Category Archives: Policy

FCC adopts new rules from the E-Rate Program

Posted on by
Reply

From the FCC…

Today, the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules to enhance the integrity of the E-Rate program by amending its rules and establishing a new competitive bidding portal and document repository. Today’s action will assist E-Rate applicants with program compliance and decrease the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse in the E-Rate program. The Commission is also taking actions to simplify and streamline the E-Rate processes and procedures, while giving greater flexibility for both applicants and service providers. The E-Rate program provides support to ensure that schools and libraries can obtain affordable, high-speed broadband services and internal connections. The Commission is committed to the responsible stewardship of E-Rate funds and protecting against waste, fraud, and abuse, and an open competitive bidding process is a cornerstone of, and fundamental, to the integrity of the E-Rate program. This action brings greater transparency and consistency to the competitive bidding process, helping ensure schools and libraries receive the most cost-effective services.

Additional Background Information: Today’s Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration will create and implement a competitive bidding portal and repository for the funding year 2028 competitive bidding cycle, beginning July 1, 2027. Specifically, it will require prospective service providers to submit bids responding to applicants’ requests for bids and require applicants to upload competitive bidding documentation, including bid evaluations, vendor selection documentation, and contracts to the portal. This action will consolidate where information is provided and stored, creating a centralized repository which will reduce the need for applicants to respond to documentation requests from the Commission and the E-Rate program administrator. Today’s action also includes rule changes to simplify and streamline E-Rate processes for applicants and service providers, including refining procedures for applicants transitioning service providers, eliminating unnecessary paperwork, and providing greater flexibility to refile rejected requests for reimbursement. Action by the Commission April 30, 2026 by Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration (FCC 26-30). Chairman Carr and Commissioner Trusty approving. Commissioner Gomez approving in part and dissenting in part. Chairman Carr, Commissioners Gomez and Trusty issuing separate statements.

Future of Universal Service Fund (USF) Reform Task Force

Posted on by
Reply

Keep Our Communities Connected (KOCC) reports…

Keep Our Communities Connected (KOCC) and the Schools, Health, and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition launched the “Future of Universal Service Fund (USF) Reform Task Force” on Friday, April 10, 2026. This cross-sector initiative aims to inform ongoing bipartisan and bicameral policy debates on the long-term sustainability of universal service programs that support broadband access for schools, libraries, rural communities, health providers, and low-income households. Chairing the Task Force are former FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Rachelle Chong.

Someone from the Schools, Health, and Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition mentioned efforts to reevaluate USF at the Office of Broadband Development conference yesterday. So, this caught my eye today…

The Task Force aims to operate on a consensus basis over the summer, focusing on:

  • Stabilizing USF Programs: Evaluating policy options, including long-term funding predictability and sustainability, the role of appropriations, contribution models, and accountability measures.
  • Broadening the Coalition: Engaging a diverse ecosystem of leaders from public interest advocacy organizations, telecommunication and trade associations, and academia.
  • Operationalizing the Sustainability: Translating abstract policy goals into a final set of principles and recommendations to guide the Congressional Universal Service Fund Working Group.

The Task Force will conclude its work with a public announcement of its findings and a convening in Washington, D.C. to present a forward-looking roadmap for universal service connectivity.

League of MN Cities take on American Broadband Deployment Act permitting bill

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote about The American Broadband Deployment Act pause button  last week, the League of Minnesota Cities has a more detailed follow up this week…

The measure was removed from the U.S. House Rules Committee agenda after strong opposition from local government groups, including the League and national partners.

The U.S. House Rules Committee was scheduled to consider the American Broadband Deployment Act (H.R. 2289) on April 20, a necessary step before the bill could advance to the full House floor for a vote. After significant advocacy efforts by the League of Minnesota Cities and its national partners, the bill was pulled from the agenda when it became clear it lacked the votes to pass.

In addition to the League, the coordinated efforts included the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors.

They detailed…

Specifically, the bill as written would:

  • Force taxpayer subsidies. It would replace the current “fair and reasonable” compensation standard with a strict limit based on “actual and direct costs.” This creates a new unfunded mandate that could force Minnesota residents to subsidize the infrastructure costs of private corporations.

  • Allow automatic permit approvals. The bill would codify federal “shot clocks” and add a “deemed granted” penalty. This means that if a city misses a deadline, broadband companies could start construction without local approval. This would take away a city’s ability to protect public safety and manage its streets and public rights-of-way.

