Carl Weinschenk

Twenty-five organizations sent a letter this week to new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr in opposition to prospective changes to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) framework. The companies say that the changes would upend the goals for which CBRS was developed. The letter urges the FCC to not pursue proposals to increase power levels for CBRS devices and relax emissions limits.

The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) has released program details for the fourth wave of the Connect New Mexico Pilot Program. The award, which is for $1.251 million, focuses on connectivity to geographic areas that had been declared disaster areas between 2022 and last year and eligible underserved broadband serviceable locations (BSL) in those areas. These New Mexico broadband awards were authorized under NM House Bill 2. The key dates for these New Mexico broadband grants:

Arizona has set January 6 to February 5 as the Round 1 application window in their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program deployment process. The state has been allotted $993.1 million in the program. Arizona’s BEAD Program will be administered by the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA).

Brightspeed says that it has received $238 million in local, state, and federal grants and funds. The money, the company says, will expand the number of addresses passed by planned projects by 121,000 in 14 states. Brightspeed, which is based in North Carolina, says that it will continue to pursue state and federal grants. The funding:

The University of Hawaii Broadband Office (UHBO) is offering guidance for organizations putting together applications for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. The applications are due on the last day of January. Hawaii was awarded $149 million in the program. There are eight RFPs, split between unserved/underserved locations and community anchor institutions.

Broadband consumption experienced a milestone during the third quarter of the year as upstream traffic increased two times as fast as downstream traffic, according to OpenVault. The firm found that year-over-year upstream traffic increased 13.9%, while downstream increased by 6.8%. Overall traffic growth was 7.2%, according to the OpenVault Broadband Insights (OVBI) report. The trend of upstream outpacing downstream traffic is well established and consistent with the evolution of end point-generated content.

Comcast, Goodwill Industries International (GII), and World Education have developed and launched the Goodwill Digital Navigator Certificate Specialization training program. The program aims to equip community supporters with skills to enable them to thrive in the quickly changing advanced digital workplace. The digital training was made available to GII employees in the United States during the past month, and now can be accessed by anyone. The program costs $49 and consists of three courses.

Copper Valley Telecom (CVT) plans to deploy gigabit fiber-to-the-home broadband service to the village of Tatitlek (AK) and surrounding communities of the Chugach Census Area of Alaska. The project on the southern coast of the state in the Prince William Sound area is being financed with a $16.5 million grant from the U.S.

Comcast said it would comply with recommendations from BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD) about its business Internet service ads. The challenge, brought by AT&T, related to the claim that “Comcast Business Internet has speeds up to 12x faster than Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.” The claim was made on television and radio ads, and in direct mail. NAD made two recommendations.

The best approach to the future of W-Fi is better use of existing spectrum, not adding more unlicensed spectrum, according to Richard Bennett, a network engineer who contributed to the original Wi-Fi specification, 802.11n, and ultra-wideband standards. Bennett’s study, “Lessons from the History of Wi-Fi,” found that larger channels offer only “incremental improvements only at very close range”. Newer versions of Wi-Fi using existing unlicensed spectrum near the router are capable of avoiding bottlenecks in the home.