Doug Dawson

It seems like almost every major action taken by the Federal Communications Commission get appealed these days (FCC). In a demonstration of how slow the courts can be, in September 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld the original FCC order from June 2020 that made it easier for wireless carriers to locate new towers and transmitters.

This article considers some of the possible changes to the Universal Service Fund (USF):

It’s been interesting to watch cable companies downplaying FWA cellular wireless. For example, in September, Comcast President Mike Cavanaugh said that FWA wireless is a ‘near term’ issue that is competing for the lower end of the market. CEO Brian Roberts was quoted this year about competing against FWA saying, “Three companies are all simultaneously within a short period of time are all offering a home connectivity product by their own admission a lower speed, more easily congested network.” And yet, the carriers selling FWA continue to sell at astounding numbers.

The State of New York recently awarded $140 million in grants to support publicly-owned open-access networks.

In late October, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a “Notice of Inquiry that seeks information on current customer service practices to build a public record on the current state of customer support and ways that the FCC can “protect families and businesses that rely on these critical services.” The FCC sought comments from the public about broadband, cable, and telephone providers. The associations for the big internet service providers (ISPs) responded to the docket and basically said that their member companies offer great customer service.

The headline isn’t entirely accurate because of the use of the word lien. However, the government maintains what it calls a property trust relationship in assets constructed with federal grant dollars, which is similar to, but not the same as a bank lien.

Scientists at University College London recently achieved a speed on a wireless link of 938 Gbps. That’s over 4,000 times faster than the current average speed being delivered by T-Mobile, the current fastest cellular provider in the U.S. The team is researching techniques for multiplexing multiple radio transmissions into a coherent transmission. The scientists achieved the speeds by utilizing a huge span of spectrum between 5GHz and 150 GHz.

We are definitely entering into a new era in regulation. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are disputing the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) ability to levy fines on them. The fines in question all stem from an FCC action to penalize the carriers for selling customer location data to aggregators. This data allows marketers to become intimately knowledgeable about where people spend their time every day.

There is a lot of speculation that Starlink is positioned to get a lot more federal subsidy from the BEAD grant program. There are a few things that have to happen for that to come to pass, but that is not the only news about Starlink these days. Starlink announced in September that it reached four million customers worldwide. What is most impressive about that announcement is the rate of growth, with the company just hitting the three million customer mark in May of 2024.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a public workshop for December 10 at 3:00 EST to describe the process for challenging the FCC cellular data maps. The primary purpose is to discuss how local governments can submit bulk challenges to the FCC cellular data map. In September, the FCC announced a new $9 billion 5G Fund for Rural America that will be used to bring cell towers to rural areas with poor coverage.