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AT&T CEO John Stankey recently offered subtle hints about AT&T’s potential participation in broadband infrastructure funding programs. But he wasn’t coy about presenting AT&T as a good partner with the states, who will be key in doling out billions in funding. AT&T was proud to report its fiber broadband progress this quarter, having added 316,000 net new fiber subscribers in second quarter 2022.

The North Carolina Broadband Infrastructure Office awarded $23.4 million in Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) grants to expand broadband infrastructure in 12 counties, which will boost service for nearly 7,000 households and 374 businesses. With the awards, North Carolina joins Arizona, Maryland, Wisconsin, and several other states that are releasing funds for broadband expansion. Half of the 12 awards went to Charter Spectrum. The cable company has taken an aggressive approach to obtaining government funding for rural broadband expansion.

West Virginia Gov Jim Justice (R-WV) announced preliminary approval for close to $21 million in funding for six broadband infrastructure projects in the state. Comcast was the largest winner of this latest West Virginia broadband funding.

The Federal Communications Commission released over 80 pages of authorized bids in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction. All but part of one page were bids for Mercury Wireless, which had funding released for deployments in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. Mercury CEO Garrett Wiseman confirmed that some of the authorizations were for gigabit fiber broadband and some were for 100/20 Mbps fixed wireless. Those were the two types of bids that Mercury Wireless made in the auction. Wiseman said these were the first RDOF authorizations the company received.

Regional cable operator Breezeline, formerly Atlantic Broadband, has entered into two public-private partnerships in Maryland. The larger of the two partnerships will extend broadband to 524 homes and businesses in Cecil, St Mary’s and Queen Anne’s (MD) counties. Breezeline is contributing $347,000 to that project. Other contributors are the state, which is providing $3.68 million and the counties, which will contribute $309,000. The total cost of the project is expected to be $4.3 million.

It’s been 18 months since the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction was completed and the Federal Communications Commission has not yet released funding for five of the top 10 winning bidders. It’s beginning to look like that isn’t going to happen, considering that the other five top winning bidders have had all or most of their funding released, as have scores of smaller winners. The FCC typically releases a ready-to-authorize list of RDOF winning bidders every month and recently those lists have had only a small handful of smaller bidders on them.