A key internet subsidy program is set to run out of funds by the end of the month, with no clear sign that Congress will renew it, sparking increasingly urgent pleas for lawmakers to find a solution.

The Affordable Connectivity Program, which has subsidized internet access for as many as 23 million households since 2021, needs at least $6 billion to continue operating until the end of the year. Speaking at an event hosted by USTelecom on Thursday, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks called the ACP “the most effective program we’ve ever had” for incentivizing low-cost internet plans, and he mourned the fact that its time could be running out.

“Within a few short weeks, millions of Americans will no longer have connections that they need to support their healthcare, their employment, their families, their education, and more,” he said. “The time is now, y’all, to act.”

A bipartisan, bicameral extension bill introduced in January aims to keep the program alive through the end of 2024 while Congress works out the details of how to fund the ACP long-term. Although the measure has steadily picked up steam, with more than 200 cosponsors in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has not scheduled it for a floor vote.

Keep reading here.—KG

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If you build it, they will come.

That’s the strategy behind a new joint venture between EV infrastructure development company EV Realty and venture capital firm GreenPoint Partners, which recently announced $200 million in funding to build charging hubs for medium- and heavy-duty commercial fleets.

EV Realty CEO and co-founder Patrick Sullivan told Tech Brew that while there aren’t many electric commercial trucks on the road today, the company is getting ahead of what is expected to be a significant increase in EV trucks in the coming years as tighter environmental regulations go into effect in California and across the US.

The joint venture “allows us to buy property today,” Sullivan said, “not have the property purchase contingent on somebody signing up today to put 100 trucks on it, because those 100 trucks don’t exist.”

EV Realty is taking what Sullivan described as a “real-estate-first approach” to building charging hubs. The firm uses proprietary software to identify what it deems to be ideal properties, with an emphasis on finding large industrial sites with built-in energy infrastructure, Sullivan said. The strategy is then to build charging stations that can serve multiple fleet customers near their operation centers. The hubs will be dubbed “Powered Properties,” and EV Realty will operate them.

“This is really the idea of finding places with a lot of power and then stacking as many customers in smart ways into that scarce resource as we can,” Sullivan said.

Keep reading here.—JG

Coworking is a weekly segment where we spotlight Tech Brew readers who work with emerging technologies. Click here if you’d like a chance to be featured.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

Like many other CEOs, I wear various hats. Our jobs primarily come down to change management and problem-solving. We’re constantly navigating opportunities or challenges for the business, where we must always lead our teams through problem-solving and change based on what’s best for the company, our employees, and our customers.

As president and CEO of Clinical Effectiveness at Wolters Kluwer Health, I have the pleasure of working in a dynamic industry like healthcare, where I solve daily problems and lead our efforts to reduce care variability and provide the best care everywhere with assistive technologies. This includes software solutions that provide on-demand evidence-based clinical guidance for healthcare professionals and patient engagement built on our UpToDate medical content written and reviewed by more than 7,000 physician authors and section editors.

What’s the most compelling tech project you’ve worked on, and why?

The most compelling tech project I’ve worked on is one we recently completed at Wolters Kluwer Health. We integrated our clinical decision support, drug reference, patient engagement, and drug data solutions to create a unified user experience for clinicians when working with patients. This was a major and important step in addressing the needs of healthcare systems and the growing diversity of where patients get care.

Keep reading here.