Advertising

NOVOS FiBER publicized itself with an announcement that Arlington (TX)will soon have a new broadband provider. NOVOS FiBER was founded in 2022, funded by InLight Capital, a private investment firm based in Sugar Land (TX). NOVOS Fiber is entering both the retail and wholesale markets and plans to serve a “significant number” of homes over the next two years. First focusing on Texas, NOVOS will eventually expand beyond state lines. Founder and CEO Andrew Snead said he and the company have a strong conviction to go against the grain of the “internet service is primarily a utility” mentality.

Announcements about multi-gigabit fiber broadband offerings are not as exciting today as they were a year or two ago, now that more and more providers are offering those speeds.

A new TV ad is running in Utah, criticizing government-run internet providers. The ads are part of a $1 million blitz to warn about problems associated with municipal internet systems, including high costs and a lack of regulatory oversight. The Domestic Policy Caucus is running them under the name NoGovInternet.com. The campaign makes the argument that government should not be involved in providing internet access.

A bitter battle is taking place between Big Tech and the free press over how to share in the income that news content generates for technology giants. The future of our news ecosystem, a linchpin of democracy, depends on the outcome. Platforms gained their audience in part by sharing news content free.

Charter will comply with a series of recommendations made by The National Advertising Division (NAD) of Better Business Bureau (BBB) National Programs about certain claims the company has made about T-Mobile fixed wireless offerings, known as T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and T-Mobile Internet Lite. NAD recommends that Charter discontinue claims made in the “Game Time” and "Move Out" commercials, which suggest that T-Mobile Home Internet services provide “spotty,” “glitchy,” and unusable service, and that T-Mobile Home Internet is too slow for five people to use simultaneously.

Mass Priorities is the group calling on local governments to prioritize improvements in water quality, education, and bridge infrastructure over investments in government-owned broadband networks. It is making its message known with a half-million-dollar, three-month advertising barrage, which kicked off on October 31. What is not clear, though, is where the freshly launched group got its money. The Mass Priorities website says that it is a project of the Domestic Policy Caucus, which Policy Director Christopher Thrasher confirmed.

My perception of internet service providers (ISPs) and cellular advertising is that companies push the envelope more every year in trying to make claims that can give them a marketing edge over the competition. What’s funny about many ads is that carriers try to differentiate themselves from their competitors, even though their peers are delivering essentially the same product to the market. The competition between cable companies and fiber overbuilders, however, is not based on equivalence.

NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association launched its new “Broadband Built to Last” ad campaign, which aims to educate policymakers and the public on the critical role the Universal Service Fund plays in getting and keeping rural consumers connected to high quality, affordable broadband service. 

Cox Communications is being pressed to change or alter its "powered by fiber" ad claims to "clearly and conspicuously disclose" that its cable broadband service is not offered with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technologies. The National Advertising Division (NAD) made the recommendation following a challenge raised by AT&T, a Cox competitor that is expanding and upgrading a portion of its footprint to fiber. In its assessment, the NAD noted that Cox's cable broadband service delivers service over fiber to the node, where it's then transitioned to coaxial line

The former head of search at Google told colleagues in February 2019 that his team was “getting too involved with ads for the good of the product and company,” according to emails shown at the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust trial against the company. Google maintains a firewall between its ads and search teams so that its engineers can innovate on Google’s search engine, unsullied by the influence of the team whose goal is to maximize advertising revenue.