Internet/Broadband

The Federal Communications Commission adopted the Enhanced Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program as a voluntary path for supporting the widespread deployment of 100/20 Mbps broadband service throughout the rural areas served by carriers currently receiving A-CAM support and in areas served by legacy rate-of-return support recipients. In adopting this program, the FCC promotes the universal availability of voice and broadband networks, while also taking measures to minimize the burden on the nation’s ratepayers.

With the enactment of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), we finally have the resources and direction to enable us to achieve universal connectivity. Yet, success is not assured. We now need to turn our attention to execution, making sure we invest these enormous resources in infrastructure that will connect communities for decades to come.

The Federal Communication Commission updated minimum service standards for Lifeline-supported services. This standard will continue until December 1, 2024. Additionally, the FCC announced that the budget for federal universal service support for the Lifeline program for calendar year 2024 will be $2,778,691,284. 

Declaration Networks deploys fixed wireless access (FWA) to unserved and underserved areas. But as CEO Bob Nichols said, “Most of our networks moving forward will be fiber-to-the-home.” Declaration Networks was one of the first companies to deploy FWA using TV white spaces (TVWS) spectrum and as a participant in Microsoft’s Airband rural broadband deployment program.

There is one nuance of the Federal Communications Commission maps that doesn’t seem to be talked about. Internet service providers (ISPs) are only supposed to show coverage on the FCC maps for locations where they are able to serve within ten business days of a customer’s request for service. Any ISP that is claiming areas it won’t serve that quickly is exaggerating its coverage on the FCC maps. That can have real-life consequences. Consider the pockets of unserved areas inside cities. We worked with an urban area recently where we identified nearly 200 such unserved pockets.

Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI are committing to:

Big telecommunications companies are working to reassure investors about two burdens: toxic lead and heavy debt. Questions about the latter are lingering in the background as AT&T and Verizon use their quarterly earnings reports to address more immediate questions about lead-lined cables.

As an end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) funding looms, a congressional briefing was held to discuss what an end to the program could mean and its importance for achieving digital equity. Estimates from the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predict th

Residents of a St. Landry Parish (LA) town say they were recently left without internet for five days while getting no answers from the service provider after a line was inadvertently cut. On July 11, some Sunset residents noticed they weren't receiving emails and web pages refused to load. Residents took to Facebook to find out that all Brightspeed customers in their community were without internet. Customers were not notified about the outage, several residents said, and calls to Brightspeed’s customer service yielded little in the way of information.

Michigan received a $1.55 billion allocation through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to be used to ensure the universal availability of high-speed internet throughout the state and support digital inclusion efforts. There are many activities that need to happen before the BEAD funds can be put to work. The first step, is the creation of the BEAD Five-Year Action Plan. The Michigan High-Speed Internet (MIHI) Office has engaged with and listened to hundreds of stakeholders from every corner of the state to draft its five-year action plan.