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Three Tennessee bodies moved on data center pauses on the same Monday. Millington’s board of mayor and aldermen approved a six-month moratorium on development applications for non-grid power generation, accessory computing and industrial-scale computing facilities on Oct. 12, effective immediately and expiring April 12 unless extended. The city’s stated reason is a zoning gap: these uses are not addressed as a distinct use in its zoning ordinance. Chris Thomas of the Millington Chamber of Commerce said the city has not received a data center proposal. The same day, the Shelby County Commission passed on first reading an ordinance sponsored by Commissioner Henri Brooks that mirrors most of the text of the Memphis city ordinance but covers unincorporated Shelby County, by a vote of 5-4. And the Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission unanimously recommended a 12-month county moratorium, with no numeric vote count reported.

Commissioner Mark Billingsley opposed the Shelby County ordinance, saying that “putting a prohibition and a moratorium on this before we have all the facts, I think, is incredibly premature.” Commissioner Derek Mills noted that “there are no data centers in unincorporated Shelby County.” The county health department told commissioners last month that data centers are not among the top 25 polluters in the county, without giving numbers. Memphis City Council’s own vote on its 12-month moratorium, pushed back twice and covered in issue 06, is set for Oct. 20.

Charlotte residents and building trades argued against each other over extending the city’s pause. Charlotte City Council heard public comment on Oct. 12 on extending its data center moratorium by up to 11 months. The current moratorium expires Nov. 5. Most residents who spoke supported extending it while the city writes policy for new hyperscale facilities. Many union members opposed it, arguing that new construction creates jobs. Akayla Galloway, executive director of The Social Justice Center, said data centers and their fossil fuel infrastructure are “disproportionately burdening Black and frontline communities.” Melissa Reyes, an electrician and organizer, said her union represents 1,000 people who work on data centers in the area, and described seeing 100 construction workers at a Forest City data center after it went into operation.

The project the moratorium actually halted is an American Towers expansion in east Charlotte, much smaller than hyperscale and sited near homes and the Reedy Creek Nature Preserve. Two larger projects, the Digital Realty facility on Moores Chapel Road and PowerHouse University City, are not affected by it. Residents held signs reading “Charlotte Says: No data centers in our city!”

Guilford County put off its moratorium decision, and residents said six months is not enough. After a public hearing on Oct. 15, Guilford County commissioners delayed a decision on a proposed six-month data center moratorium and are expected to return to it Nov. 5. No vote count was reported. Most speakers said six months was too short. Bree Guerra and other residents argued for 32 months, and Guerra said a six-month pause is “guaranteed to get challenged in court and challenged in many other ways,” adding that “we’re asking for 32 months in part to see what legal language by other communities will turn out to be the most effective.” Commissioner Skip Alston said he was willing to postpone and noted that nobody has submitted a formal proposal for a new data center in the county.

The statewide picture explains where 32 months came from. Northampton County adopted a 32-month moratorium in May, the first in North Carolina. More than 50 jurisdictions have shorter pauses. Forsyth County commissioners rejected a moratorium of any length earlier in October, citing concern about developer lawsuits.

Mississippi law calls data center power deals trade secrets and takes them out of regulatory review. A guest essay in Mississippi Today on Oct. 13 laid out the statute. Senate Bill 2001, passed in 2024 and codified at Mississippi Code Annotated section 77-3-271, exempts these projects from Public Service Commission review and designates the deals trade secrets, which shields them from the Public Records Act. Under the used-and-useful standard, Entergy can pass infrastructure costs to customers and exceed the state’s 4% annual rate-increase cap. All but one senator and all but two House members voted for it. The no votes were Reps. Dan Eubanks and Solomon Osborne and Sen. Kathy Chism.

The authors are Brooke Floyd, director of programs and community-led governance at the People’s Advocacy Institute, and Korbin Felder, a Jackson civil rights attorney. Citing a report by Earthjustice and Environmental Advocates Mississippi, they write that Entergy residential ratepayers have paid approximately $38 million as of March 2026 for data center-related investments and will contribute $74 million by the end of 2026, and that the average residential bill is about $10.60 a month higher. They report that Entergy is adding 3,500 megawatts of gas-fired generation capacity to serve Amazon’s central Mississippi data centers, that Amazon claims 2,000 jobs statewide, and that a newly announced Jefferson County data center is expected to create 200 permanent jobs. Jackson’s City Council passed what they describe as the state’s first data center moratorium.

