Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

U.S. fiber broadband deployment is accelerating, and CostQuest’s newest fiber focus report offers a forward-looking view of where fiber coverage is expanding, who is building it, and how federal funding is reshaping the competitive map. Fiber is now serving 58.7 percent more U.S. homes and businesses than it did four years ago, with more than 26.6 million Broadband Serviceable Locations gaining fiber access since Version 1 of the Fabric, including 6 percent growth in just the past six months.

Gov Jeff Landry (R-LA), ConnectLA, REV Fiber, state and local leaders, and community members joined in Central for a groundbreaking celebrating the country's largest broadband build to date, funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. The project will be delivered by REV Fiber, providing reliable, high-speed internet access to 2,840 locations in East Baton Rouge Parish.

For over four decades, the Lifeline program has helped Americans get online and stay online, and that support matters even more now, with rising prices, a country at war, and nearly half of Americans struggling to afford the cost of living. This enforcement action is a targeted and responsible step that holds the providers who committed fraud accountable while exposing the weaknesses in our own systems that made that fraud possible.

States have yet to receive lists of locations that will be eligible for an additional round of broadband grant funding. “We may not see it until sometime in November, perhaps,” said Glen Howie, head of Arkansas’ broadband office. “I think they’re waiting on the June data to take another look at their lists and see what that looks like.”

A new White House task force will have 120 days to report on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence—and determine the federal government’s responsibility—according to Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence who effectively becomes the administration’s AI czar.

In 2025, Edgebeam Wireless was formed to take advantage of the unused spectrum of TV stations. The business is a partnership between the E.W. Scripps Company, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair. You may recall that a few years ago the FCC held an incentive auction to lure TV stations to sell their spectrum, and many station owners decided to do so.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing more than $10 million in fines against two providers who apparently defrauded the FCC’s Lifeline Program. The Federal Lifeline Program is funded by the Universal Service Fund to provide a discount on phone and internet services for qualifying low-income Americans. The Notice of Apparent Liability adopted by the FCC proposes $2,673,966 and $7,453,966 fines against AirVoice Wireless and TAG Mobility, respectively.

The Oklahoma Broadband Office is celebrating the completion of eight broadband infrastructure projects by Indian Electric Cooperative that will expand fiber-optic connectivity across several rural Oklahoma communities. The projects were funded through Oklahoma’s American Rescue Plan Act State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund broadband program. IEC received approximately $17.7 million for four last-mile and four middle-mile projects.

The common theme that spanned across SCTE TechExpo26 in Atlanta was that the cable industry is facing a new network challenge as upstream broadband traffic grows faster than many operators anticipated. OpenVault CEO and Founder Mark Trudeau said the industry's focus has shifted from simply adding downstream capacity to ensuring networks can reliably support a growing volume of upstream activity driven by applications such as AI, content creation, and social media uploads.

British Telecom is buying TalkTalk Telecommunications and its subsidiary PlatformX Communications for about $540 million. BT said it’s buying the companies to “keep them out of administration,” which is a U.K. process similar to bankruptcy in the U.S. BT said that by buying the companies it is protecting services for 1.5 million TalkTalk residential broadband customers along with 1 million wholesale customers.