  • Weaken cable franchising authority. The legislation would permanently exempt bundled broadband services from local franchise agreements and allow providers to unilaterally modify existing agreement terms. This could significantly weaken a city’s ability to enforce local standards and services.

  • Shift dispute resolution. The proposal would move legal disputes from local courts to the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. This would increase costs and complexity for Minnesota cities when defending local interests.

New MN Bill: Minnesota Digital Choice Act with personal digital data (SF4100)

Posted on by
Reply

The Minnesota Senate will hear about the following this morning:

Commerce and Consumer Protection

Chair: Senator Matt D. Klein

Location: G-15 Capitol

Public Notice Date: 2026-04-23 11:29 AM

Documents added Revision 4

Testifiers must be in person.
Other items may be added to the agenda.
The number of testifiers and length of time permitted is at the discretion of the chair.

Agenda:

New MN Bill: Social media platforms requirements for minors (SF4696)

Posted on by
Reply

The Minnesota Senate will hear about the following this morning:

Commerce and Consumer Protection

Chair: Senator Matt D. Klein

Location: G-15 Capitol

Public Notice Date: 2026-04-23 11:29 AM

Documents added Revision 4

Testifiers must be in person.
Other items may be added to the agenda.
The number of testifiers and length of time permitted is at the discretion of the chair.

Agenda:

Minneapolis City Council to vote on data center moratorium on May 21

Posted on by
Reply

The Minnesota Star Tribune reports...

The city of Minneapolis may put a moratorium on data centers, even as some see the facilities as possible saviors of the downtown commercial tax base, which has plummeted in value in recent years.

Data centers are rapidly being built all over the nation to provide computing power that tech companies need to train artificial intelligence.

But a public backlash has sprung up amid concerns over their electricity demands and water use, and there’s apprehension about supporting a technology that is likely to displace human workers.

Now, the Minneapolis City Council is making moves toward putting a moratorium on the establishment or expansion of data centers in the city.

On Thursday the council scheduled a vote on a moratorium for May 21, giving members time to see whether state lawmakers enact statewide regulations.

The article outlines the perspectives of various council members, which run the gamut of issues we’ve seen in other data center discussions..

The council is largely split on the issue along its usual political divide, with more moderate Democrats worried that a moratorium would put the brakes on an emerging market that could help resuscitate downtown commercial property values, which have been hobbled by the rise of remote work.

House restores ReConnect Funding in FY2027 USDA Bill

Posted on by
Reply

Broadband Breakfast reports…

House appropriators included $40 million for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect program in their fiscal year 2027 spending bill, restoring funding after the agency proposed eliminating the rural broadband initiative.

The move marks a clear divergence from USDA’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, which proposed no funding for ReConnect, according to agency broadband program requests.

The House Appropriations Committee released the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies bill on Wednesday, ahead of a subcommittee markup the following day.

Libraries, schools and others ask FCC to reject proposed E-Rate bidding portal

Posted on by
Reply

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society reports…

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition led more than 80 organizations (including the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society) representing schools, libraries, service providers, and education leaders in sending a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency not to proceed with its proposed competitive bidding portal for the E-Rate program. The groups are concerned that the establishment of a Bidding Portal and its associated complex requirements and procedures, as proposed in the Draft Order, is not only unnecessary but also undermines the good work being done to streamline the E-Rate program. The groups requested that the FCC not proceed with its proposed implementation of the Bidding Portal. If the FCC elects to proceed with the Bidding Portal, the groups urge it to delay implementation until at least Funding Year 2029, hold a public comment proceeding to allow input into the portal’s development, create beta testing with applicants and providers to ensure the portal functions appropriately, and hold training for all applicants and vendors on the portal and new requirements under this order.

MN House Bill passes: , A bill for an act relating to telecommunications (HF4052)

Posted on by
Reply

The Minnesota House reports…

HF4052 (Kresha) Various provisions governing telephone company regulation, facilities and property, pricing plans, service classification, and reporting requirements.

