12_Expanding_Digital_Opportunity_Nationwide_-_FCC_and_NTIA

Joly MacFie21min

Mark Colón

00:02

Good morning, everyone. My name is Mark Colón. I'm the director of litigation at NTIA, I have to forewarn you that the more engaging art of the saga will be my partner Alliander award from the FCC. But if you've suffered through with me, we'll get to the fun part. I'm coming up on my two year anniversary with the Internet for all programs. And I feel like I could honestly sum up and succinctly sum up the first part that where you be a part of this as far as an agent, bye, thanks for our race to seats in this event, say we can pretty musical. And hope you'll it'll be by the end of the presentation that up to now, we've been able to accomplish quite a bit starting. As you see up in the background there on November 15 2021, President byjus Sign the bipartisan infrastructure law, a 1.2 trillion about one is it good or is best in the nation violation of structure and economic competitiveness. That law included $65 billion once again, a one cent generation investment aimed at providing every American with access to affordable reliable high speed Internet service, as well as the digital SEAL training devices. See, you want super all those already since the digital divide. NTIA was tasked with administering the bulk of these funds. And I am happy to report that up to now we have met every set to story deadline and IFA program objective. For instance, by May of 2022, we issued notices to funding on our committee for both the largest of those programs, the 42 and a half billion dollar BT program, as well as the digital ad we see red and red probe. By the end of that summer, we were still bad ahead 1000 When we were able to get and all 56 eligible states and territory to opt to apply and opt in to both of those programs. Both the BEAD league have elected before where we notice all the top of MIT in this day and age to get every state leadership governor's office

Mark Colón

02:32

to sign on to the program that has equity. So fast forward in June of 2023. And as you can see up on the screen.

Mark Colón

02:47

When thanks to our partners at FCC and their new broadband maps, President Biden and US Commerce Secretary Raimondo, were able to announce the reality sheet for every module of cities safe territory about youth program, award allocating between 170 million up to 3.1 billion. Again to ensure the cries of profits that connect every American with affordable reliable high speed Internet and service. This all we collaborated with the C band offices are 56 NTIA federal program officers, as well as every type of stakeholder organization to ensure that the states were able to by the deadline again December quantum salmon and this year, submit both volumes of their beat initial plans to NTIA review and of cool 138 print those they'll have access to up to 20% of those allocated funds to begin in are mandated. I want to get to what's next. But I need to mention that we've also hit you know photos and made awards into critically important programs, our tribal broadband connectivity program, as well as our beta miles will at the end of the program. And finally, that are connecting minority community pilot programs has awarded over $200 million dollars to historically black colleges and universities tried to call this university the Hispanic serving institutions to purchase high speed Internet service and equipment as well. It's a higher say technologists per deciliter. Vietnam first time. So moving on to what's next. What's next, you might ask? So right out states and territories are engaging in their beat state challenge process. Under the town process, states must publish their proposed beat eligible locations before they can award any beat farms. Local governments and registered nonprofits can then challenge those eligibility determinations to ensure that been funds go to where they are most needed. My Office of Public Engagement is teaming with NTIA, its Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and our state federal program officers to ensure maximum outreach and participation in the bee count process. Next, Next, the bead sub granting process, the money becomes available. Once they've completed that challenge process and NTIA has approved their initial plans, states and territories will be able to begin to solicit proposals for the different sub granting proposals. And with that in mind, NTIA is partnering with the SBA Small Business Administration, as well as affinity organizations like the US Black Chambers. To ensure that small minority and women owned businesses have every opportunity to participate in the BEAD program. And finally, the digital state capacity building program $1.44 billion is preparing to the program is preparing an issue there NOFO for that program coming up shortly. Last year, the program, solicited Requests for Comments and got hundreds of submissions from individuals and organizations with the the team is used to inform an offer, which is coming out imminently. states and territories were previously able to use if you remember all the way back in the beginning of the salt eons ago, the d state planning grant capacity planning grant program states and territories were able to use those planning grant funds to put together digital equity or digital opportunity plans. And I'm happy to report that for the first time ever, every state and territory in the United States will have its own digital equity, or digital opportunity blend to begin to address the digital divide in their state. And with that said, I'd like to turn it over to Alejandro

