Reporting

Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (MEC) is using Ciena tech to build middle mile backbone scalable from 100 Gigabit to 400 Gigabit. MEC serves 31,000 member accounts across nine Virginia counties and five North Carolina counties. It delivers broadband in its service territory through its subsidiary EMPOWER Broadband. Specifically, the co-op is leveraging Ciena’s 8114 Coherent Aggregation Router and 5160 Service Aggregation Switch for the middle mile network.

The US federal government has stopped warning some social networks about foreign disinformation campaigns on their platforms, reversing a years-long approach to preventing Russia and other actors from interfering in American politics less than a year before the US presidential elections. Meta no longer receives notifications of global influence campaigns from the Biden administration, halting a prolonged partnership between the federal government and the world’s largest social media company.

Kansas awarded a $5 million grant to nonprofit Connected Nation to construct a carrier-neutral internet exchange point (IXP) adjacent to Wichita State University’s Innovation Campus. Construction will be done through Connected Nation IXP, a joint venture between Connected Nation and Newby Ventures. The Wichita IXP will be the first carrier-neutral IXP in Kansas. One network that will connect to the Wichita IXP is the middle-mile network planned for the state that was funded, in part, through a June 2023, $42.5 million grant awarded to the Kansas Departments of Commerce and Transportation.

Verizon’s TracFone Wireless subsidiary reached a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Enforcement Bureau to resolve an investigation into whether the company violated the agency’s Lifeline and Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program rules.  According to the FCC, TracFone’s internal systems: 1) improperly considered a subscriber’s receipt of an inbound text message to constitute qualifying Lifeline usage and 2) improperly claimed support for a group of customers who were enrolled jointly in both the Lifeline and EBB programs, but did not use one of the services in

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is looking to offer Internet services to low-income New Yorkers through a cutting-edge mix of fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber. Garfield Swaby, VP of IT for NYPL, sees the organization as potentially offering a layer of telecommunications services alongside the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides subsidies to low-income Americans to help them pay for telecommunications services. The COVID-19 pandemic, and its resulting shutdowns across New York City, sparked the project.

A new analysis from New Street Research revealed that the telecommunications industry collectively increased fiber locations by 1.8 million in the third quarter of 2023, with “most of the increase driven by AT&T.” A broadband trends report from analyst Jonathan Chaplin highlighted that over the past year, AT&T has passed 2.2 million new consumer locations with fiber, although he wrote that pace is “slightly below expectations based on management guidance.” AT&T added 1.1 million fiber subscribers during the past year.

Verizon President of Global Networks and Technology Joe Russo said that Verizon does manage its network capacity on a sector-by-sector basis, which has become especially important with the rollout of its fixed wireless access (FWA) service. T-Mobile has been very transparent about managing its network capacity on a sector-by-sector basis in areas where it introduces FWA, to make sure that FWA doesn’t in any way degrade the experience of T-Mobile’s regular mobile customers. But Verizon has only said that it’s always managing the capacity needs on its mobile network, without getting into spec

The looming lapse of funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) threatens to widen the affordability and adoption gap just as the access gap is closing. The ACP, which currently provides a monthly broadband subsidy of $30 for roughly 22 million households, is projected to run out of funding by April 2024 without action from Congress.

Charter will comply with a series of recommendations made by The National Advertising Division (NAD) of Better Business Bureau (BBB) National Programs about certain claims the company has made about T-Mobile fixed wireless offerings, known as T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and T-Mobile Internet Lite. NAD recommends that Charter discontinue claims made in the “Game Time” and "Move Out" commercials, which suggest that T-Mobile Home Internet services provide “spotty,” “glitchy,” and unusable service, and that T-Mobile Home Internet is too slow for five people to use simultaneously.

Colorado is a bit of an enigma. It’s home to numerous dense and high population areas including the Denver/Boulder metro area, Fort Collins to the north and Colorado Springs to the south.