June 2024

Broadband is the newest trade work for the ‘toolbelt generation’

Plumbing, welding, electrician work—these may be a few of the best-known trades needed to keep our modern world afloat. But there is a new infrastructure in place that has quickly become as common and important to everyday life: the internet. Despite how simple accessing the internet via your mobile phone may seem, a vast physical infrastructure is needed to sustain it.

FOCUS Broadband Awarded Two Completing Access to Broadband Awards to Serve Additional Addresses in Chowan and Perquimans Counties

The North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Equity (NCDIT) has announced that FOCUS Broadband is a recipient of two Completing Access to Broadband (CAB) program awards. The $5.4 million in awarded CAB funding will allow FOCUS Broadband to extend their fiber optic network in both Chowan and Perquimans counties, bringing high-speed internet to an additional 800 rural homes and businesses.

North Carolina Awards $4.5 Million to Kinetic, Expansion of High-Speed Fiber Internet Planned

To bridge the digital divide, the North Carolina Department of Information Technology (NCDIT) will award Kinetic $4.4 million to bring high-speed fiber internet to unserved areas in two counties. This grant will enable Kinetic to significantly expand its fiber-optic network in Cabarrus and Union counties by the end of 2026, bringing gigabit internet speeds to 1,392 previously unserved locations. Kinetic will invest $1.9 million of private capital in this fiber-to-the-home project and cover any cost overruns.

Industry Presses the FCC to Keep Funding Broadband Growth

Despite problems with the wider U.S. economy, demand for broadband and consumer take rates for increasing speeds has not slowed.

Sponsor: 

The Black Women’s Roundtable

Date: 
Wed, 06/26/2024 - 12:00 to 13:30

This event will featuring experts in business and government who will explain the business, employment, and grant opportunities available through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) and Digital Equity Act (DEA) programs.

Registration for this event is required. Space is limited. Click Here to Register



Change Is Inevitable, Including at Telecompetitor

I realized some months ago that all those books piling up on my side table aren’t going to read themselves. All those places I’ve been wanting to visit aren’t going to visit themselves. And so on.

Making things up is AI's Achilles heel

Generative AI makes things up. It can't distinguish between fact and fiction.

A Mature Broadband Market?

It is becoming clear that the broadband market is reaching maturity. This is already causing havoc in the industry for internet service providers that relied on year-over-year customer growth to prop up stock prices. New Street Research, a company that specializes in research in the telecommunications and technology sectors, said that it estimated that new broadband customers would grow by about 1 million this year. That’s roughly equal to the number of new households expected to be created during the year.

Hybrid Work Has Changed Meetings Forever

More than four years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, what do we know about how meetings have (or haven’t) gotten back to “normal,” particularly amid calls back to the office? An analysis of 40 million virtual meetings from 11 organizations suggests that some habits, like using virtual meeting options even when in the office, are sticking. Further, data shows that meeting participation and camera usage correlates with retention.