Alejandro Roark

07:34

along again. Hi, good morning, afternoon. My name is Alejandro Roark and I'm the Chief of the consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, I'm at the Federal Communications Commission. Marc is really great at making all of the work that they're doing. Feel like it's just let's cross this off our list kind of bullet points. But as you can imagine, it's been a ton of work, and a lot of close coordination, I think between the FCC and NTIA and across the federal government. And it's always good to be able to partner to chat about how we're all kind of coming together to bridge our countries to do opportunity to buy. So I actually wanted to start with a map that I think we're still trying to get out and into the world. So as Mark mentioned, a lot of funding has been allocated at the state and local level. And so the FCC, you know, as directed by the infrastructure and Jobs Act, also has a map, but we have layered and visualized all broadband funding that is been allocated across the country. So this map is is being continually updated. And so you can go to funding map.ftc.gov And you can play with, you know, at the state and local level and see how all those resources either overlap, complement each other. And, and you'll know kind of where the data is coming from. So that is, I think, a valuable tool, as a lot of these projects are beginning to break ground across the country. And you know, a way for us to kind of really be able to be intentional and thoughtful and harmonize a lot of these efforts to ensure that we are achieving our goal of universal access and adoption. So for us over the course of the past few years, the FCC has made significant progress, establishing new tools to expand digital opportunity and to promote digital equity. You know, for us part of what that means and in process, right. It or in practice is that we have a we are working to ensure that we have an Internet that is fast, open and fair to all it means that we have are working to ensure that we have accurate maps with granular level data so that we know exactly where broadband is. And broadband is it which is a big deal. That we as consumers have consistent and reliable information so that we can select an Internet service plan that best meets our household needs and our long term budget. And we are doing this through our new broadband Trish and labels, we have also been working hard to bridge the broadband affordability gap with the Affordable connectivity program, I know that many of us are really tuned in to the affordable connectivity program on what's gonna happen next. So I'm going to dive into that a little bit later. And it also means that we have established a framework to prevent and eliminate digital discrimination. And I think personal to me in my bureau is that we have an accessible and inclusive stakeholder engagement process that really allows the agency to promote policies that expand the digital opportunity to everyone everywhere. So I am super happy to be able to share some updates on these really important topics. And I want to start off with our broadband, our National Broadband Map. So the broadband data Act was a directive from Congress and was established to develop a new map that had highly granular information. So they first map the first iteration of this map was, was published in November of 2022, the second version in May of 2023, the third version in November of 2023, and essentially has an visualizes all a fixed service availability is depicted on a location by location basis. And mobile coverage is based on standardized propagation parameters to ensure comparability among providers. So an important feature of this map, for those of you that have not had a chance to play with it in the past, you know, service providers will be able to say, hey, we, we cover all of these places, and we would say, Thank you, that's really great. Thank you for being good people. But now all of us have a voice in what shows up in that map, because we can type in our address, we can type in our state, you can type in our city. And we can see exactly what was reported by the Internet service providers. And in that same place without going anywhere else, we can challenge that information, we can say, You know what I have tried to get the service I have tried to call or and it's not available to me or I'm not getting the service that is that is advertised. And all of that can be done with just a few clicks on this map. So I encourage everybody to check it out, if you haven't had a chance to play with it. And it's a really good tool to get out into the community. Crowdsourcing really works here. So send it out to all of your folks. Because we The goal here is to ensure that we have the most up to date and accurate maps of where broadband is and isn't all across the country. And so that is really awesome. And what we want all of us to be working on. So in December 2003, the fabric was released to licensees, right, so that is the next step here. And providers must report updated availability data as of December 31 2023, to us by March 1. So the availability data will be overlaid on to the updated fabric and will appear in a public map in the spring. So just want to kind of underscore that the FCC continues to accept location and availability challenges on an ongoing and rolling basis that those challenges are processed and resolved. As we get them, and they continue to be kind of resolved to as a way to improve the map as they come in. So that is something that doesn't ever go away. And we have a lot of great resources for either our community partners, or people that want to really kind of do a deep dive on what is in the map how to work it. If you really want to get into the data, if you want to export data, you can find all that information@fcc.gov forward slash broadband data. The other thing that I'm really excited about our new broadband nutrition labels, and we will start seeing those hit the streets here and just this year. So get excited. And I'm wanting to give you guys a few quick quick updates. So in November of 2022, the Commission unveiled new rules that would for the first time require broadband providers to display easy to understand labels to allow us as consumers to comparison shop for broadband services. We've all kind of had the experience of shopping for broadband, and then getting that first bill and then seeing the price that was advertised plus all the fees plus the installation B plus all these things that you never even heard of right and really getting being faced with the reality of that monthly charge once we get that monthly bill and that is probably not the best time to really be able to figure out how much you're going to be paying per month. And so the broadband labels allow consumers to be able to comparison shop and it will ensure that there is pricing transparency across the ecosystem. So consistent with our rules, large providers must begin displaying the labels on April 10th 2024. And smaller providers will have until October 10 2020 for the FCC, and we are working to assist providers in meeting this requirement and so the commission will make certain resources such as templates for the labels that it'll be available on our websites at least 30 days before the requirements go into effect. So broadband labels, get excited about them, because we're going to start seeing them everywhere the you shopper broadband. And I think two quick things because I know that we're also very tuned in about our efforts to prevent eliminate digital discrimination. So as you might know, the infrastructure and Jobs Act tasked the FCC with the responsibility to adopt rules and achieve the prevention and elimination of digital discrimination. And so as a part of that, we established the task force to prevent the discrimination with the monetary stamp or Williams, and myself, and we did a lot of outreach all across the country. We hosted listening sessions, we did stakeholder roundtables, we ensure that the perspective of the impacted communities were a part of that record, so that we were able to put pen to paper and develop model rules and policies that really I think were responsive to the real world, circumstances on the ground. And so I think, because I know that we're running out of time, so I will just say there is a further notice out there that I think we encourage all of you guys to continue to participate in. And so the further notice, asks different types of questions right about should we require broadband providers to annually submit to the FCC information about any large scale broadband deployment upgrade or maintenance projects? Should we establish a mandatory internal compliance program? And finally, we're asking further comment on whether the FCC should establish an Office of Civil Rights. So we are we might we I mean, the FCC and the task force, continue to be really interested in your feedback, in your perspective. And so we welcome your participation in the rulemaking process. And so comments on the further notice our due March 4, and reply comments By April 1. So please tune in, check it out. And let us know what you think. And lastly, I want to talk about the Affordable connectivity program.

