This episode features Gigi Sohn: a longtime advocate for broadband access, including in her role as an advisor to former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler during the Obama administration, as well as in her current capacity as senior fellow and public advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and now in her newly accepted role of executive director at the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB).

Sohn was nominated for FCC Commissioner by President Biden in October 2021 but withdrew from the nomination process earlier this year, following three Senate hearings and a significant lobbying effort against her nomination.

We discuss what she thinks that process says about dark money in politics and the industry at large. We also discuss what her most urgent goals would have been as FCC Commissioner, the state of the FCC's broadband map as it relates to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, her concerns about the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) running dry, how she hopes to reframe the public broadband debate and much more.