Joan Engebretson

The US is set to get another satellite broadband provider that uses a non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) approach. The Federal Communications Commission has approved market access to OneWeb, a NGSO satellite broadband operator that filed for bankruptcy earlier in 2020 but is back in action after receiving an investment from the British government. NGSO operators use constellations of satellites that orbit the earth at lower altitudes in comparison with traditional geostationary satellites.

The COVID-19 impact on telecommunication business revenues hasn’t been as bad as financial analysts at MoffettNathanson expected it to be. But the worst is yet to come.

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking input on how it should prepare its 2021 annual broadband deployment report. The report, which is intended to determine whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner, traditionally generates controversy, and 2021 is likely to be no exception – particularly considering that the FCC is proposing few changes to the methodology and definitions used in the 2020 report. The most controversial element of the proposed plan is likely to be the minimum broadband speed definition.

Fifteen Mississippi rural electric cooperatives have won a combined total of $65 million in rural broadband funding through the CARES Act passed earlier in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The money came indirectly through the state, which carved out $75 million for rural broadband from a larger pool of funding it received through the act. The rural electric cooperatives must spend the funding they were awarded before the end of the year and must invest an additional $65 million of their own in the broadband projects.

A lot of hopes are riding on the auction of spectrum in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, which has a start date of July 23. The spectrum is considered mid-band – and industry stakeholders increasingly see mid-band spectrum offering the optimum mixture of bandwidth and coverage for 5G deployments. Perhaps no one has higher hopes for the auction than Verizon, which is light on mid-band spectrum holdings.

Frontier has filed a waiver request with the Federal Communications Commission, the resolution of which could impact the company’s ability to participate in Phase 1 of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, scheduled to begin in Oct. Frontier entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.

Wireless equipment provider Nokia expects the International Telecommunications Union to begin work on defining the next generation of wireless technology to be known as 6G in 2021. But the company already has some ideas of its own about what 6G should look like. Nokia visionaries see the technology supporting peak speeds of 1,000 Gbps, and they see service being deployed in the terahertz (THz) band, which is even higher frequency than the multi-gigahertz (GHz) millimeter wave bands that are being pioneered for 5G.

Charter plans to participate in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction. Depending how successful the company is in the auction, the build-out could involve multiple millions of locations and an investment of multiple billions of dollars, Charter said.  Major cable companies-turned-broadband providers such as Charter traditionally have not participated in government funding programs.

NTCA — The Rural Broadband Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) asked the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to relax certain rules for the ReConnect rural broadband funding program. The ReConnect program covers some of the costs of deploying broadband to unserved rural areas where build-out costs are high. ReConnect 100% grant awards require matching funds, and currently, recipients must spend all matching funds before they can begin using grant funding.

Communications industry financial analysts at MoffettNathanson Research expect to see continued cable broadband market share gains, which have accelerated as bandwidth demand climbs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers’ “equilibrium” forecast calls for DSL market share to drop to zero. And “mid-tier” telco broadband increasingly is becoming “just as obsolete,” the researchers said. “Broadband is increasingly a two-horse race between cable and telco FTTH, where it exists,” the analysts argue.