Alejandro Roark

17:02

There we go, the affordable connectivity program. Here's what I'll say, one, the affordable connectivity program is working right. As of this year, over 23 million households across the country now have the Internet connection that they need to connect to the world around us, I think all of us know that there is no big or small tasks that we do on a day to day that sustained critical aspects of our everyday lives, that don't in some way involve being connected to the Internet. So ensuring that that everybody has the ability to connect is paramount. I think it also creates a sustainable funding source for all these new infrastructure projects that are going to be breaking ground and are breaking ground across the country. And so we we are in the unfortunate kind of position where, you know, we are quickly kind of arriving at the financial fiscal cliff for the affordable connectivity program. So without, I think congressional action that will give us more funds to the program. We are forecasting that the program will run out in about April of this year. So really, really a big deal. But I want to, I think highlight a lot of the work that we've all done together in this room across the country, you know, the 23 million households and enrolled 20 228 ACP outreach grants issued national media campaign, federal agency partnerships across the federal government. We launched to navigator pilots, we have multilingual Support Center, we have multilingual resources for how to enroll how to get people for the enrollment process. So it really has been a team lift. And I think really great to this program is very explicit consumer protections that are a part of this program. That again, the number one most cited barrier for why people that don't have Internet today don't have Internet is because of the price of the affordable connectivity program is bridging that gap. So I wanted to share with you guys some key dates, and then we can kind of wrap up. So key dates, late January 2024. Household currently see the ACP monthly benefit, started receiving notices from the Internet service providers, letting them know that the end of the ACP could potentially happen since February 8, there is now an enrollment freeze in the program. So there will be no more enrollment in the affordable connectivity program. Until and hopefully when Congress gives us more money. And again, I'll underscore that based on the current enrollment rates. April is when we anticipate the funds to kind of run out so the FCC anticipates existing ACP funding to run out at the end of April and potentially a partial benefit available in May if Congress does not provide additional funding. So households that are enrolled in the ACP will continue to receive their benefit on their Internet service through April of 2024. And so we encourage folks to continue to lift up the stories of success of the program. I think that that is really gonna go a long way. And as always, we have a lot of support for all of our partners, just like we had at the beginning of the program where the FCC was there with you, in your community, doing webinars, you know, ensuring that people knew how to enroll and all of the background for the program, we are now offering that same level of support throughout the wind down process, I think a lot of consumers will begin to have a lot of questions once they start getting all their notices from providers once they start getting notices from USAC. So again, we are there too, and we have part of our team that does that Renee, and Kayla, please raise your hands. These are our folks. And they are happy to again, either ship you wind down factsheets print them to you, they can do webinars. So again, that that intense kind of level of support that we had at the beginning of the program, we are now offering it right now to ensure that all of our stakeholders at the community level understand the impact to consumers, and that I think consumers have all the resources that they need, especially again, because a lot of US consumer protections continued to be in place as we I hate it breaks my heart to say why down the ACP but that is where we are today. And that is it for MTA and FCC. Thank you so much, guys.

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