Joan Engebretson

Congress is “in disarray right now,” said Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association, in an address at NTCA’s annual RTIME conference in Tampa. Bloomfield urged NTCA’s members attending the conference to remind their elected officials that “It’s not about who’s winning and who’s losing; it’s about getting things done.” Bloomfield pointed to several open issues facing Congress that will impact rural providers and their communities.

It’s been over a year since AT&T and investment firm Blackrock established their Gigapower joint venture to build open access fiber networks and set a goal of reaching 1.5 million locations within 18 months. Until now, the company has made relatively few moves on that front.

The state of Oklahoma has tentatively announced $374 million in broadband funding awards to AT&T, Cox and 29 smaller providers. Funding came through the federal American Rescue Plan Act State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund. Awardees will contribute an additional $90 million to project costs. More than 55,000 locations are expected to get high-speed service. As with many other state broadband funding programs, competition was intense. Applicants requested a total of more than $5.1 billion in funding. Awards were made through the Oklahoma Broadband Office.

It’s unfortunate that this couldn’t have happened sooner, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently released a public notice seeking input on the challenge process for the Broadband Data Collection that the commission undertakes twice yearly. Broadband providers are required to report on broadband availability, and the data ultimately is used to update the National Broadband Map.

AT&T sees opportunities to apply for funding in the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program in Texas and some other states, but likely will not apply for funding in many others, said the company’s CEO John Stankey. Noting that each state will set up its own rules for the program, Stankey said, “I point to a state like Texas. Policy-wise, they had a pretty sound approach to things. . .

T-Mobile’s planned satellite-to-cellphone service came a step closer now that SpaceX Starlink has begun launching satellites that will support the service. Field testing is expected to begin soon. When available, the service will enable T-Mobile customers to have cellphone connectivity in areas where traditional service is not available, and may never be, because of land use restrictions or difficult terrain. T-Mobile and SpaceX announced plans for the satellite-to-cellphone service in August of 2022.

There’s a lot of optimism in the broadband industry, driven by new opportunities in rural broadband, technology advances and more. In no particular order, here are 11 important developments that we saw this year.

Brightspeed’s origin story isn’t typical for the telecommunications industry, at least not for a company of its size. It all started with an investment premise that Apollo Global Management wanted to test. That premise: “If we invested in an under-invested wireline company, could we turn it into a growth company?” Apollo negotiated a deal to buy CenturyLink’s local service business in 20 states, which appeared to be an excellent place to test the premise. Only 2 to 3 percent of the footprint that Apollo bought from CenturyLink had been upgraded to fiber when the ownership was transferred.

Charter celebrated the $1.3 billion that the company is investing in rural areas of Texas. Charter will invest $700 million of the money to cover the full cost of network upgrades. The remaining $420 million will cover some of the cost of fiber deployment. The remainder of the cost of fiber deployment will come partially from money Charter won in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program in 2020, and partially from public-private partnerships with counties and cities.

Kansas awarded a $5 million grant to nonprofit Connected Nation to construct a carrier-neutral internet exchange point (IXP) adjacent to Wichita State University’s Innovation Campus. Construction will be done through Connected Nation IXP, a joint venture between Connected Nation and Newby Ventures. The Wichita IXP will be the first carrier-neutral IXP in Kansas. One network that will connect to the Wichita IXP is the middle-mile network planned for the state that was funded, in part, through a June 2023, $42.5 million grant awarded to the Kansas Departments of Commerce and Transportation.