NTIA Blog
NTIA 2023: A Year in Review
How Public Input Helped Shape NTIA’s Approach to the Uniform Guidance in the BEAD Program
Investment Meets Impact: Celebrating the 2nd Anniversary of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
On November 15th, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law. Better known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the statute designated $65billion to improve high-speed Internet access for people across America.
Two years later, NTIA and other agencies have distributed billions of dollars to communities to bridge the digital divide and make participation in the digital economy a reality for everyone. At NTIA, we completed funding rounds for multiple programs in the last year and are moving to the implementation phase, all the while preparing states and territories to administer their state grant programs. Here are some of our major accomplishments in Year 2 of Internet for All, from major milestones to stories of how this initiative is impacting people’s lives.
Moving the BEAD Program from Planning to Execution
Ensuring Robust Participation in the BEAD Program
When We Say Internet for All, We Mean All: A Digital Inclusion Month Recap
One Byte at a Time: NTIA’s Approach For a Trustworthy and Secure Internet
New laptop, new chance
By Margaret Harding McGill, NTIA
Dalia Calderon was ready to quit college, for the second time. She had returned to Mercy University after a 20-year break, but the combination of online classes and an ancient laptop was proving to be too much to bear.
“I said, ‘I don’t know how I can finish school. I'm just going to drop out - I’m already old,’” said Calderon, 47, who lives in the Bronx. “That’s when I got an email that said they were loaning laptops. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”
Mercy University has loaned more than 500 laptops and hotspots to help students like Calderon access the Internet as part of a program funded by a $2.6 million Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
Calderon first attended Mercy when she was in her twenties, but between having children and the cost of tuition, she was unable to graduate. She now works at an elementary school, and the principal urged her to return to college so she could obtain her teaching license.
Calderon worked as a private tutor to save up the money to re-enroll. She took online classes so she could continue to work, but her ancient laptop was not up to the task. With only two classes left, she was ready to give up.
That’s when she heard about Mercy’s new laptop program. When she went to campus to pick hers up, she learned it was also Internet-enabled.
Shaping the Future of Digital Equity: Communicating Your Feedback
One Giant Leap for Mobility: Recapping the 2023 5G Challenge
At the National Telecommunications and Information Administration we are working to foster the development of an open 5G wireless ecosystem to help the private sector bring new life and innovation to a marketplace held back by few vendors and little competition.
One way we’re doing this is through our 5G lab at the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, where we partnered with the Department of Defense for our 2023 5G Challenge. The 2023 5G Challenge tested whether an open 5G ecosystem can work in real world scenarios.
Challenge Structure Recap
These results are now available in the 2023 5G Challenge Closing Ceremony video
The 2023 5G Challenge tested whether components of an Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN), such as antennas and radio base stations, can work together to ultimately create a multi-vendor subsystem end-to-end (E2E) 5G network.