The Trump FCC has voted to kill two different programs that helped bring free Wi-Fi to school kids in underserved poor and rural U.S. communities.

It’s the latest casualty of an administration that has been taking a hatchet to FCC consumer protection and affordability initiatives, many of which were developed over decades – with popular bipartisan support.

The FCC under Brendan Carr on September 30 voted 2-1 to kill the programs, with Republican Olivia Trusty voting with Carr and Democrat Anna Gomez dissenting.

In 2023, the previous FCC expanded the agency’s Universal Service Fund's E-Rate program to help fund free Wi-Fi service on school buses. In 2024, the Biden FCC further expanded the program to help fund schools and libraries looking to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and services that could be used off-premises by school kids that lacked affordable home broadband.

Both efforts were lauded for bridging the “homework gap,” making it easier and more affordable for kids in disconnected areas to keep up with homework. The expansions incurred no additional costs to taxpayers, leveraging existing USF funding. E-Rate spends about $2 billion annually and has a funding cap of roughly $5 billion.

Both Texas Senator Ted Cruz and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr spent most of 2025 trying to eliminate the programs. At one point, Cruz claimed, falsely, that the program was “censoring kids’ exposure to conservative viewpoints.” Carr, meanwhile, had tried to suggest the program created risks for kids due to unsupervised Internet use.

When it comes to community-owned and operated networks, better, faster, cheaper broadband is often only one of the benefits. Some telephone cooperatives, like Paul Bunyan Communications in Northern Minnesota’s Beltrami County, share profits with its members, literally paying the benefits of shared telecom ownership back into the communities they serve.

The Cooperative recently announced it was giving a $3.6 million profit windfall back to local community members. It’s the fourth such payout to local subscribers in the last seven years.

For distributions of $150 or less, a credit was applied to subscriber’s bills. For sums greater than $150, the cooperative mailed checks out to locals.

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With origins that owe a part of its success to the Beltrami Electric Cooperative, it was in 1996 when locals were first offered broadband access through Paul Bunyan Telephone. Three years later, it began the necessary infrastructure upgrades that allowed it to offer phone, high-speed Internet access, and digital television.

In 2005, the cooperative expanded with fiber technology for the first time. In 2010, Paul Bunyan Telephone changed its name to Paul Bunyan Communications. 

“Our cooperative continues to grow and thrive, now serving over 35,000 active members across over a 6,000-square-mile service area,” said Paul Bunyan Communications CEO Chad Bullock.

“Through steady investment and expansion, we’ve built one of the nation’s largest rural all-fiber [networks], transforming how our members live, work, and play. It’s incredibly rewarding to see that success come full circle as we share the benefits with our members.”

From the demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program and the sudden termination of the Digital Equity Act to the drastic revamping of the BEAD Internet infrastructure program and the myriad ways trust in governmental institutions has been eroded, digital inclusion advocates will not want to miss the next Building for Digital Equity (B4DE) livestream.

Slated for October 1 at 3 pm EST, the next B4DE virtual gathering will speak to the moment by focusing on a fundamental formula Internet access warriors cannot afford to overlook as they face down the forces actively working to undermine efforts to bridge the digital divide.

Co-hosted by ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), the next B4DE will spotlight local strategies for digital equity and explore why it’s necessary for frontline digital inclusion practitioners to be “Moving at the Speed of Trust.”

Register for the free event here.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is poised to include new broadband affordability requirements as part of the state’s looming approval of Verizon’s massive $20 billion merger with Frontier Communications, even as some consumer advocacy groups worry the changes may not go quite far enough to hold Verizon accountable.

The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office has struck a partial settlement with Verizon that the state hopes will take some of the sting out of the telecom industry’s latest consolidation spree.

Verizon’s $20 billion proposed merger with Frontier would merge two of the nation’s top four traditional phone companies, resulting in a telecom giant with assets across 31 states. The merged new company would have more than 9.6 million customers with a fiber network that ultimately passes more than 25 million fiber homes and businesses.

While the two companies don’t directly compete, Verizon’s political influence and market power will still increase. Both companies have long been criticized for lobbying to undermine U.S. broadband competition, then leveraging the resulting regional market failure to jack up consumer costs and neglecting aging DSL network upgrades and repairs.

Update Below - New Information

NTIA, the federal office administering the largest single investment to expand Internet access across the nation, appears to once again be changing the BEAD program in ways that would only force states to further reduce investment in rural areas.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who oversees the NTIA office, has already introduced delays to the $42.5 billion Internet access expansion program, creating a year-long slow-down at a time when many states could be already connecting homes.

Now, even as the administration claims to be expediting the process, NTIA seems to have added yet another time-consuming wrinkle: a super secret “Best and Final Offer” round imposed on states after submitting final proposals.

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A quick reminder of where we are: states were forced to redo all their work in recent weeks to follow new rules aimed at cutting costs by making the program demonstrably worse for hundreds of thousands of families.

Rather than spend money to help get these families access to comparably affordable fiber networks, states now have to push billions toward low-Earth orbit satellite services which offer them far worse connectivity at much higher prices to each subscriber. And yet, NTIA called this process of reducing investment in rural America the “Benefit of the Bargain” round.

*This is the first installment of an ongoing series we are calling Connected Complex looks at how states, local communities, and Internet service providers are working to address the often complex challenges involved in bringing high-speed Internet access to multi-dwelling units.

Massachusetts state leaders have announced a new $31.5 million investment to bring reliable, high-speed Internet access to residents in affordable and public housing statewide.

