Reporting

Jessica Rosenworcel is the boss—chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the 1,600-employee agency that has oversight of how the country communicates, from FM radio to broadcast television to the wires that make up the U.S.’s internet infrastructure.

123NET and Ottawa County's (MI) seventh largest county by population, have entered into a public-private partnership to build 380 miles of additional fiber in the county. The county board and 123NET finalized the agreement near the end of 2023. The $25 million project, funded, in part, through $14 million from Michigan’s ROBIN program, $7.5 million from Ottawa County’s American Rescue Plan Act funds, and $3.5 million from 123NET will bring fiber access to about 4,000 residents.

Oak Hill Capital has made yet another investment in telecommunications, announcing its acquisition of Florida-based fiber-to-the-home provider Wire 3 from Guggenheim Investments. The price was not disclosed. Oak Hill Capital has committed to invest up to $250 million out of its sixth flagship fund to accelerate the expansion of Wire 3’s fiber network in underserved communities across Florida. Wire 3’s existing management team members will continue leading the business, now as shareholders. Wire 3 provides symmetrical internet speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps).

T-Mobile said that it achieved the world’s first six-carrier aggregation call using sub-6 GHz spectrum on its live production 5G network. Working with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, T-Mobile exceeded 3.6 Gigabits per second (Gbps) in the test. The carrier described this speed as fast enough to download a two-hour HD movie in less than 7 seconds. Higher speed and increased performance are the result of the 5G carrier aggregation in which T-Mobile combined multiple 5G channels.

Cities are looking to leverage streetlights and even electric transformers to give them deeper insights into what’s happening on the ground. These technology developments come as public leaders also work to ensure individual privacy is not trampled on the road to a smart city. Many of the questions from city leaders involve how data is transported and stored, said Mike Grigsby, director of business development at Ubicquia, a smart city technology company. “The data is owned by the city,” Grigsby said.

Vexus Fiber kicked off the new year by launching service to its first customers in Huntsville (TX) after beginning construction in late 2023. Nearly 500 Huntsville homes and businesses are now connected to Vexus Fiber, with first active service areas located south and southwest of Interstate 45.

Archtop Fiber closed its acquisition of New York-based Warwick Valley Telephone (WVT), marking the provider’s third acquisition in five months as it continues expanding in the northeast US. With WVT under its belt, Archtop will serve customers in New York’s Orange County, the Mid-Hudson Valley and northwestern New Jersey with an XGS-PON network. Archtop will overlash fiber onto WVT’s existing lines and rebrand the company to WVT Fiber. The acquisition came via a stock purchase agreement with Momentum Telecom, WVT’s previous owner and a provider of managed cloud communications services.

Announcements about multi-gigabit fiber broadband offerings are not as exciting today as they were a year or two ago, now that more and more providers are offering those speeds.

The next chapter in cable and fiber networks will see cable operators focus on a new phase of their widely deployed hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks as telephone companies – and some cable operators – maintain their pursuit of speedier passive optical network (PON) and Ethernet technologies. DOCSIS 4.0 represents the next generation of HFC, enabling symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds, enhanced security and lower latency.

T-Mobile’s planned satellite-to-cellphone service came a step closer now that SpaceX Starlink has begun launching satellites that will support the service. Field testing is expected to begin soon. When available, the service will enable T-Mobile customers to have cellphone connectivity in areas where traditional service is not available, and may never be, because of land use restrictions or difficult terrain. T-Mobile and SpaceX announced plans for the satellite-to-cellphone service in August of 2022.