Funding for high-speed internet initiatives received by Federal agencies totaled $64.3 billion with an additional $11.4 billion in infrastructure contracts during fiscal year (FY) 2022, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) 2023 Federal Broadband Funding Report.
The report analyzes Federal broadband investments in FY2022 (October 2021-September 2022). This includes the Universal Service Fund (USF) programs – which provide qualifying citizens with a credit on their monthly internet bill.
Most of FY2022’s broadband funding, which rose by nearly $51 billion compared to FY2021, went to the NTIA’s new programs ($48.2 billion), the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Affordable Connectivity Program ($14.2 billion), and the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) broadband programs ($1.9 billion).
NTIA attributed the increase in funding to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The Affordable Connectivity Program, which replaced the COVID-19 pandemic Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, recently ended on May 31 – much to the chagrin of FCC and Biden administration leadership.
According to the report, Federal broadband outlays, or spending by the Federal government to support the expansion and improvement of broadband access, increased from $6.7 billion in FY2021 to $14.7 billion in FY2022.
“With approximately 15 percent of American households lacking access to high-speed Internet service in 2023, a digital divide continues to persist in the United States,” said the NTIA. “To bridge this digital divide, substantial public investments are underway to connect all Americans to affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet services through a whole-of-government approach. Internet services are critical for daily communication, access to healthcare, education, and other services, and for full participation in the global economy.”
This year’s report is the first to provide a “comprehensive view” of investment data since the Access Broadband Act of 2021 mandated it. Changes include making information on historical and current broadband funding types, purposes, agencies, programs, and future plans available to the public and Congress instead of limited and select charts.
The report includes data reported by 13 agencies across 70 programs and Tribal data, which showed the NTIA’s Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) allocated approximately $1.36 billion to more than 120 Tribal governments.
NTIA’s Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth (OICG) developed the Federal Broadband Funding Report Dashboard as a “hub for interagency broadband funding data collection” to accompany its annual report.
The dashboard includes data reported from agencies that made investments in broadband infrastructure; digital inclusion or adoption activities; and broadband planning, data, and mapping efforts. It includes data across three years, beginning in FY2020.
“These investments collectively represent an unprecedented whole-of-nation approach to expanding reliable, affordable high-speed Internet access and use,” reads the NTIA’s dashboard.
The new dashboard also features a new “streamlined data collection process,” instead of using spreadsheets like in previous years. NTIA provided agencies with a central hub for direct data input that allowed agencies to fix data issues, upload state and Tribal outlay data in spreadsheet format, and see if NTIA had reviewed data submissions or made revisions. The data input system also enabled agencies to enter data from previous years.
NTIA is seeking user feedback on its data collection systems to “make updates ahead of the next data collection.”
