T home internet services, including AT&T Fiber. It does not include AT&T wireless services.

When ed-tech leaders from 21 states met with lawmakers to discuss 2022 policy priorities at EdTech Advocacy Day in Washington (DC), they coalesced around the idea of modernizing federal E-rate funding for new expenses. The May 12 event brought together officials from the US Department of Education, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington and FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks.

Customer satisfaction with wireless service overall retreats 1.4 percent to a score of 73 (out of 100), according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Wireless Phone Service and Cell Phone Study 2021-2022. Mobile network operators (MNOs) and full-service mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are steady at 73 apiece. Satisfaction with value MVNOs also is unchanged yet still outperforms the other wireless categories. After a slight dip last year, customer satisfaction with cell phones is stable.

The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the $42.2 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) grants establishes new rules for the grants that might have a wider implication for broadband elsewhere. One of the most interesting aspects of the NOFO was the definition of a new term – Reliable Broadband Service.