Opponents called Entergy’s power plan for Meta’s Louisiana data center absurd, and protested in New Orleans. Members of the Take the Power Back campaign protested at New Orleans City Hall on Oct. 13 against a proposed zoning change that would allow smaller data centers in the city, and against the Richland Parish project. Entergy has asked the Louisiana Public Service Commission to fast-track 10 new gas-fired power plants for Meta’s north Louisiana data center. In a filing last month with the regional grid operator, Entergy said a proposed substation near the data center will generate 4,500 megawatts for the facility.

Entergy says Meta’s 20-year deal requires the company to pay for the electrical infrastructure so other customers do not subsidize it, cites more than 1,500 jobs tied to the buildout, and calls suggestions of higher costs for other customers false. Volunteer organizers Kendall Berry and Devorah Lea of Take the Power Back say bills will rise. Neither side gave figures. Lea said the data centers strain “our water supply” without a water-use figure.

A Georgia school board started working out how to hand data center money back to homeowners. The Columbia County school board began discussing using revenue from the Google data center under construction there to lower the school portion of property taxes, which makes up more than half of each property tax bill. The board voted 4-0 with one abstention to move the process forward. It approved no legislation. District 4 member Katie Allen abstained, saying the board is rushing and that “we need to be making sure that we’re following processes and giving this the time and diligence that it deserves.” Superintendent Steven Flynt said the board wants the additional revenue to “go back to the taxpayers and again, specifically homeowners.” A separate county property tax relief measure tied to the data center is on the ballot in Columbia County in November.

Data center construction is now the largest financial bet in American history, and the South holds much of it. Stateline sized the buildout against every previous American construction boom on Oct. 16, putting projected total investment at about $10.3 trillion and data centers at nearly 4% of gross domestic product in annual economic impact. Projected three-year construction cost by state puts Texas at $638 billion, Virginia at $249 billion, Ohio at $169 billion and Georgia at $160 billion. Census figures through August show about $85 billion a year in new data center construction value put in place, roughly double two years ago, while the value of all other construction fell 8%. Since 2024, data center construction value is up about $48 billion and house and apartment construction value is down about $29 billion. A Carnegie Mellon and North Carolina State analysis from July projects retail electricity bill increases of 8% nationally and up to 25% in parts of Virginia.

A companion Stateline piece on Oct. 12 counted the political reaction. At least 36 cities, counties and townships vote in November on measures that could ban data centers, and Ballotpedia counts 39 data center ballot measures across eight states. A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found 11% of Americans would support a local artificial intelligence data center against 65% opposed. Current American data center electricity demand is about 49 gigawatts, with nearly 350 gigawatts planned or under construction, which is about a quarter of current American generation capacity.

A total of 111 members of Congress asked the FCC to drop its plan to narrow or end E-Rate, and four of these nine states sent nobody. Sen. Ed Markey, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Reps. Doris Matsui, Rob Menendez and Grace Meng led 46 senators and 65 representatives in a letter to Chairman Brendan Carr on Oct. 15 urging him to withdraw the proposal. The letter rejects child safety as a justification, on the ground that E-Rate funds broadband service rather than devices or content and that recipients must already comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act. The release says E-Rate supported more than 158,000 schools and libraries in 2025 and has invested more than $69 billion in connecting them since it began nearly 30 years ago.

Here is who signed from these nine states, read off the release itself. Virginia: Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, and Reps. Jennifer McClellan of the 4th District and Suhas Subramanyam of the 10th. North Carolina: Reps. Don Davis of the 1st and Deborah Ross of the 2nd. Georgia: Sen. Raphael Warnock. Louisiana: Rep. Troy Carter of the 2nd. Mississippi: Rep. Bennie Thompson of the 2nd. No signers from Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas or Tennessee appear on the release. The letter was organized among Democrats, which accounts for part of that, and these four states do have Democrats in their delegations.