A key part of the major new investment initiative focuses on something that’s particularly challenging in the northeast: updating long outdated wiring in multiple-dwelling-units (MDUs) like apartments, condos, and housing developments, many of which were built before the advent of the Internet.

The funds are being provided by the Massachusetts Broadband Office’s (MBO) Residential Retrofit Program, which aims to deploy state-of-the-art broadband infrastructure to public and affordable housing properties across Massachusetts. MBI’s funding, in turn, was largely made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

In partnership with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), Gov. Maura Healey’s office awarded the grant money to four Internet service providers: Aervivo, Archtop Fiber, Comcast, and Community Broadband Networks FLX (CBN-FLX). All told, the funding is poised to deliver broadband access to 13,700 housing units across 60 Massachusetts municipalities.

The second installment in the ongoing Community Broadband Film Series spotlights  “Rocketeers: The UTOPIA Fiber Story” – an eye-opening documentary that tells the story of how a publicly-owned fiber network has ignited local Internet choice and competition across dozens of cities, delivering connectivity at the speed of light.

Hosted by ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB), the screening will be streamed to a live audience on September 3 at 4pm ET.

Register now for the virtual event here.

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The event  will begin with a screening of the 24-minute film and then treat attendees to a live Red Carpet discussion with UTOPIA Fiber CEO Roger Timmerman and key leaders of two communities that are now part of the fast growing UTOPIA network – Sid Boswell, CEO of Yellowstone Fiber in Bozeman, Montana; and Bountiful, Utah Councilmember Kate Bradshaw.

The discussion will be moderated by AAPB Executive Director Gigi Sohn and ILSR’s own Sean Gonsalves, the Community Broadband Network team’s Associate Director for Communications.

On the virtual red carpet, the special guests will dive into UTOPIA Fiber's open-access journey and the network of people bringing future-proof connectivity and local Internet choice to thousands of homes and businesses.

Bring your popcorn and join us for another exciting showcase of how local communities are seizing control of their digital futures.

As states struggle to readjust their plans to expand high-speed Internet access in the wake of the Trump administration “termination” of the Digital Equity Act, Vermont is working to address the multi-million dollar shortfall by aligning the state’s Digital Empowerment initiative with its newly established Affordable Long Drop Program.

The Affordable Long Drop Program was established to provide grants to eligible Internet service providers (ISPs) in order to cover the connection costs for Vermonters whose homes are beyond standard drop distances.

Typically, an ISP will pay for a standard drop, which is the final external link that connects a provider's distribution network to the end-user's location – a distance that most often spans a couple hundred feet or less.

In rural areas around the country, community-minded operators like telephone and electric cooperatives will often cover the first quarter of a mile. This has also been the case in Vermont, where many of the state’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs) have been footing the bill to cover as much as the first 2,000 feet of drop distance. But, as with any predominantly rural state, there are a number of homes located just beyond that 2,000 foot range.

The construction costs of extending fiber lines can get pricey the further the home is away from the main fiber routes. Vermont’s Affordable Long Drop Program aims to help pay for the drops costs of the last mile networks that are currently being built across the state to help ensure residents in harder-to-reach locations can still get Internet access.

Vineland, New Jersey officials say they’ve secured a $3.7 million grant from the state that will help expand fiber and wireless broadband access to the city of 62,000. Local officials are hopeful the grant is just the beginning steps toward dramatic expansion of affordable access.

Vineland’s new grant was made possible by the New Jersey Broadband Infrastructure Deployment Equity (NJBIDE) grant program. NJBIDE will be delivering $40 million in broadband grants via the state’s Capital Projects Fund (CPF), made largely possible by the 2021 federal passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

NJBIDE grants prioritize fiber optic infrastructure of 100 megabytes per second (Mbps) and mandates the provision of at least one low-cost option (not specifically defined by New Jersey) to serve low income communities – something increasingly important in the wake of the federal government’s retreat from efforts to ensure equitable and affordable broadband. (Still early in the process, the city has not yet determined the exact pricing and service tiers the network will offer once construction is complete).

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A 2024 city proposal indicates that city leaders want to spend between $35 and $40 million to create a citywide broadband network, starting with a citywide fiber ring. The city paid for a viability study from Bonfire that found that at least 42 percent of the City does not have access to viable, quality, affordable broadband service.

The mystery of who and what killed the California Affordable Home Internet Act is coming into view.

As a California lawmaker hinted when the bill was abruptly withdrawn in June, the evidence seems to be pointing to the new leadership now directing the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) – the agency administering the $42.5 billion federal BEAD program to expand Internet access.

In a recently released FAQ published by the NTIA this week, a corroborating clue has emerged.

And what may be the smoking gun is a bullet buried on page 48, under section 3.29, after the question: "May an Eligible Entity (states) require a specific rate for the low-cost service option (LCSO) when required by state law?”

NTIA's answer:

“No. The IIJA prohibits NTIA or the Assistant Secretary from engaging in rate regulation. Because the Assistant Secretary must approve the LCSO in the Final Proposal, the rate contained may not be the result of rate regulation. The RPN (Restructuring Policy Notice) addressed this fundamental flaw in the BEAD NOFO. The RPN eliminated BEAD NOFO requirements dictating price and other terms for the required low-cost service option.”

“Per the RPN, states may not apply state laws to reimpose LCSO requirements removed by the RPN. More specifically, the RPN ‘prohibits Eligible Entities from explicitly or implicitly setting the LCSO rate a subgrantee must offer’ (BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice, p.7). Violation would result in rejection of the Final (BEAD) Proposal (emphasis added).”