In prisons and jails across the country, a bulky tablet enclosed in a screwed-on plastic case has become the hottest new device. Featuring limited online access, the tablets allow incarcerated people to make calls, send messages and watch movies from their cells. They also give prison telecommunication companies and correctional facilities another source of revenue when profits from phone calls, which have long been the industry’s principal business, are getting squeezed. In July, the Federal Communications Commission voted to slash the rates and fees that companies can charge for prison or jail phone calls and impose price caps on previously unregulated video calls. The rules, which will take effect next year, also outlaw site commissions, which are clauses in contracts that give a correctional facility or agency a portion of the revenue from calls. At large jails, a 15-minute phone call that previously could have cost more than $11 will now be at most 90 cents. The new caps will save incarcerated people and their friends, families and legal teams $386 million, according to the FCC. The new FCC rules regulate voice and video calls—whether they are made through wall phones or tablets—but not other services available on tablets, which companies have distributed in hundreds of jails and prisons over the last decade. Educational content on the devices is usually free, but e-messaging, music, ebooks and movies can cost prisoners significantly more than they would outside of confinement. While the FCC decision will prohibit site commissions from voice- and video-call revenue, correctional facilities and agencies can continue receiving portions of revenue from the e-messaging, entertainment and equipment that companies sell through their tablet programs. Securus Technologies and ViaPath Technologies, the two biggest providers of prison phone and tablet programs, say that by providing safe access to digital services, they enrich the lives of incarcerated people and improve the environment within facilities. Some advocates for prisoners say that tablet programs, like the phone-calling services before them, are exploitative because they charge high prices to incarcerated people, who often have almost no income and cannot choose between providers. 

Render Networks is itching to get in on the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) action, especially as deployment costs are going up. The company is hearing concern from state broadband offices that “there’s a real possibility that some of these firms could walk away from money because they just don’t see a way to actually execute against the constraints and still meet all the cost conditions.” Render’s bread-and-butter is a digital construction management platform that aims to automate many of the manual construction processes that go into broadband deployments. Whatever the method may be, Render can serve up a “highly ordered and sequenced set of work tasks,” taking into account the materials and construction crews that are “actually available to do that work,” Laudati said. 

A digital equity grant awarded to Internet2 will be used to enhance the capabilities of Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Tribal libraries. Internet2 is a nonprofit community of more than 2,000 organizations that works to provide advanced technologies that are oriented for research and education. The two-year, $249,994 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant, which was funded by the Laura Bush 21st Century Library Program, will enable the Internet2 Community Anchor Program to “scale the adoption” of the Toward Gigabit Libraries toolkit in these libraries, according to the announcement. The Toward Gigabit Libraries program was initially funded in 2015 and expanded in 2020 through previous IMLS grants.