telecompetitor

Frontier Communications is “very excited” about the possibility of using Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding to deploy fiber broadband to areas that aren’t currently part of the company’s plan to have fiber available to 10 million locations by 2025, said Chief Strategy Officer Vishal Dixit. He declined to say how many locations might be eligible for funding in the $42.5 billion BEAD program.

At a time when some service providers are revving up to get funding in the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, TDS Telecom President and CEO Jim Butman had a surprising take on it. The company already has upgraded a large part of its traditional local service territory to fiber broadband but has about 500,000 locations that are served by DSL, including about 200,000 or fewer that do not have service at speeds of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) available to them. Those locations would be considered unserved and eligible for BEAD funding.

Private equity firms have been investing heavily in broadband providers in recent years, typically infusing cash into their acquisitions to expand operations, increase a company’s value and then do an initial public offering or sell the company at a profit several years later. What do private equity firms look for in a broadband acquisition? How involved are they in a provider’s operations? For EQT Group, fiber is a top selection criterion in making acquisitions.

AT&T says that it spent more than $140 billion between 2018 and 2022, mostly on its domestic wired and wireless network. Much of the spending was in capital investments—including the FirstNet first responder network – and wireless spectrum acquisition. The carrier provided the figure in a wide-ranging update of its following operations:

Two states recently made moves on broadband funding. Funding bills were passed by legislatures and signed into law by governors in Alabama and Idaho. Governor Kay Ivey (R-AL) signed legislation to make $260 million in funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) available for broadband deployments. The funding represents a portion of $1.06 billion that was released to the state in its final ARPA allotment.

Cable companies’ wireless offerings are a bigger threat to wireless providers than wireless providers’ broadband offerings are to cable companies, according to a new research note from industry financial analysts at SVB MoffettNathanson. It’s a contrarian view at a time when fixed wireless offerings from T-Mobile and Verizon are stealing cable broadband subscribers and the mobile market is heavily saturated. The researchers base their analysis on several key market realities. One of the most critical is that the wireless industry is roughly twice the size of the broadband industry.