Earlier this week during a keynote address at the United Nations, a U.S. Department of State official unveiled an initiative to bring 1.5 billion people around the world online by 2020. Global Connect, the new initiative, will be a cross-agency effort to make Internet access a top priority in foreign policy. The State Department announcement explicitly states that Internet access is being made a priority because of its role in entrepreneurship, innovation, knowledge flows and market creation.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam recently announced a new fund to support economic development in rural parts of the state. While most of the $8 million (approximately $7 million) is designated for shovel-ready economic development sites and tourism projects, the state will commit $600,000 for economic development grants to support entrepreneurship in small towns across the state including $300,000 to support a Main Street Business Incubator Program for downtown business districts.

For many states, broadband connectivity is becoming an increasingly important tool used to improve the economic well-being of residents, especially in rural areas. While some have paved the way for publicly funded municipal broadband providers, others, such as North Carolina and Tennessee, have filed suit with the Federal Communications Commission and joined the telecommunications industry in their opposition.

AT&T has announced a new partnership with three U.S. metros to establish a Smart Cities Framework using Internet of Things (IoT) innovations to create solutions for cities. In the first stage of the effort, Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas will showcase the potential use of sensors and other Internet-connected technologies to improve municipal services. In addition to existing services offered by AT&T, the new framework adds several new services in four categories: infrastructure; citizen engagement; transportation; and, public safety.

Editor’s note: The Senate passed the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act on Aug. 10, 2021. This article has been updated to reflect the final amendments and new information on next steps for the legislation.

On June 26, 2023, the U.S. government announced allocations from the $42.45 Billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. These funds, allocated to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five territories, are intended to close the digital divide in the U.S., as funding will be used to deploy or upgrade broadband networks to ensure that everyone in the U.S. has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet service.

As more households rely on faster forms of internet, broadband internet service has begun to be treated as a necessity in the home and workplace. But its use has varied by generation; according to Pew Research Center, 99% of US adults ages 18-29 report using the internet, while only 75% of senior citizens (65+) can say the same.

On May 30, 2023, FCC released a broadband map that had been updated to reflect states' challenges to the availability data for more than 4 million locations throughout the U.S. Seventy-five percent of those challenges had been resolved in the new map. The new map reflected a net increase of more than one million new serviceable locations that had not appeared on the previous map.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last month the availability of more than $11 million in grants to support rural broadband through its Community Connect grant program, which seeks to help fund broadband deployment into rural communities where it is not yet economically viable for private sector providers to deliver service. For FY 2016, the minimum grant amount is $100,000, while the maximum award is $3 million.

This week, the White House announced the ConnectAll Initiative, an effort to reform federal communications programs to focus on bringing more Americans online. The focus of this effort will be on lower-income families who often lack access to affordable service and the devices to make use of them. Under the proposed plan, low-income families could be eligible for a monthly broadband subsidy.

Broadband connectivity is foundational for regional competitiveness in the global economy, prompting more states and communities to develop innovative solutions to expand high-quality broadband access for their businesses, residents, education systems and public sector. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam provided one of the most recent examples of the trend by signing legislation making it easier for municipalities and cooperative boards to deliver broadband connectivity in underrepresented communities throughout the Volunteer State. Considerable socioeconomic and political challenges remain for communities interested in providing broadband service at the municipal level.

Throughout the United States, innovation districts have been proposed with varying degrees of emphasis on inclusivity and opportunity.

The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) plan that would allow municipalities to build their own broadband network – superseding state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that explicitly prohibit such projects. The FCC claimed that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 granted it implicit power to preempt state laws that are intended to support open markets for private-sector utility companies.

A month after a federal court ruled that high-speed Internet service can be defined as a utility, four states have announced commitments to expand high quality, reliable broadband services to rural areas and other underrepresented groups. Two Midwest states, Wisconsin and Minnesota, will provide funding to help support projects that improve access to broadband and spur economic prosperity.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released its latest broadband report. The report provides summarized data on Internet access connections in the U.S. (over 200 kilobits per second in at least one direction). Key findings include the number of broadband connections with downstream speeds of at least 10 Mbps increased by 118% in the U.S. between June 2012 and June 2013.

The Federal Communications Commission announced a round of funding for rural broadband experiments in price cap areas that will deploy new, robust broadband to consumers. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a series of reports on its broadband grant programs.

Can banks meet Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) obligations by helping address high-speed broadband gaps and the digital divide? Participants in a recent Federal Reserve webinar said yes and provided tips on how.

CRA is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and the webinar explained how financing broadband initiatives would qualify as an economic development tool that meets the CRA service tests. Our communities would benefit on a number of fronts.