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  2. April 2024

April 2024

With Federal Affordable Connectivity Program Set to Expire, Public Service Commission Reminds Residents about Existing Internet Assistance Options

The Public Service Commission (PSC) is reminding Wisconsin residents that, due to congressional inaction, the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is currently winding down, and no further ACP payments will be provided after the month of May. Initial ACP funding made available in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has almost run out. Unless Congress provides additional funding for the program, the ACP is set to expire soon. A replacement for the ACP does not currently exist.

America, Disconnected: What’s Biden’s Plan for Averting Digital Disaster?

As millions of Americans prepare to lose their internet connection, the Biden administration has been caught flat-footed, failing to articulate a robust plan to avert the looming connectivity crisis. The Biden Administration’s connectivity strategy continues the US government’s neoliberal aversion to creating and funding public options for the internet. As a result, the country’s primary mechanism for connecting the unconnected is directing users to corporate internet service providers’ (ISPs) low-income plans.

How Much Did the U.S. Wireless Carriers “Earn” From “Location Information Aggregators”?

The Federal Communications Commission lawfully fined U.S. facilities-based wireless carriers nearly $200 million for selling highly intrusive location data about subscribers without their “opt-in” consent. In Section 222 of the Communications Act, Congress comprehensively specified how the carriers bore an affirmative duty of care not to disclose clearly defined Customer Proprietary Information (“CPNI”).  The Act explicitly required the FCC, and no other agency, to protect telecommunications consumers.

New Mexico Broadband Director Talks Bid-Worthy Project Areas, Technology Mix

Many state broadband directors are keeping their fingers crossed that all the areas eligible for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program rural broadband funding receive bids. But it’s a particularly big challenge for New Mexico, as the state’s broadband director Drew Lovelace explained. “New Mexico hits a trifecta of challenges in geography, size, and rurality. A lot of states have one or two of these, we have all three,” said Lovelace. New Mexico is the fifth largest state in land mass, but only 36th in population.

As internet data centers multiply, efforts to control them are growing

A backlash against internet data centers has triggered a wave of laws around the country to restrain the rapidly growing industry that uses massive amounts of energy to make cloud computing and smart technology possible. In Northern Virginia, home to the world’s largest concentration of data center buildings, Prince William County increased its tax rate on the equipment inside data centers by 72 percent, a response in part to complaints about too many of the football-field-sized facilities being built there.

Need for speed: Fiber and student achievement

This paper studies the impact of the introduction of fiber broadband in North Carolina, through the lens of student achievement. Campbell links granular data on new fiber construction and advertised download speeds with administrative test score data and local labor market data. Exploiting variation in fiber availability at the census block group level, Campbell implements a difference-in-differences design and find modest effects on educational outcomes, roughly equivalent to lowering class sizes by one student.

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