Reporting

T-Mobile has yet to take possession of the 2.5 GHz spectrum that it acquired via auction in 2022 to fill holes in rural territories across the US, but it’s ready to roll when the spectrum does become available. Congress passed legislation requiring the Federal Communications Commission to release the 2.5 GHz spectrum from Auction 108 and President Joe Biden signed the 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement (SALE) Act into law in December 2023.

As communities around the US work to close their digital divides, more and more are pursuing municipal broadband networks as a solution. As a recent example, in mid-January 2024, the state of New York was awarded $228 million by the Treasury Department for a grant program that will provide funding to "municipalities, non-profits, and other entities to construct open and accessible public bro

Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB), discusses municipal broadband networks in the US, including why and where they're popping up and which are most successful.

Martinsville, Virginia, is looking for quick ways to create new revenue and the answer may be staring the city in the face. MiNet is a city-owned telephone and internet service provider for local businesses and residents in Martinsville. As of the 2020 census, the population of Martinsville was 13,485, but MiNet only has a total of 376 customers with 98 and of them classified as residential.

Peggy Braffet and her husband think about broadband a lot. When guests show up to their pick-your-own berry farm, they sometimes expect to be able to pay with credit cards, but the Braffets' slow internet connection won't allow it.

CEO's from Meta, Snap, X, TikTok, and Discord testified in a contentious and emotional Senate hearing on child online safety. Lawmakers invoked the stories of online child abuse victims—many of whom sat directly behind the tech leaders—to issue a stunning rebuke to Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.

It seems cable internet providers are still lagging behind in customer satisfaction, especially when it comes to cost. In a 2024 CableTV survey, the best major internet service providers for overall satisfaction were either fiber or wireless providers, those being Google Fiber, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T.

Tracking broadband funding awards as they happen. In January 2024:

The fate of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) remains unknown, but with the Federal Communications Commission scheduled to halt new enrollments in February, internet service providers are thinking about how a shutdown would impact the consumers relying on the subsidy. Some of the bigger companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, said on their earnings calls they have backup plans if the ACP goes away. But what do the regional and rural providers think about the situation?

New Street Research took a deeper dive into the risks faced by wireline broadband operators if the government fails to refund the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and it were to be shut down this spring. The study confirms that Charter Communications faces the greatest risk—by far.