A Senate committee report says consultants are attached to 82% of E-Rate money, and uses a Virginia district as its example. Senate Commerce Committee majority staff released an 11-page report on Oct. 13 titled “The Cost of Connection: E-Rate’s Hidden Consultant Ecosystem,” timed to the close of initial comments in the commission’s E-Rate review. The committee’s own release says paid intermediaries are associated with applications for roughly 82% of E-Rate funding commitments by dollar value, and estimates consultants collect $200 million to $400 million a year from schools and libraries for application, bidding and reimbursement help. It recommends simplifying the rules, requiring public disclosure of consultant compensation, considering annual appropriations for the program and focusing support on high-cost and high-need schools.

Benton’s analysis adds the detail from the report: more than $1.9 billion of roughly $2.4 billion in 2025 commitments associated with consultants, more than 500 consulting firms, nearly $900 million and more than 38% of 2025 dollars going to 10 firms, 143 publicly available consulting agreements reviewed, and eight of 18 board members at the administering company tied to beneficiaries, consultants, providers or advocacy groups. Its pricing example is a comparison: Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, with 177,000 students, paid $33,125 to $45,750 a year to the same firm that charged District of Columbia Public Schools, with 52,000 students, $129,500 to $135,500 a year.

Someone counted the comment record, and 98.6% of filings that took a position said keep the program. Funds For Learning analyzed the docket on Oct. 15 and found that of 2,514 filings taking a position, 2,479 urged the commission to preserve E-Rate, 21 asked to limit or narrow it and two asked to end it. Those are counts of filings rather than of organizations or people. The disagreements among supporters are about federal screen-time rules, consultant rules and the composition of the administering company’s board. Route Fifty’s own review of the record found hundreds of school systems and libraries among the commenters, and quoted Superintendent Daniel Hornick of Orange County Public Schools in Virginia, who filed. The Ohio School Boards Association put its state’s fiscal 2025 E-Rate support at about $82 million. A coalition of state attorneys general also filed in support, and the roundup naming it does not list which states joined, so we cannot say whether any of these nine did.

The commission circulated $162 million more for Alaska mobile service in the same week its funding vehicle was held unlawful. Chairman Carr’s office circulated a draft order on Oct. 14 adding $162 million for rural mobile service in Alaska, to be voted at the Oct. 29 meeting or on circulation. The Alaska Connect Fund already pays $203.8 million a year from 2027 through 2034, about $1.6 billion in total, succeeding a 2016 plan worth $1.5 billion. GCI chief executive Ron Duncan has said federal support accounts for 60% of total telecommunications revenue in Alaska.

Arkansas put the first federal broadband construction dollars out the door in these nine states. The Arkansas State Broadband Office released $2.6 million to Brightspeed on Oct. 13 after the provider completed Milestone 1, which covers project plans, budgets, environmental review milestone schedules and network designs. It is the state’s first disbursement under the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, the $42.45 billion federal construction program better known as BEAD. Brightspeed has 13 BEAD projects across 25 counties, which the office says will reach more than 13,700 homes and businesses with fiber, at a total investment of nearly $66 million including more than $39 million in private capital from the company. Arkansas’s federal allocation is $1.024 billion and the state has committed to serve more than 77,000 homes and businesses. The office uses fixed-amount subawards, which release money on verified milestones rather than reimbursing expenses.

Glen Howie, who directs the office, is also the only state broadband official in these nine states who said anything on the record about the coming supplemental round. He told Broadband Breakfast the week before that the federal eligible-location lists may not arrive until November, and that Arkansas has signed contracts with all its BEAD winners with construction expected around December 2026 or January 2027.

The federal estimate of how many places still need money doubled in a month, and nobody has a Southern breakdown. Brooke Donilon, chief of staff at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, told a Wireless Infrastructure Association panel on Oct. 14 that the coming supplemental BEAD round may cover 600,000 to 1 million locations. The agency’s estimate the prior month was about 477,000 locations. An independent count from the Advanced Connectivity Law and Policy Institute puts it near 1 million, counting every location eligible in BEAD’s main bidding round, which is not the same universe. Of the $42 billion program, the agency reports about $18 billion spent and slightly more than $21 billion in stated savings. Donilon raised $3 billion and $6 billion as scenarios while saying the cost is unclear, and an earlier $2 billion figure was a cap on potential state funding rather than a cost estimate.