More details…

HF. No. 4052, A bill for an act relating to telecommunications; modifying and clarifying various provisions governing telephone company regulation, facilities and property, pricing plans, service classification, and reporting requirements; amending Minnesota Statutes 2024, sections 237.035; 237.036; 237.069; 237.07, subdivision 1; 237.11; 237.164; 237.626, subdivisions 1, 3; 237.66, by adding subdivisions; 237.70, subdivision 7; 237.762, subdivision 5; repealing Minnesota Statutes 2024, sections 237.065; 237.066; 237.067; 237.071; 237.072; 237.075, subdivisions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11; 237.14; 237.15; 237.16, subdivision 9; 237.22; 237.231; 237.59, subdivisions 1, 1a, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10; 237.66, subdivisions 1, 1a, 1c, 1d, 2, 2a, 3; 237.75; 237.766; 237.768; 237.772; 237.775.

      The bill was read for the third time and placed upon its final passage.

The question was taken on the passage of the bill and the roll was called.  There were 134 yeas and 0 nays as follows:

The bill was passed and its title agreed to.

St Francis City Council approves first reading of an ordinance on small cell technology (Anoka County)

Posted on by
Reply

Hometown Source reports…

St Francis City Council unanimously approved the first reading of an ordinance on small cell technology at their April 20 meeting.

Here are more details from the St Francis City Council website…

Ordinance Amendment – City Code Chapter 7 – First Reading

Ordinance 357 amending City Code Chapter 7, Section 5, Sub. 3, 7, 9, 10, 14, and 20 adding Small Cell Wireless Facility

Emily Thabes enters race for Minnesota House District 2B – mentions broadband

Posted on by
Reply

The Pilot Independent reports…

Emily Thabes, a Clearwater County resident since March 2020 and executive director of the Beltrami County Historical Society, announced that she is running for the Minnesota House of Representatives in District 2B. She will challenge Republican incumbent Matt Bliss in November.

The article mentions Clearwater County’s current broadband status…

Itasca County ranks among the highest in the state for property tax burden and among the lowest for median household income. Mahnomen County, home to the White Earth Nation, has a 37 percent poverty rate and the 47th-worst broadband coverage of any Minnesota county.

Greater Minnesota is short 42,581 childcare slots. The December 2025 federal funding freeze cut access for an additional 23,000 Minnesota children statewide, in a region where northeast Minnesota already holds the highest job vacancy rate in the state.

And Thabes response to the concerns…

She says tribal and non-tribal communities across the district face the same healthcare, housing, broadband, and workforce shortages, and that the solutions to those problems require working across jurisdictional lines, not around them. Her platform treats the district’s economies, resorts, agriculture, tribal enterprise and outdoor recreation as a system built on the same shared land and water.

The American Broadband Deployment Act could change broadband permitting and siting

Posted on by
Reply

Wireless Estimator reports ona bill that was going through the Congress yesterday (spoiler: Punchbowl news reported that this bill was pulled from the House floor). While the immediacy may be gone, I think it’s still helpful to know what is being discussed…

A bill working its way through Congress could be one of the most significant boosts the tower and telecom siting and contracting industry has seen in years — and it may be one step closer to becoming law by tonight.

H.R. 2289, the American Broadband Deployment Act, introduced by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), is a sweeping federal bill designed to streamline nationwide permitting for broadband and telecommunications infrastructure.
What began as a one-page proposal to exempt specified broadband projects from federal environmental and historic review requirements expanded dramatically through committee amendments into a roughly 100-page omnibus bill incorporating more than 20 separate permitting and preemption provisions affecting wireless siting, wireline broadband deployment, cable franchising, and federal review processes.
It would limit the ability of local governments to delay, restrict, or add costs to tower and network deployments — cutting through the kind of bureaucratic red tape that has slowed projects and drained contractor resources for years.

The bill has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee and significantly restructures how local governments may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of communications facilities in public rights-of-way and on locally controlled property.

Industry support for the bill is broad and deep.

The industry is interested in bill; local governments are not as interested…

Not everyone is on board, however. A powerful coalition of local government organizations is fighting back hard. The National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, and the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors jointly oppose the bill, calling it an unprecedented and dangerous usurpation of local governments’ authority to manage public rights-of-way and land use.
The local organizations wrote that the bill “creates a framework that prioritizes communication companies’ shareholder value at the expense of the safety and financial interests of the communities and the taxpayers they serve.” Critics further argue that the bill would undermine public safety, force local taxpayers to subsidize private corporations, and disrupt the very broadband deployment progress it aims to accelerate.

