Joan Engebretson

Microsoft and Declaration Networks Group are partnering on a project to bring fixed wireless broadband to 65,000 people on Virginia’s eastern shore over the next three years. The Microsoft Declaration Networks deal is part of Microsoft’s Rural Airband initiative, which aims to bring broadband to unserved areas of the U.S. within five years using a mixture of wireless and wireline technology. Declaration Networks Group specialized in bringing broadband to rural areas using fixed wireless broadband.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) has begun accepting RUS broadband loan applications for fiscal year 2018. For years, the program has provided low-interest loans for broadband network construction and is currently operating based on parameters established in the 2014 Farm Bill. There are some changes to the RUS broadband loan application process effective immediately, however.

In separate announcements, AT&T and Verizon provided launch details for core networks to support mobile broadband service for public safety users. A key capability of both the AT&T and Verizon public safety offerings is to prioritize public safety network traffic and, where necessary, to pre-empt regular commercial traffic – a capability that could be important in the case of a major emergency. 

Federal Communications Commission rural broadband funding could increase by over $500 million if the commission votes to adopt an order circulated by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The the funding would include about $180 million for the current funding year for the nation’s smaller rate-of-return (ROR) carriers who get their support through traditional legacy mechanisms and up to $360 million over the next 10 years to ROR carriers who receive support based on the FCC's Alternative-Connect America Cost Mode (A-CAM). The $500 million would come, in part, from reserves.

President Donald Trump’s address about economic issues facing rural America at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention touched on Trump rural broadband initiatives. But although President Trump talked about the importance of broadband to the rural economy and signed two executive orders aimed at facilitating rural broadband deployment, I came away asking ‘where the beef’ was.

The Federal Communications Commission could vote as soon as Feb or earlier to reduce the speed required for an internet connection to be considered broadband for purposes of the FCC’s annual broadband progress report. If the FCC opts to change the definition of broadband in response to the Notice of Inquiry, it’s important to note that the changes should only impact the annual progress report and not the CAF program. 

Letters from rural carriers have been pouring into the Federal Communications Commission to urge the commission to close the broadband Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) funding gap before the end of 2017. It was just about a year ago that more carriers than expected chose to participate in the A-CAM broadband program, which will pay part of a carrier’s costs to bring broadband to unserved areas based on a cost model.

Telecommunications and electric cooperatives are playing an important role in bringing high-speed broadband to rural America, according to a new report from the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). Using FCC data, researchers identified 87 cooperative gigabit deployments as of December 2016. The majority of the nation’s 260 telecom cooperatives have deployed fiber-to-the-home.  About 60 of the nation’s 900 electric cooperatives have deployed fiber, and that number is growing fast.

In recent years, cable companies have gained broadband market share against the telecommunication companies except in areas where the telcos have upgraded their traditional copper-based network infrastructure to support speeds competitive with the cablecos’ hybrid fiber coax-based service. But according to researchers at Moffett Nathanson, that’s set to change as telcos, particularly AT&T, get more aggressive about delivering faster broadband speeds.

[Commentary] With the Sprint T-Mobile merger called off, what’s next for the wireless carriers? Many saw the merger as the best move for Sprint, which has been struggling in a competitive wireless market. The merger was less critical for T-Mobile. But that company has been a disruptive force in the wireless industry and hasn’t been one to simply maintain the status quo.