Administrator Arielle Roth said the same day that this may be the program’s only chance to run a cleanup round and that the agency is waiting on updated Federal Communications Commission coverage data before sending states their lists. The latest available coverage data is from Dec. 30, 2025, and the agency is waiting on the June 30, 2026 data. Separately, the Vernonburg Group published its own estimate on Oct. 15: about 900,000 remaining unserved and underserved locations needing about $5.3 billion, down from about 1.1 million locations and $7.6 billion in February. It applies the agency’s own method, multiplying each state’s approved average cost per location by the locations on its supplemental list, assuming a technology mix like the approved final proposals.

Louisiana says Coushatta is the first community in the country to get fiber service through BEAD. The state’s broadband office announced two claims of national firsts: Pelican Broadband connected its first BEAD fiber customers in Coushatta, in Red River Parish, and SkyRider Communications became the first provider in the country to begin BEAD fiber construction, building across northern Louisiana with the contractor Etheridge Pipeline & Conduit. The release carries no count of locations, households or customers and no dollar figure. Separately, Gov. Jeff Landry announced in Ruston on Oct. 12 more than $3.5 billion in rural investment across broadband, health and infrastructure, with the broadband share reported at more than $1.53 billion in federal funding. ConnectLA executive director Veneeth Iyengar said 95% of Louisiana is expected to have access to reliable internet by the end of 2026. Landry said more than 140,000 residents have been connected over the prior 18 months across 26 mostly north Louisiana parishes. The state projects $400 million in consumer savings over four years, which KNOE flagged as a state projection rather than realized savings.

Statewide data center moratorium bills are stacking up for the session that opens in January. Senate Bill 843, from Sen. Russet Perry of Loudoun County with Sen. Danica Roem of Prince William County, would bar localities, the Department of Environmental Quality and the State Corporation Commission from approving data center building permits statewide from July 2027 to July 2030, and would pause distribution lines, on-site generation and related projects serving only data centers. A separate Roem bill would block new approvals until Dominion’s interconnection queue is energized and built. A House bill from Del. Irene Shin of Fairfax County, carried over from 2026, would block local zoning and permit approvals until pending distribution interconnection requests are fulfilled or until July 2028, whichever comes first. Sen. Glen Sturtevant of Chesterfield County plans his own moratorium bill and wants to revisit the sales and use tax exemption. Sen. Louise Lucas of Newport News has previously proposed ending that exemption and the legislature rejected it. Sen. Richard Stuart of King George County joined Perry in asking Gov. Abigail Spanberger for a special session on water, and she declined.

Perry said this “billion-dollar industry has grown unchecked and without guardrails for years” and that “we cannot keep rubber-stamping new data centers when we can’t even manage the ones already built.” She said “massive transmission lines threaten our homes, schools, churches, and farms” and cited 765-kilovolt lines in her district. Dominion has about 25,000 megawatts assigned to projects with an energized date and an additional 75,000 megawatts for projects without power dates, and estimates about seven years for queued customers to receive power. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Data Center Coalition oppose the moratoriums.

Dominion has 53.8 gigawatts of data centers in contracting and signed agreements for 12 of them. Data Center Frontier published the clearest ledger of Virginia’s siting and rate rules on Oct. 14. Dominion reported about 53.8 gigawatts of data center capacity in various contracting stages in July 2026, of which only about 12 gigawatts was covered by executed electric service agreements. Both are capacity figures at different stages of commitment and neither is energy delivered. Data centers were 28% of Virginia Power’s electricity sales in 2025, up from 26% the prior year.

The cost rules now on the books are specific. A new rate class called GS-5 covers customers with at least 25 megawatts of demand on a contiguous site and a load factor of at least 75%. It was approved in November 2025, starts Jan. 1, 2027 and carries a 14-year minimum term, with minimum billing at 85% of contracted transmission and distribution demand and 60% of generation demand, subject to exemptions. A statewide data center electricity consumption tax took effect July 1, 2026 at 1.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, running through June 2028, with a refund mechanism above $600 million a year. The State Corporation Commission also approved a framework for assigning the cost of dedicated transmission connections directly to large-load customers where those facilities would not otherwise be needed, with implementation still pending. On siting, Prince William County cut its data center overlay from roughly 9,700 acres to about 3,641. Loudoun eliminated most by-right development in March 2025. Henrico eliminated by-right in June 2025 and has 37 data centers plus about 17 approved facilities in its pipeline. Stafford County approved a rezoning for a roughly 590,000-square-foot campus on 121 acres by a 4-3 vote on Oct. 7.

