State of Telecommunications Policy in the US Today

The Illinois Legislature has taken several major legal steps to not only improve broadband affordability in The Prairie State, but empower local cooperatives to expand affordable, reliable fiber access to state residents. Illinois State Sen. Rachel Ventura (D-Joliet) recently introduced Senate Bill 3612, which would amend the state’s Utilities Act to require that large private telecoms in the state provide affordable, fast broadband access to low-income state residents.

Pennsylvania’s Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative (REC) says it’s making steady inroads in expanding affordable fiber access throughout rural Bradford and Wyoming Counties. The cooperative recently passed a notable milestone: the cooperative just wrapped up a project that delivered 100 miles of new fiber-optic cable to pass roughly 1,300 previously-unserved and underserved homes and businesses in rural Bradford and Wyoming counties for the first time ever.

When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it sought to modernize regulatory structures for the digital age. Three decades later, architects of the ‘96 Act say it achieved many of those goals, but numerous legal challenges reshaped how key provisions were implemented.

In late 2024 the Biden FCC implemented a new rule requiring that broadband providers include a “nutrition label for broadband", but a lack of enforcement made their impact lukewarm, and now the new FCC is looking to water down their effectiveness even more.

California’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently signed off on Verizon’s $20 billion merger with telecom giant Frontier with some notable conditions. While the concessions extracted from Verizon by the CPUC are promising, they’ll require consistent monitoring and enforcement, something that hasn’t always been a strong suit when it comes to state and federal oversight of politically powerful regional telecom monopolies.

This week, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance joined with other public interest groups and Tribal nations to urge the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt a Tribal Licensing Window in the upcoming auction of Upper C-Band spectrum.