New MN Bill: to establish a steering committee that would provide recommendations on current human services IT HF4675

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, the House Human Services Finance and Policy Committee, heard about HF4675 to establish a steering committee that would provide recommendations on current human services IT systems and the development of new ones…

Counties have long lamented outdated “Oregon Trail”-era IT systems used to enroll Minnesotans in Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Women Infants and Children, and other public assistance programs. Soon, President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will introduce increased complexity to these systems and legislators have said the status quo can’t accommodate that.

In addition to remedies proposed by Gov. Tim Walz and other legislators throughout the session, Rep. Danny Nadeau (R-Rogers) has a proposal to kickstart upgrades and modernizations.

He sponsors HF4675 to establish a steering committee that would provide recommendations on current human services IT systems and the development of new ones. The bill would also appropriate an undetermined amount of money in Fiscal Year 2027 to update county IT systems.

The committee laid the bill over.

Counties currently use two systems to process claims: MAXIS, launched in 1989, and METS, established in 2014.

Testifiers said both systems have issues.

Benton asks if the changes to BEAD proposed by the Trump Administration are legal

Posted on by
Reply

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society has asked the question that I think many of us have pondered – are all of these change to BEAD legal? They recently posted an article from Tejas N. Narechania is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law on the topic. He starts with the setup…

In 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which allocated over $42 billion to the new Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program to ensure high-speed Internet access for every American.[1] That money was allocated across 56 states and territories responsible for selecting the providers that will build connectivity to unserved and underserved locations.

After President Trump’s second inauguration, his administration implemented several changes to the BEAD Program. Among them are two new conditions on state funding.

First, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), announced that it would prohibit states from regulating broadband rates or imposing network neutrality rules on broadband providers,[2] even after several federal courts held that such rules fell within the states’ traditional, lawful powers. NTIA has since asked states to sign amended “Notices of Award”—documents governing BEAD grants—that purport to implement this prohibition statewide, even in locations not subsidized by BEAD (e.g., places with existing service).

Second, Executive Order No. 14,365 directs the Secretary of Commerce to identify “onerous” state laws regulating AI systems,[3] singling out Colorado’s prohibition against biased AI systems used for discriminatory purposes as an example.[4] The Executive Order then declares that any state with an onerous law will be deemed ineligible for certain “nondeployment” BEAD funds. As of April 2026, the Commerce Secretary has yet to release this “naughty list” of AI laws.

Both conditions are unlawful.

The author goes on to explain that both conditions are inconsistent with the text of the IIJA and other statutory provisions, there’s no federal power to preempt state AI and broadband regulation and federal authorities doesn’t have the power to regulate and to preempt state regulation. The explanations in the article are more complete and succinctly explained. It’s worth checking out the full article.

Notes from Broadband Development Training Series: Navigating PLUS (Permitting, Land Use, and State Systems)

Posted on by
Reply

Today the Office of Broadband Development held a session on Broadband Development Training Series: Navigating PLUS (Permitting, Land Use, and State Systems). Below are the slides and notes on questions.

 

 

Questions

 

Q: Shouldn’t one clue have been that gas line should have been in yellow conduit, not blueish/green?
A: Yes

 

Q: Hi Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. Two questions; 1) How is the MNOPS preparing for the massive increase of broadband deployment construction projects that will hit the MNOPS and 811 locate program that will be part of the next four years for the BEAD program? 2) As new entrants to the broadband market, rural electric coops have experienced significant delays due to incumbent telco/ISP not providing timely locates. How will MNOPS insure BEAD broadband projects are not delayed due to incumbent telco/ISP locate delays?

A: We get a lot of communications. There has been an impact.
We are trying to mitigate locate delays. But yet, projects are been delayed.

 

Q Mike would it be a good use of BEAD funds to pay for more locators, are there enough locators available in the market or is there a skill shortage?
A: We ask that regularly. We can recommend but not demand.

 

 

Q: Is MNOPS able to proactively work with MN DEED to ensure locating companies in rural Minnesota are staffed appropriately to support the massive fiber construction about to begin?

A: We are happy to partner

 

Notes:

Resources are available on the Line Extension Connection Program (https://mn.gov/deed/programs-services/broadband/extension/) and federal BEAD program (https://mn.gov/deed/programs-services/broadband/bead/). 

Sign up for the April 23 session: https://events.gcc.teams.microsoft.com/event/6a5c02c3-d4f8-48fb-9ad5-c6f137b98955@eb14b046-24c4-4519-8f26-b89c2159828c  

Registration for the 4/29 Broadband Summit site is available here: mn.gov/deed/events/connecting/