The $67 billion utility merger is now a three-state ratepayer fight, and two states decide in January. Speakers at the State Corporation Commission’s two in-person local hearings asked regulators to deny the Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy merger or to condition approval on guarantees that data centers pay their own infrastructure costs. The hearings were held Oct. 7 in Newport News and Oct. 9 at the Fairfax County Government Center, and issue 06 covered them. U.S. Rep. Eugene Vindman said “data centers need to pay their fair share.” Del. Kirk McPike opposes the merger without “ironclad guarantees that costs will not increase for Virginia taxpayers.” The commission decides in January under a 180-day clock, with telephonic hearings Nov. 5, 9 and 10 and an evidentiary hearing beginning Nov. 17. Federal energy regulators sent a Sept. 23 letter calling the application incomplete and requesting more information, including on rate impacts.

The South Carolina end of the same transaction moved this week. NextEra chief executive John Ketchum testified for roughly two hours on Oct. 15 before the Public Utilities Review Committee, the legislature’s utility oversight body, in his first public hearing in the state on the deal. He cited data center growth as part of a substantial opportunity in South Carolina, alongside future work with Santee Cooper, and gave no megawatt figures. Senate President Thomas Alexander chairs the committee and Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin also raised concerns. The South Carolina Public Service Commission holds a formal hearing Dec. 8 with a final vote scheduled for January, the same month Virginia decides. North Carolina approval is also still required. About 800,000 South Carolina electric customers are still paying off debt tied to the abandoned VC Summer nuclear reactors in Fairfield County, which is the backdrop to every affordability question put to Ketchum. He pledged to prioritize rate affordability and proposed reviving the name South Carolina Electricity and Gas for the new state subsidiary.

A university analyst told Virginia Beach commissioners to demand commitments a community can verify. Joao Ferreira, acting director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center, briefed Virginia Beach planning commissioners on Oct. 14. “So for me, it’s always about transparency before the local approval,” he said, and “local policy can connect promises to performance.” The question he told them to ask is “what can the community verify over time?” He distinguished very large hyperscale facilities from smaller ones with lower water and power demand, and noted that the biggest projects are not necessarily looking at Hampton Roads.

Planning Commission Chair John Coston warned in May that data centers are undefined in the city’s zoning and could be built by right in industrial districts. City Council paused considering applications in August for 12 months or until zoning rules address the facilities, and a conditional use permit process is one option under discussion. City officials said no new applications have arrived and that existing data centers there are tied to the subsea cable landing industry, which the city wants to protect. Commissioner Bryan Plumlee wanted better understanding of water use, noting the city draws water from Lake Gaston. Commissioner John Cromwell said “water would be a major concern from my standpoint.” Coston said he is “happy with where we are right now, that we’re not going to build these things in Virginia Beach.”

Fauquier County restricted where data centers can go, and left three projects out of it. The Fauquier County Board of Supervisors adopted a zoning text amendment 4-1 on Oct. 8, reported Oct. 12, restricting new data centers to land zoned for planned commercial industrial development, removing them as a permitted use in business park districts and requiring a special exception even in the permitted zone. Future facilities must use closed-loop or air-cooled systems and must place power lines underground. Supervisor Daron Culbertson of the Lee District dissented. Vint Hill is the only part of the county currently zoned for planned commercial industrial development. The changes do not apply to three projects already approved or in process, including an operational OVHcloud facility.

All nine states produced news, and almost none of it came from a broadband office or was about broadband. This is a change from the last two issues and it is worth stating precisely. Every one of these nine states produced something in this window, which has not happened before in this newsletter. But the week’s state-level news was overwhelmingly about electricity, land use and data centers rather than about broadband, and only two of the nine state broadband offices published anything at all.

The two that published were Arkansas, with its first BEAD disbursement on Oct. 13, and Louisiana, with three announcements. The other seven published nothing in the window. Alabama’s Be Linked broadband news feed has nothing newer than March 24, 2026, and its parent department posted seven items in October, none of them about broadband. Mississippi’s BEAM office publishes essentially nothing current: its news page and archive hold 2019 and 2020 placeholder content and its news and events page stops at January 2024. Georgia’s Technology Authority press page reads “No press releases,” and broadband.georgia.gov has nothing dated newer than July 20, 2021. South Carolina’s Office of Regulatory Staff broadband news archive for 2026 holds three items, the newest dated June 30. North Carolina’s Division of Broadband and Digital Equity has nothing newer than Sept. 23. Tennessee’s economic and community development newsroom posted once in October, on a superintelligence computing consortium, not broadband. Virginia’s housing and community development news feed has three October items, none about broadband and all before the window.

