Level of Government

On May 9, 2024, Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) introduced new legislation to strengthen the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), complete the equipment removal of China-based telecommunications companies, Huawei and ZTE, and allow the Federal Communications Commission to auction certain spectrum licenses to create more responsive networks for consumers. The bill would:

If all goes well, the $42.5 billion in BEAD funding that Congress allotted in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act should be enough to extend broadband coverage across the country. But it will depend on how states and territories use the money. The first half of 2024 is a critical juncture as states solicit feedback and approval of their Initial Proposals from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which administers the BEAD program.

T-Mobile acquired a boatload of 2.5 GHz spectrum when it acquired Sprint in 2020, and it paid $304 million to win the lion’s share of licenses in the Federal Communications Commission’s Auction 108. Now it’s involved in a spectrum swap with SoniqWave Network to get even more 2.5 GHz spectrum.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance has warned policymakers about digital redlining, a discriminatory practice that prevents certain populations from having internet access, since 2017. Thanks in part to these warnings and advocacy efforts, the creation of digital discrimination rules was mandated in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

On May 16, 2023, the Federal Communications Commission approved a transfer of a domestic section 214 authorization from Echo Wireless Broadband to Resound Networks. As a result of this approval, the Parties have received FCC consent to transfer certain assets of Echo—including Echo’s Connect America Fund Phase II auction (CAF Phase II) support and associated obligations to serve eligible areas in Texas and New Mexico—to Resound. As a condition of this authorization, Resound assumes sole responsibility for complying with universal service fund requirements and FCC rules, regardless of any pr

Rules for the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband funding program give individual states considerable leeway in how they define project areas—and broadband providers applying for funding should expect to see considerable variation from one state to the next. Depending on the state, providers may even be able to define their own project areas. There is considerable variation among states that are allowing providers to define their own project area. For example, Louisiana established clusters of Hex9s, which the state calls sub project areas (SPAs).

A delegation of US Congress members part of the Congressional Western Caucus and House Commerce Committee was in Bakersfield (CA) on May 10. At a nearly two-hour field hearing, Central Valley farming representatives joined rural internet service providers in highlighting the importance of high-speed connectivity to precision agriculture as well as poor communities reliant on computers for health care, education and remote work. While there was little question how vital internet service has become to rural areas, the underlying question was what role the government should have in not only he

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited a recently completed Comcast rural broadband project in Stafford County, Virginia, highlighting that this is a public-private project between Comcast and the county. The giant cable company is involved in public-private partnerships across its national footprint. For years cable operators such as Comcast, Charter and Cox have fought hard against municipal broadband projects, always crying that it’s wrong for taxpayer dollars to compete against their private investments.

The internet’s original promise was to help people and businesses connect, innovate and share information. Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996 to realize those goals. It was an overwhelming success. Section 230 of the act helped shepherd the internet from the “you’ve got mail” era into today’s global nexus of communication and commerce. Unfortunately, Section 230 is now poisoning the healthy online ecosystem it once fostered.

As part of its ongoing network expansion, Great Plains Communications (GPC) announced network expansion to an additional 5,000+ homes and businesses in urban and rural Nebraska communities in 2024. The company recently completed projects and turned up fiber services including symmetrical Internet speeds up to 2 Gigabits per second to over 3,900 homes and businesses in Gretna, Papillion, Ralston and additional areas of their existing Kearney, Nebraska footprint. Additional urban Nebraska projects in progress include over 1,000 passings in LaVista, projected to be complete in Q3, 2024.