X-Lab

Raising awareness with my Pennsylvania Broadband Research Institute colleagues about a looming legal paradox that's been left to fester, and is now coming to the fore: https://www.benton.org/blog/bad-business-bead Chris Ali David Elliot Berman Sydney Forde Victor Pickard

The Bad Business of BEAD The Biden Administration’s unwillingness to enforce federal statute could threaten billions in broadband funding.

https://www.broadband.pa.gov/funding/capital-projects-fund-cpf

Several folks were asking about the analyses we did when Pennsylvania announced that the Capital Project Funds were awarded for broadband buildout this past week. Here's the totals & percent of total allocation for the 12 winners:

COMCAST $61,664,038 30.20%
ABI $1,809,524 0.89%
Verizon $78,387,788 38.39%
Claverack $4,771,248 2.34%
Armstrong $12,470,081 6.11%
Windstream $11,979,593 5.87%
Frontier $3,529,171 1.73%
Zito $26,388,039 12.92%
Upward $1,476,288 0.72%
Blueridge $524,857 0.26%
Brightspeed $782,163 0.38%
Adams $387,969 0.19%

Overall, 97% went to for-profits, and 0% to municipal/county networks.

There is one cooperative (Claverack).

There is also only one non-profit winner ABI [Allegheny Broadband].

The winners represent entities that have routinely failed to live up to their broadband commitments -- e.g., Verizon, quite infamously, failed to roll out the promised 45Mbps service they promised to the State of Pennsylvania; Frontier has been so terrible in failing its commitments that it had to enter bankruptcy just three years ago (when it was facing clawbacks do to their rollout failures).

Overall, I have a hard time understanding the criteria that were used (and the scoring/weighting that was granted), which lead to this particular group of winners. They would seem to be at odds with the scoring metrics that the Broadband Authority says that they used.

Capital Projects Fund (CPF) Programs - Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority Funding Capital Projects Fund Program The U.S. Department of Treasury awarded $279 million to Pennsylvania for critical capital projects. In June 2022, the Pennsylvania General Assembly appropriated this funding to the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA), which is using the funds to....

Can we talk about how utterly *crazy* Congress has acted this past week vis-a-vis reauthorization. Manufacturing a national security crisis (that wasn't) to prevent the reining in of warrantless surveillance of Americans is a new low:

Officials sound alarm about new Russian ‘space threat’ Russia has been experimenting with ways to disable satellites, raising concerns that classified intelligence about a new weapon could indicate a strategic threat to national security.

The Facebook checkin at Standing Rock is a turning point for surveillance activism, says X-Lab researcher Jeff Landale in the Christian Science Monitor. "Without more transparency into the modern surveillance tools that police are using around the country, it's impossible to know where law enforcement is crossing the line and violating long-standing boundaries to protect privacy and First Amendment rights." http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2016/1102/Standing-Rock-check-in-marks-turning-point-for-activists

Standing Rock 'check in' marks turning point for activists While it's unknown if the Facebook check-in campaign to support pipeline protesters at the Standing Rock is effective, it shows protesters are pushing back against online surveillance.