The rest of the week by state, beyond what is reported elsewhere in this issue: in Mississippi, C Spire said on Oct. 14 that it had completed fiber builds across 12 counties under U.S. Treasury Capital Projects Fund grants, reporting 217,900 Mississippi homes passed company-wide and about 12,000 fiber route miles in the state, with a company match of 30% to 60% of build costs. In Tennessee, TDS announced on Oct. 16 that it had completed a Monroe County project making fiber available at more than 3,000 locations, supported in part by a $12.9 million state grant funded with federal pandemic relief money. In North Carolina, the Smoky Mountain News reported on Oct. 16 on whether broadband can expand fast enough as Verizon retires copper landlines in the western mountains, and Verizon told the commission the same week that it has reassured customers in nine states, among them South Carolina and Virginia, two weeks after the commission paused its copper retirement plan. In Georgia, The Columbus Times published an explainer on the two Public Service Commission races on the November ballot, noting that six Georgia Power rate increases since late 2022 have raised the average residential bill about $43 a month, or $516 a year, and that the commission approved nearly 10,000 megawatts of new generation in December 2025 at about $16 billion, with about 80% expected to serve data centers. In Virginia, the U.S. energy secretary announced on Oct. 16 in Lynchburg up to $50 million in federal money for grid upgrades in Appalachian Power’s territory, of which the utility receives $40 million, covering about 14 miles of reconductored transmission line and adding about 290 megawatts of transmission capacity across its Virginia system.

States are building their own broadband affordability programs, and none of them is in the South. With the Affordable Connectivity Program expired since 2024 and the 2025 BEAD restructuring having stripped states of authority to set low-cost plan terms, Pew Charitable Trusts reported on Oct. 13 that states are using two levers instead: requirements on providers, or subsidies funded by user fees. The federal Lifeline benefit is up to $9.25 a month per eligible household and has not changed since 2012, against an average broadband plan price of $98.49 a month in the commission’s own methodology report. Connecticut caps eligible households at $40 a month for at least 100 megabits per second download, effective Oct. 1, 2026. New York requires $15 a month at 25 megabits or more and $20 a month at 200 megabits or more, exempting providers serving fewer than 20,000 households. Oregon tops the federal benefit to $24.25 a month, or $49.25 on tribal lands. New Mexico caps subsidies at $30 a month, or $70 on tribal lands, drawing up to $10 million initially from its state universal service fund and up to $45 million a year thereafter.

A companion Pew brief on Oct. 14 proposed four durable state policies and reported that unserved and underserved locations fell from about 12 million in 2022 to about 4 million today, with 1 million to more than 2 million locations likely to remain without broadband after BEAD money is spent. It counts more than $1.3 billion in major state-led broadband investments in 2025, with Texas at $461.8 million a year. Pew’s own scorecard says 34 states have at least two of its four policies and two states have all four. A separate Pew piece on Oct. 14 notes that Florida added affordability and adoption assistance to its BEAD scoring criteria and that Louisiana awards points partly on proposed consumer prices, giving no figures for either.

A device ownership index got a second week of coverage, and the two headline numbers measure different things. Digitunity’s National Computer Ownership Index, launched Oct. 7 and therefore outside this window, was carried by Government Technology on Oct. 15 and by Benton’s digest on Oct. 13. The two write-ups lead with different figures. Benton reports 32.9 million people lacking reliable access to a large-screen computer, of whom 25.8 million rely on a smartphone alone. Government Technology reports that people with no computing device at all fell from 21.9 million to 7.1 million since 2016. Those count different things and are not interchangeable: access to a large-screen computer is one measure and having any device at all is another. Both are counts of people rather than households. The index is built on 2024 American Community Survey data, so the current picture it describes is two years old. Digitunity says the index will track state and county trends over time, and published no state or county figures at launch.

