Joan Engebretson

At one time it looked like the high-speed broadband network built 10 years ago by EPB (formerly the Electric Power Board) in Chattanooga would be an island of gigabit connectivity, as the state of Tennessee had rather restrictive laws about what types of entities could offer broadband and where. But things have changed, as J. Ed Marston, EPB vice president of marketing, explained in an interview about new EPB gigabit partners. The state now allows municipalities and electric cooperatives to offer broadband, Marston noted.

Rural broadband was a hot topic for the opening session at the Independent Show, an event put on by cable industry organizations ACA Connects and the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) aimed at smaller cable providers. “It’s something everybody realizes they need to do but traditional finances don’t work,” commented Todd Shurz, President and CEO of IN-based cable and broadband provider Schurz Communications, in reference to the higher costs of deploying broadband in rural areas.

Dish Network has agreed to acquire prepaid mobile operations and spectrum from Sprint and T-Mobile. What would a Dish wireless strategy be? Dish’s traditional business of delivering video by satellite has come under pressure as cord-cutting increases, and the company seems to see wireless as the most logical new business area. In 2018, Dish said its initial move into the wireless business is to build a network to support Internet of Things (IoT) applications and that the company eventually would deploy 5G.

Microsoft, Google and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) are urging the Federal Communications Commission to allow co-channel spectrum sharing in the C-band. The proposal would allow fixed wireless operators to use the same spectrum band as incumbent users, who are comprised largely of satellite operators that use the spectrum for their earth stations. The FCC is currently pondering how it might best make a portion of the C-band, comprised of spectrum between 3700 and 4200 MHz, available for wireless services.

The latest Microsoft Airband partner is Watch Communications, which will work with Microsoft to bring high-speed broadband to 50 counties in IN, 22 counties in IL, and most counties in OH. The Microsoft Watch Communications partnership will use a variety of broadband technologies, with an emphasis on fixed wireless operating in TV white spaces. TV white spaces technology uses vacant TV broadband spectrum, incorporating database technology to ensure that broadband providers only use spectrum that is available for unlicensed use in a geographic area.

As the US gets set to ban certain Chinese manufacturers from selling telecommunications equipment to US service providers, CoBank is warning that rural Americans’ access to communications services could be damaged if insufficient funding is available for rural service providers to replace prohibited equipment already installed in their networks.

As the Federal Communications Commission gets set to address inadequacies with the way broadband availability data is collected from service providers, USTelecom is warning that those efforts are only part of the solution to broadband mapping problems. To know which US homes and businesses do not have broadband available to them, we also need to know the exact geographic coordinates of those homes and businesses. And perhaps surprisingly, that information doesn’t exist, explained Mike Saperstein, vice president of policy and advocacy for USTelecom.

Four satellite companies known as the C-Band Alliance have enlisted a spectrum auction expert to develop a plan for an auction of spectrum in the coveted spectrum band known as the C-band.

AT&T saw a whopping 57% growth rate in fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) subscribers over the last year, according to a new research note about AT&T fiber subscriber growth from financial analysts at Moffett Nathanson. The company’s broadband market share hasn’t increased commensurately, however, according to the researchers. “Despite the dramatic growth at AT&T Fiber, AT&T’s broader IP broadband category has posted only modest subscriber gains over the past year,” the researchers wrote.

Early data from USTelecom’s broadband mapping pilot in Missouri and Virginia indicates the new methodology is working and is “superior to other [mapping] proposals,” the lobbying group tells the Federal Communications Commission. The broadband map pilot is an effort aimed at better defining where there are gaps in rural broadband coverage.