Sean Buckley

AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier and other providers that want to further expand rural broadband will soon be able to bid in the Federal Communications Commission’s $2 billion additional Connect America Fund II auction. The FCC has identified nearly 1 million homes and small businesses that will be eligible for broadband deployment support over the next 10 years. A large majority of the rural areas the FCC identified do not have access to broadband internet service. Given the low density of these areas, service providers are unlikely to expand service without federal support. 

Frontier appears to be on a roll with its Connect America Fund II deployments, expanding broadband services in the rural areas of eight additional states in 2017.  The list of states included in this latest push in which Frontier is ahead of pace in deploying rural broadband include: Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Frontier users have found an unwelcome present in their latest bill as the company has added a $2-a-month Internet Infrastructure Surcharge:

"Beginning with this bill, customers not on an Internet Service term agreement, price protection plan or subject to other exclusions will be assessed a $1.99 per month Internet Infrastructure surcharge. The Internet Infrastructure surcharge is not a tax or governmental charge."

Frontier says the surcharge has been implemented to defray some local network maintenance costs.

A group of 50 US mayors sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai in a collective effort to ask that he keeps the current rules, which are based on Title II of the Communications Act, in place.

Following 2012's Hurricane Sandy, Verizon has put together a new set of flood barrier and network transformation methods that are designed to achieve two goals: keep its wireline network operational and hasten its ongoing copper-to-fiber migration. During Sandy, which flooded several of its service and central offices, the service provider reported $1 billion in damage due to water and related storm damage.

Ting, the wireline internet division of Tucows, does not envision Google Fiber’s recent troubles posing challenges to the larger fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service community. Elliot Noss, president and CEO of Tucows, said that there are still plenty of opportunities to expand its FTTH reach. “There are certainly markets that had, had some conversation with Google who have been in contact with us,” said Noss. “But at the end of the day, it's such a big market, and Google had such big halo that I don't know that will necessarily have a material impact.” Noss added that having a larger amount of FTTH service providers is a benefit to all players that participate in the fiber broadband segment.

CenturyLink’s proposed acquisition of Level 3 is now facing protests from two California-based consumer advocacy groups who say the combined company will place too much control of a large portion of the state’s wholesale and retail fiber into one company. This is a small blow to CenturyLink, which has remained confident that it would not have as difficult a time getting state approvals because the telecommunication company is purchasing a company that does not serve consumers.

Level 3 is mainly focused on selling a mix of wholesale services like fiber to other carriers and selling IP-based and TDM services to business customers. These groups include a coalition of consumer advocacy groups—TURN, The Greenlining Institute and the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) office of ratepayer advocates—and the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF).

Google Fiber is implementing a fiber installation process in San Antonio (TX) it hopes won’t upset local residents along with methods to reduce network build-out costs. The emerging fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) provider, according to a San Antonio Business Journal report, wants to be more responsive to the Texas community’s concerns. "They want Google Fiber, but they also want it deployed with a minimum of disruption," Google Fiber wrote in a statement. "We agree. Across all our markets, we are focused on innovating new deployment techniques that are faster, more efficient and less disruptive." The first thing on Google Fiber’s list is to remove a fiber hut that it initially constructed inside a pocket recreational area at the city’s Haskin Park. As part of the revised plan, the service provider plans to replace the hut, which holds its network cables, with a smaller utility cabinet.

CenturyLink says it does not always compete head to head with Level 3—which it is in the process of acquiring—and that the two companies are providers in an ever-evolving business services market.

In a new Federal Communications Commission filing responding to questions about the markets in which the two providers offer business services, CenturyLink said it and Level 3 offer similar services to small and large businesses, but not in every market. “While CenturyLink and Level 3 offer overlapping services for SMBs and enterprises, they do not significantly compete with each other in the provision of these services,” CenturyLink said. In the fourth quarter of 2016, CenturyLink said it had 28.5% of sales of SMB data 11 services in its ILEC territory, while Level 3 accounted for only 1.1 % of similar service sales. Ethernet is another key factor. CenturyLink noted it had 6.5% of the total US sales of business Ethernet services, and Level 3 accounted for 17.6% of such sales. CenturyLink said it is seeing competition in the business data services (BDS) market from two main sources: cable and national providers.

FairPoint has completed broadband expansion projects in 25 Vermont towns, thanks in part to funding from the FCC’s CAF-II rural broadband expansion program. By completing these broadband expansion projects, the service provider will offer higher broadband speeds to over 4,500 locations throughout the state. In towns like Dover, Jamaica, Londonderry, Stratton, West Dover, Wilmington and Winhall, over 2,200 locations have been impacted, providing broadband service to some locations for the first time.