New Mexico’s timely broadband subsidy program

In the absence of a federal program to subsidize broadband internet costs for low-income families, New Mexico’s legislature recently applied a surcharge to telecommunications bills, creating a unique replacement to the Federal Communications Commission’s defunct Affordable Connectivity Program. Christopher Mitchell, who heads the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s broadband initiative, said New Mexico has been “aggressive” in quickly setting up a program that will allow families internet access at $40 per month, at an estimated cost of $45 million to the state, once the program is in full flight. Run through a universal service fund, the program will provide greater stability, Mitchell said, than one that, in lean times, might need to compete with, say, a food assistance program. Though his group lauded New Mexico’s effort, he warned against complacency: “This is not a cure-all. … We should be figuring out how to use public policy to drive those [ISP service] costs down.”

This week’s top stories:

A federal child welfare initiative aimed at increasing foster home capacity is beginning to take shape. Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana and Tennessee have joined the “A Home for Every Child” initiative, which aims to update IT systems and connect more families with government services.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has announced it will delay the release of guidance on how states can spend the remaining “nondeployment” funds that were allocated through the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Arielle Roth, the NTIA’s administrator, said the agency will first sort through “an extraordinary level of interest and feedback.”

Organizers at the Center for Internet Security have told state and local government officials that they should expect a wave of “low-level cyber activity” following attacks by the U.S. and Israel on Iran. These, they said, will likely include distributed denial-of-service attacks and website defacements.

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