From the 12 Days of Broadband:

• On the Twelfth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
  12 or More State Broadband Officers
  11th Year of Xi Jinping’s rule in China
  $10 Billion Remaining in the Affordable Connectivity Program
  $9 Billion Universal Service Fund
  8,132,968 census blocks and a national Broadband Fabric
  7.7% annual inflation rate
  Wi-Fi 6E
  5 Federal Communications Commissioners
  $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds
  Section Two-30 of the Communications Decency Act
  24 Reverse-Preemption Pole Attachment States
  and A Symmetrical Gigabit Network.

State broadband officials must administer funding programs, build broadband availability maps, promote digital equity, coordinate with federal agencies, and much more. They have consistently argued that engaging robust staking engagement and diverse partnerships is indispensable to their success.

Although the bulk of the broadband industry’s scrutiny is now directed federal government, the source of what many experts call a “once-in-a-generation” investment in broadband infrastructure, once those grants are issued to the states, state officials must plan and oversee the final disbursal of those funds.

From the 12 Days of Broadband:

• On the Eleventh Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
  11th Year of Xi Jinping’s rule in China
  $10 Billion Remaining in the Affordable Connectivity Program
  $9 Billion Universal Service Fund
  8,132,968 census blocks and a national Broadband Fabric
  7.7% annual inflation rate
  Wi-Fi 6E
  5 Federal Communications Commissioners
  $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds
  Section Two-30 of the Communications Decency Act
  24 Reverse-Preemption Pole Attachment States
  and A Symmetrical Gigabit Network.

Year by year, tensions between the U.S. and China continue to grow. And in this Cold War 2.0, the battle over information technology and policy often appears to be at the heart of the conflict.

Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei has been effectively barred from the U.S. market for well over a year. But the constraints are tightening. And while Huawei has been central to China’s global communications aspirations, disputes over technology are now affecting all sorts of Chinese-owned companies. Even ByteDance’s TikTok, arguably the world’s hottest social media company with more than 100 million U.S. users, now appears in jeopardy.

From the 12 Days of Broadband:

• On the Tenth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
  $10 Billion Remaining in the Affordable Connectivity Program
  $9 Billion Universal Service Fund
  8,132,968 census blocks and a national Broadband Fabric
  7.7% annual inflation rate
  Wi-Fi 6E
  5 Federal Communications Commissioners
  $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds
  Section Two-30 of the Communications Decency Act
  24 Reverse-Preemption Pole Attachment States
  and A Symmetrical Gigabit Network.

Some say that people are not enrolling in the Federal Communications Commission’s new subsidy for low-income households, the Affordable Connectivity Program. Others say that at the rate people are subscribing, the fund will soon run out of money.  

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Dec. 13, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance warned that the ACP is at risk of being deplenished. “Unless Congress takes action, this vital program will go away in just a few short years,” said the nonprofit’s executive director Angela Siefer at the hearing.