The Rural Utilities Service, a Rural Development agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is accepting applications under the Community Connect Grant (CCG) program for Fiscal Year 2023. RUS has approximately $79 million for FY 2023. These grant funds will be made available to eligible applicants to construct broadband networks that provide service on a community-oriented connectivity basis in rural areas. All applicants are responsible for any expenses incurred in developing their applications. Applications are due June 20, 2023. RUS encourages applicants to consider projects that will advance the following key priorities:

• Assisting rural communities to recover economically through more and better market opportunities and through improved infrastructure.
• Ensuring all rural residents have equitable access to Rural Development programs and benefits from RD-funded projects.
• Reducing climate pollution and increasing resilience to the impacts of climate change through economic support to rural communities.

US Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Todd Young (R-IN), and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), reintroduced the Funding Affordable Internet with Reliable (FAIR) Contributions Act (S.856). The legislation would direct the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a study into the feasibility of collecting Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions from internet edge providers. Among other provisions, The FAIR Contributions Act would:

• Direct the FCC to issue a Notice of Inquiry seeking public comment on the feasibility of collecting USF contributions from internet edge providers, and issue a final report on the matter within 180 days
• Require the FCC to consider
  • Possible sources of Big Tech revenue, such as digital advertising and user fees;
  • The fairness of the current system and a system under which contributions could be assessed on Big Tech firms;
  • The feasibility of assessing contributions on such a broad category of firms that do not currently register with the FCC;
  • The effects such a change would have on Tribal, low-income, and elderly consumers; and
  • The changes to current law necessary to implement this system.

At the beginning of Mayor Eric Adams’ term, New York City Chief Technology Officer Matt Fraser stepped in to head up the city’s new Office of Technology and Innovation, a reorganization of the city’s technology and IT offices into one central authority. In relation to New York's "Big Apple Connect," and "Internet Master Plan," Fraser said any plan that has a tangible item that's supposed to be delivered within a two-year timeframe, but you get two years in, and there's not a single contract issued – that’s not a plan, it’s an idea. Fraser continued, saying, "We brought in our big cable providers. We brought in the folks at Charter Communications, we brought in the folks at Altice, and we brought in the folks at Verizon. We want to make sure that we get these communities access as quickly as possible. We started with public housing, but we're not going to stop at public housing. We're going to extend that to those that have other housing subsidies from the city and try to extend these programs to them as well."

On March 20, US District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan will weigh pleas by four major book publishers to stop an online lending library from freely offering digital copies of books, in a case that raises novel questions about digital-library rights and the reach of copyright law that protects the work of writers and publishers. Nonprofit organization Internet Archive created the digital books, building its collection by scanning physical book copies in its possession. It lends the digital versions to readers worldwide, with more than three million digitized books on offer. The archive expanded its digital lending during the Covid-19 pandemic, temporarily lifting limits on how many people could check out a book at one time. The move helped prompt the publishers’ copyright infringement lawsuit in 2020. The plaintiffs are Lagardère SCA’s Hachette Book Group, John Wiley & Sons, Bertelsmann SE’s Penguin Random House, and HarperCollins Publishers, which like The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. They argue the Internet Archive book platform “constitutes willful digital piracy on an industrial scale” and hurts writers and publishers who rely on consumers buying their products. William Adams, general counsel for HarperCollins Publishers, said the archive’s approach has no basis in law. “What they’re doing is supplanting what authors and publishers do with libraries and have been doing for a long time,” he said. The Internet Archive says its lending practices are a fair and legal use of the books, in the same way that traditional bricks-and-mortar libraries have a right to share their collections with the public. 

Residents of Morgantown (PA) became the latest to tap into Windstream’s Kinetic fiber network. But according to Jeff Small, President of Kinetic, Morgantown is just the beginning of Windstream’s plans for 2023. The newest passings in Pennsylvania are a part of Windstream’s national rollout to overbuild fiber on top of its historic DSL footprint. “We’re building 300,000 fiber passings a year,” explained Small. “When you look at the end of 2021, we had 164,000 fiber customers. [At the] end of last year, [we’re] up to 289,000.” That means that at the close of 2022, Kinetic had snagged another close to 125,000 new fiber subscribers. In 2022, Windstream won more than $202 million in broadband grants in Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Thus far in 2023, it’s scored another $34.9 million in Georgia and has applied for several grants in Nebraska. It also secured $523 million in support covering 18 states from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, which will be distributed over the course of 10 years. As Kinetic’s fiber offerings roll out, some customers are naturally migrating from DSL services over to fiber. In competitive areas, Small estimates market penetration to shake out to about 30 percent. For non-competitive areas, though, expectations tick up to 40 percent. Even though some states are larger with potentially more customers – like Kentucky, Georgia, and Texas – Small was adamant that the size of a state or a market isn’t going to sway how resources and time are allocated to Kinetic’s upgrades. And with $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding getting ready to be allocated later this year, Small is cautiously optimistic.