Diana Goovaerts

C Spire has been working to bridge the middle-mile gap in the rural southeastern US, plugging away at construction of a backhaul network in the area for the past few years.

Tillman FiberCo received a $200 million investment from Northleaf Capital Partners to fuel plans to build an open-access fiber network in five states. The deal with Northleaf leaves the door open to another $300 million investment when the time is right. Founded in 2021, Tillman FiberCo is a subsidiary of Tillman Global Holdings, whose other subsidiary, Tillman Networks, is a well-known player in the telecommunications construction world. But unlike its sister company, Tillman FiberCo not only designs and builds fiber networks, but also owns them.

DOCSIS 4.0 has been billed as the technology that will put cable operators on par with 10G PON service from fiber providers, but a recent CableLabs interoperability event showed cable companies can hit over 8 Gbps with a mix of new and old gear. CableLabs Principal Architect Doug Jones said that operators demonstrated speeds of “eight point something” gigabits per second downstream and 1.5 Gbps upstream. But rather than using an end-to-end DOCSIS 4.0 system, this was done using a DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem termination system (CMTS) in a high split configuration and a DOCSIS 4.0 modem.

Nokia is teaming with longtime manufacturing partner Sanmina to bring production of fiber network electronics to Wisconsin, hoping the move will help it bring in the cheese when money starts flowing from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program.

The US government just dished out $930 million in support for middle mile broadband projects, but a pair of experts said there’s demand for billions in additional funding. Both noted that states could be the next big source of support as they work out how to divvy up their newly allocated Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) allotments. Zayo was one of the big winners in the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) recent award round for the Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program, scooping up nearly $93 million for three projects.

Midco is two years into a $500 million upgrade project called Fiber Forward, which aims to deliver multi-gigabit service to 300,000 homes and businesses over a six to eight year time span.

The US Department of Education, Federal Communications Commission, non-profit group Civic Nation, and broadband operators joined hands to launch a “Week of Action” designed to boost sign-ups for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

Private equity firm Friedman Capital is looking to scoop up as many as 20 small broadband providers across the Southeastern Sunbelt region in the US, aiming to build a sizable competitor capable of bringing better broadband to parts of the country experiencing rapid population growth. Friedman Capital launched a new strategic investment fund to fuel its plan, aiming to secure $250 million in capital commitments.

Frontier Communications still has hundreds of thousands of copper passings, but it doesn’t seem like that footprint will be taken offline anytime soon.

Private equity (PE) money has been flooding into the broadband market over the past two years. Everywhere you look, someone has a PE partner of some kind.