North Carolina is the only one of these nine states with algorithm bills in a national tracker. The Transparency Coalition’s legislative update on Oct. 16 lists pending state bills on automated decision tools, algorithmic rent setting, insurance algorithms and surveillance pricing. North Carolina is the only one of these nine states that appears. Its tracked bills include Senate Bill 316, which would bar an artificial intelligence algorithm from being the sole basis for denying a utilization review determination in health coverage, sitting with the House Health Committee since May 6; House Bill 565, its companion, in Senate Rules since June 23; House Bill 1161, an omnibus covering artificial intelligence in elections, education, employment, courts and insurance, in Appropriations; Senate Bill 963, a chatbot licensing bill, also in Appropriations; and Senate Bill 988, which would create a workforce transition program for displaced workers.

Elsewhere, Pennsylvania’s insurance algorithm bill passed the House 144-59 on Sept. 30 and went to a Senate committee on Oct. 14. New York’s algorithmic pricing bill has passed and awaits the governor, who has until Dec. 31. Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Ohio have bills on employer monitoring, automated decision tools and algorithmic rent setting. The tracker covers no bills on credit algorithms, facial recognition, predictive policing or benefits determination. Separately, Route Fifty reported on Oct. 13 on California’s No Robo Bosses Act, Senate Bill 947, which bars employers from relying on automated systems for firing or discipline without human review, requires notifying employees when an automated system assisted such a decision and bars use of systems whose output a human reviewer cannot verify. The governor signed it in late September, so the law is not new this week and the coverage is.

A county budget figure came back 53% too high when an AI assistant was asked for it. Georgetown University’s Beeck Center published a practice guide on Oct. 14 arguing that as residents increasingly get government information through artificial intelligence assistants, agencies have to manage crawler access, accuracy and page structure. Its illustrative case is Mendocino County, California, where a ChatGPT answer about public safety spending came back 53% higher than the county’s own budget tool reported. A second example, a 30 to 60 day special event permit processing time in Larimer County, Colorado, was returned accurately. The guide names nine crawlers in a first-tier list current as of mid-2026. The authors describe it as a practice guide, not a controlled test, and it is not measured research.

The United States committed $175.8 million to Caribbean undersea cables and named no cable and no country. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau announced a package of more than $340 million at the opening of the U.S.-Caribbean Dialogue in Washington on Oct. 15. Of that, $175.8 million goes to an undersea cables program for the Caribbean and Central America, for high-speed connectivity and resilient communications networks. Two regional outlets agree on that figure. Neither names a single cable, route, landing point, operator or recipient country. The package also includes $61.5 million for a regional health workforce initiative and $37 million in Caribbean Basin Security Initiative programming, which one outlet frames partly as protecting critical digital infrastructure. The law enforcement and military financing components do not reconcile between the two accounts, at $55.5 million plus $11 million in one and about $66 million combined in the other.

A report on African digital infrastructure is getting fresh attention, and it came out in September. The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa published its State of Internet Freedom in Africa 2026 in September and launched it at a forum in Mauritius that ran from late September into Oct. 1. Two pieces this week describe it as a fresh release. Its argument is that technical integration of digital public infrastructure across 11 African countries is outpacing the legal and institutional safeguards around it, that mandatory links between digital identity and public services turn technical failures into mass exclusion, and that shared dependencies mean one cable cut, power failure, cloud outage or shutdown can take down identity, payments and public services at once. It reports internet use in Africa at 38% of the population, 57% urban and 23% rural, against a global average of 67%. It counts 540 million people in Africa without a foundational legal identity document, at least 49 countries operating biometric identity systems and at least 44 with data protection laws, and 72 data centers across the continent concentrated in Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

A 20-megawatt artificial intelligence data center in Morocco added an engineering partner. FiveNines Group joined Nexus Core Systems on a planned 20-megawatt artificial intelligence data center in Morocco, part of a broader 180-megawatt facility, Connecting Africa reported Oct. 13. FiveNines leads design management, technical governance, consultant coordination, constructability and procurement planning. The work is at the briefing, feasibility and concept stage, aimed at a permit package. The companies signed a memorandum of understanding with Moroccan government agencies at a technology exhibition in April. The larger facility is planned for delivery next year. No city, dollar investment figure or processor count is given.

