Digital Divide

House Oversight Sheds Light on Biden-Harris Administration’s Broadband Deployment Failures

By Lawson Faulkner On Thursday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing titled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” During the hearing, lawmakers took aim at the disastrous mismanagement of the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which…

The Problem(s) with Poles

By James Erwin If you want to make any telecom expert’s fingers curl, mention pole attachments. It is an incredibly niche policy area, but exorbitant pole attachment fees and burdensome terms from municipally-owned poles could undermine federal broadband deployment efforts, possibly wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. If Congress and the…

Two Cheers for the BEAD Allocations

It’s finally here. On Monday, more than eighteen months after President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the administration has at last released each state’s broadband grant allocations. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program will distribute $42.5 billion to states to expand broadband to rural…

Americans for Tax Reform & Digital Liberty File Comments to FCC on Best Practices for Preventing and Eliminating Digital Discrimination

Americans for Tax Reform and Digital Liberty jointly filed comments on February 21st with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the agency’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Digital Discrimination. These comments explore the pitfalls that would result from the agency’s adoption of a disparate impact standard to measure digital discrimination, as opposed to a…

FCC’s New Broadband Coverage Maps Are a Great First Step 

By allowing ISPs to establish a baseline and then crowdsourcing corrections and challenges, the FCC will maximize the accuracy of the data it is collecting. Doing so through an iterative process will enable them to refine the data over time and give consumers and policymakers an ever-improving tool to determine need.

Utility Poles Create Unexpected Barriers to Broadband Deployment

By: Katie McAuliffe The past year saw consumer demand for broadband access at an all-time high. Broadband providers have also been itching to continue investing enormous levels of capital to expand service to new and underserved areas. Despite having the supply and the demand, there has been one…

Digital Liberty Joins Coalition Opposing Wasteful Expansion of E-Rate

Today Digital Liberty signed onto a letter opposing the FCC’s attempt to expand the E-Rate program for the use of remote learning.  Remote learning during the pandemic is an important mission. Our students want to stay in school, that is why Congress has already given nearly $70 billion in…

Broadband Expanded to More Americans with Private Sector Investment

By: Noah Vehafric As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into the new year, one of the lessons we can takeaway is how important having access to broadband is. Americans use broadband to work, see healthcare providers and students use it to learn – all from their home. Families and communities without…

Better Mapping to Bridge the Digital Divide

By: Katie McAuliffe The FCC estimates that out of a population of nearly 330 million, only  19 million Americans—about 6% of our population—lack access to high speed internet. The lack of access is most highly concentrated in rural areas, where about one-fourth of rural populations are without high-speed fixed internet. Congress and…