Ownership

North Carolina-based broadband provider Brightspeed has caught the eye of Abu Dhabi sovereign investor Mubadala, which will invest $500 million into the operator. The investment, subject to regulatory approvals and conditions, would make Mubadala a minority shareholder alongside Apollo Global Management, Brightspeed’s parent company.

Cogent Communications has completed the previously announced acquisition of T-Mobile’s Wireline Business.

30 years ago—on April 30, 1993—something called the World Wide Web launched into the public domain. The web made it simple for anyone to navigate the internet. All users had to do was launch a new program called a "browser," type in a URL, and hit return. This began the internet's transformation into the vibrant online canvas we use today. Anyone could build their own "web site" with pictures, video and sound. They could even send visitors to other sites using hyperlinked words or phrases underlined in blue.

Broadband partnerships have emerged as an attractive option for deployment in many areas of the country. However, in order to be successful in developing a mutually beneficial Network Operating Agreement (NOA), the parties should keep the big-picture goals of the project in mind throughout the negotiations. A successful NOA will typically address the following ten core issues:

The Federal Communications Commission proposed new rules that would require, for the first time, companies with existing authorizations to provide international telecommunications services to and from the US to file renewal applications at the FCC.

GoNetspeed President and CEO Richard Clark calculates that the founding team behind the provider holds about 100 years of experience in broadband operations and construction. The freshly-consolidated GoNetspeed is focused on rolling out one product and one product only: fiber. Each of the companies that merged under the GoNetspeed umbrella historically operated in varying states, but as of 2023, their footprint comprises communities in Maine, Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and West Virginia.

Sitting atop a backdrop of economic imbalance are Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms that daily manage hundreds of billions of dollars, leveraging debt to acquire companies, then firing workers, and stripping the carcasses of American industry for asset sales. This destructive way of running our economy is bad news in many sectors. Nowhere is it more pernicious than in communications and the media. Two massive Wall Street funds, Standard General and Apollo Global Management have set out to purchase the second-largest local TV station group in the U.S.—Tegna.

There are still lots of unanswered questions about the true benefit the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will bestow upon some of the nation's top broadband providers. But a "rough, preliminary estimate" from New Street Research indicates the BEAD opportunity stands to beef up their combined enterprise values by billions of dollars. New Street Research employed a multi-step model to calculate the number of served and unserved homes that can qualify for BEAD subsidies.

For decades, municipal broadband operations have been subject to a minefield of restrictions and barriers designed to make the prospect of establishing or maintaining a community broadband network costly, difficult, and unsustainable. There are currently 17 states in total that have restrictive legislation against municipal broadband networks in the US. Although no states have managed to remove their restrictions in 2022, 2023 could be the year that things begin to change for states that have historically been opposed to allowing for a public option.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) announced that Gila Local Exchange Carrier d/b/a Alluvion Communications (GLEC) and Fond du Lac Communications (Fond du Lac) have notified the FCC of their decisions to withdraw from the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II auction support program. Fond du Lac’s and GLEC’s letters constitute notification to the FCC that they are defaulting on their obligations to meet their service milestones.