Diana Goovaerts

With billions of dollars both public and private on the table, new fiber players are springing up left and right. Some are small, rural telecom companies who have decided to make the technology leap from DSL. Others are entirely new entrants targeting strategic pockets of certain states, as Wire 3 is doing in Florida. It seems almost impossible that all will survive in the long run. But is the fiber industry destined for a rollup akin to what’s already been seen in cable and wireless? And if so, when will it happen and who will be doing the buying?

Google Fiber’s West Region General Manager Ashley Church said the company is looking to launch its service in Mesa (AZ) a city located within the Phoenix metro area. Its plan is dependent on the city council’s approval of a license agreement which will allow Google Fiber to access municipal rights of way along public highways to build its infrastructure. The proposal calls for an initial five-year license term with a renewal option.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development division sought to delay the implementation of a “Buy American” provision included in the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) on the grounds that the requirement could hinder critical projects including broadband rollouts. Its move is notable given the USDA administers a number of key broadband funding initiatives, including the well-known ReConnect Program.

Ookla released a new batch of Speedtest results which showed median download speeds for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband service jumped 38 percent year on year in the US in first quarter 2022. Even with that boost, the service still only delivered downstream rates of 90.55 Mbps, leaving it well short of the 144.2 Mbps median posted by the industry as a whole.

A new study from Tufts University’s Digital Planet initiative found a correlation between broadband and Covid-19 death rates, highlighting a particular link between greater access and better outcomes in urban areas. The report comes after researchers at the University of Chicago released a paper earlier in 2022 that came to a similar conclusion.

AT&T won its latest battle with Charter Communications over marketing claims, with the National Advertising Division (NAD) recommending the latter discontinue advertisements which call into question the reliability of AT&T’s internet service. The ruling followed AT&T’s challenge of a Charter ad for its Spectrum service. The commercial in question claimed Spectrum won against “telephone internet companies” in terms of providing reliable and glitch-free internet service.

Brightspeed is looking to deploy fiber at a furious pace following the expected close of its deal to buy ILEC assets from Lumen Technologies, targeting rollouts to 1 million locations by end-2023. It has now laid out plans to reach more than half of its goal, naming Alabama as the fourth state where it’s planning a significant project.

US Ignite, an organization that has spent the last decade helping cities across the country plan and tackle broadband projects, brings seven more communities into its fold. All told, more than 50 cities are now part of its network and it’s looking to grow that number as communities face a daunting challenge: navigating an influx of federal broadband funding opportunities.

Verizon flexed its promotional muscle, dropping the cost of its entry-level Fios and fixed wireless Home Internet plans to $25 per month and offering a four-year price lock for fiber customers on its faster 1-gigabit and 2-gigabit tiers. Verizon indicated it is looking to steal subscribers from cable competitors with the promotion, explicitly calling on customers to “ditch cable and switch” to one of its Home Internet services.

Charter Communications CFO Jessica Fischer revealed the operator is expecting as many as 70,000 broadband customers to churn off its network in second quarter 2022 as they roll off a government subsidy program, but stressed it still believes it will achieve overall positive broadband subscriber growth for the period. Fischer explained Charter has been an active participant in the Federal Communications Commission’s Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program and its successor, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).