A judge halted the $480 million sale of a rural Southern cable operator’s stake, and its lender called it insolvent. A New York federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Cable One’s $480 million purchase of a 55% stake in Mega Broadband Investments on the day the deal was to close, after the lender CoBank sued. CoBank called Cable One “currently insolvent.” Issue 06 carried the first order in this matter. Cable One’s stock collapse has cost former Washington Post owner Donald Graham a paper loss of about $1 billion so far.

Applications are open for a national connectivity policy cohort, and they close Oct. 30. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Public Knowledge opened applications on Oct. 14 for the 2027 Connectivity Policy Corps. The commitment is four to eight hours a month, each member must host at least one event with government representatives, and the position is uncompensated. Selection weighs geographic and organizational diversity along with digital equity experience. Applications close Friday, Oct. 30 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time.

Oct. 20: the Memphis City Council takes up its data center ordinances. Ordinance 5982, the 12-month moratorium, at third and final reading, with the review district and water ordinances alongside it. The vote has been pushed twice. City Hall, 125 N. Main St.

Oct. 22: the first Fairfield County, South Carolina town hall on data centers, in Jenkinsville. Ridgeway follows Jan. 7 and Winnsboro Jan. 21, with a Planning Commission hearing March 25. Fairfield County is 51.4% Black and is where the abandoned VC Summer reactors sit.

Oct. 27: the Pulaski County, Arkansas quorum court is expected to vote on overriding the data center ordinance veto. Nine of 11 justices of the peace are required. Until then the county has no data center regulations.

Oct. 29: the Census Bureau releases the 2025 American Community Survey one-year estimates. Embargo access opens 10 a.m. Eastern on Oct. 27 and a prerelease webinar is Oct. 22. The geography thresholds are populations of 65,000 and above for the one-year estimates and 20,000 and above for the supplemental estimates, which means most rural Southern counties will not be covered. Educational attainment figures follow Oct. 28.

Oct. 29: the FCC’s open meeting. Seven items on the tentative agenda, including a proposed rulemaking implementing the Rural Broadband Protection Act, which would vet recipients of high-cost universal service support; a proposal on eliminating accessibility barriers; and a further notice on auctioning 25 megahertz of mid-band spectrum. The $162 million Alaska order may also be voted here.

Oct. 30: applications close for the 2027 Connectivity Policy Corps. 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Geographic diversity is a selection criterion.

Nov. 3: general election. Two Georgia Public Service Commission seats, which all Georgia voters vote on. The Columbia County, Georgia property tax relief measure tied to data center revenue. The Mississippi U.S. Senate race. The Pulaski County judge race in Arkansas. And at least 36 local measures elsewhere in the country that could ban data centers, none of them in these nine states.

Nov. 5: three things at once. Charlotte’s data center moratorium expires. Guilford County, North Carolina is expected to return to its own moratorium decision. And telephonic public hearings begin in the Virginia merger case, continuing Nov. 9 and 10.

Nov. 12: reply comments close in the FCC’s E-Rate proceeding. Docket WC 26-133. Anyone can file. Of the 2,514 filings that have taken a position, 2,479 have asked the commission to keep the program.

Nov. 17: the evidentiary hearing begins in the Virginia merger case. Written comments closed Nov. 9. The commission’s decision is due in January.

Nov. 18: Oasis Digital Properties holds a community forum in Russell County, Virginia. County government center, 139 Highland Drive, Lebanon. This is the developer’s meeting and not a public hearing, and it is the only scheduled occasion to ask about a project the county’s own authority will not discuss.

Dec. 8: the South Carolina Public Service Commission holds its formal hearing on the Dominion and NextEra merger. The final vote is scheduled for January, the same month Virginia decides.

Jan. 13, 2027: the Virginia General Assembly session opens. At least four data center moratorium bills and two proposals to revisit the sales and use tax exemption are expected.

Still tracking. The Digital Equity Act litigation had a meet-and-confer deadline on Oct. 16 in NDIA v. Trump in federal district court in Washington. We could not confirm whether anything was filed: the court docket service blocks automated access, no trade outlet covered it and the case tracker has not been updated. The government has said it targets December to reopen the competitive grant program without the racial and ethnic minority covered population a judge struck down in July. We are also watching for the supplemental BEAD eligible-location lists, the written Lowndes County agreements, and which states signed the attorneys general letter on E-Rate.