Carl Weinschenk

C Spire is adding 15 community colleges to the Mississippi Optical Network (MissiON). The MissiON network is the research and education network supporting universities in the state. The 15 community colleges – which are not identified in the press release – will gain additional capacity and fully redundant connectivity to commodity Internet services and state university research programs, according to C Spire. C Spire has been quite involved with MissiON, having previously added universities to the network and “enhanced connections” to the network for others.

RootMetrics compared mobile broadband speeds between the first half of 2014 and the second half of 2019. Among the four national wireless carriers, Verizon has already increased its mobile broadband speed the most. Verizon’s rolling average median download speed across 125 markets generally outstripped other carriers in measures taken twice yearly during the time frame. AT&T and T-Mobile became serious challengers in 2017, with all carriers showing considerable mobile broadband speed gains, the comparisons show.

With wireless use set to spike as more people work from home during the coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic, wireless spectrum holders are working together to most efficiently use the available spectrum. That has led carriers and spectrum holders to temporarily put competition aside and enter wireless spectrum lending arrangements. The goal is to expand voice, video and data capacity where it is needed as work, as education and as commerce shifts to the home from the office, school and store.

Smithville Communications and SCI REMC–a rural telecommunications provider and an electric cooperative, respectively–are teaming to build fiber-based broadband infrastructure to serve their common Indiana service areas. The telco electric cooperative fiber partnership project will serve about 3,400 residents and businesses in Ellettsville, Lake Monroe and Gosport (IN) communities with homes served by copper-based services.

The newly enacted 2019 Wisconsin Act 128 incentivizes rural broadband investment through targeted tax exemptions. Telephone companies will get an exemption for property used to provide broadband service in rural or underserved areas. Most Wisconsin property taxes are paid to local governments. The telephone company property tax, however, is paid to and controlled by the state. This means that the bill will have no fiscal impact on local governments, according to a press release from WSTA — Wisconsin’s Broadband Association.

C Spire, Entergy Mississippi, and the Mississippi Public Service Commission commemorated the completion of a project that will bring advanced broadband services to rural Mississippians. The $11 million project took 18 months to complete. It spans more than 300 miles in 15 counties and is aimed at helping to meet the state’s education and healthcare needs.

Almost 20% of Americans are still on 3G networks – even as many of these networks face decommissioning next year, according to Opensignal. Only 4.1% of the approximately 30 million Americans who still use 3G do not have a 4G-capable device. This is “unsurprising,” according to Opensignal, because most carriers have sold nothing but 4G-capable phones for years as a way to accelerate the move of subscribers away from older networks. In all, 83% of users still served by 3G have 4G-capable devices but do not have a 4G plan.

The United States leads the world in gigabit broadband, with 68.5 million people having the service available to them, according to a gigabit availability report from VIAVI Solutions. Gigabit connectivity is available for 354 million people across 51 countries worldwide. This is about five percent of the global population. At 61.5 million people, China has moved ahead of South Korea as the country with the second most people with gigabit availability. That total represents an increase of over 41 million with access in August 2019.

The Northeast Michigan Council of Governments (NEMCOG), in conjunction with Connected Nation Michigan, has created a vertical asset inventory for the region, which is largely rural. The project identifies and catalogs publicly and privately held assets upon which wireless equipment can be mounted. These structures include silos, water towers and the like. The interactive tool can be accessed at Discover Northeast Michigan. Identifying these assets is vital in rural areas that long have lagged in broadband penetration.

A partnership between Nextlink Internet and Microsoft aims to bring broadband to hundreds of rural communities in six states through the Microsoft Airband program. The partnership will provide broadband in IA, IL, KS, NEB, OK, and TX.  “This partnership will enable the coming of precision agriculture, IoT, digital healthcare, access to higher education and overall economic growth,” said Ted Osborn, Nextlink’s Senior Vice President of Strategy & Regulatory Affairs.