Reporting

Americans rank the importance of regulating AI below government shutdowns, health care, gun reform, immigration and the war between Israel and Hamas, according to 

More reliable and higher quality internet could be coming to Fort Worth’s (TX) underserved areas. The Fort Worth City Council approved a $7.5 million, 34-year contract with Dallas-based Sprocket Networks for broadband infrastructure. The contract authorizes the installation of an approximately 300-mile network to connect residents and businesses with internet in locations designated as underserved. Around 17 percent of residents in Fort Worth don’t have access to high-speed internet and 8 percent have no internet access at all.

Altafiber, formerly known as Cincinnati Bell, has been busy in 2023 with its fiber buildout—both within its incumbent territory and in expansion markets.

The rapid spread of fiber broadband connections in emerging markets is set to drive growth in those countries’ digital economies, according to the Financial Times-Omdia Digital Economies Index. India, Brazil, Kenya, and Mexico are among the countries highlighted by Omdia analysts as experiencing rapid take-up of fiber broadband, which is faster and more reliable than mobile or older copper-wire broadband connections.

One of Consolidated Communications’ institutional investors is encouraging other shareholders not to vote in favor of the proposed Consolidated sale to Searchlight Capital Partners and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. The investor, Wildcat Capital Management, owns about 3 million shares of Consolidated stock, or between 2 and 3 percent of the company. That makes Wildcat the fifth largest independent stockholder, according to Wildcat.

The state of South Dakota has set a high bar for applicants seeking rural broadband funding in the ConnectSD Broadband Development Program. For example, the state sees fiber broadband as the “gold standard” in broadband technology.

The state of Idaho has awarded nearly $119 million in funding to Ziply, Comcast and 14 others. Ziply won two awards totaling over $14.3 million. Comcast won a single award for over $9.8 million. Other awardees included competitive and incumbent local providers. In addition, some awards went to individual counties. Awardees will contribute matching funds equal to 30 percent of project costs on average. The funding will go toward last mile and middle mile projects. The funding for the program came through the federal Capital Projects Fund.

Cox Communications is being pressed to change or alter its "powered by fiber" ad claims to "clearly and conspicuously disclose" that its cable broadband service is not offered with fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) technologies. The National Advertising Division (NAD) made the recommendation following a challenge raised by AT&T, a Cox competitor that is expanding and upgrading a portion of its footprint to fiber. In its assessment, the NAD noted that Cox's cable broadband service delivers service over fiber to the node, where it's then transitioned to coaxial line

T-Mobile expanded its fiber ambitions to a handful of new markets via partnerships with several open access fiber network operators including Tillman FiberCo and SiFi Networks, among others. The developments reflect T-Mobile's growing interest in partnering with fiber network operators to offer T-Mobile-branded fiber services running over another company's network. It is a model that T-Mobile knows well as companies like Dish Network, Altice and Google Fiber pursue a similar strategy using T-Mobile's own wireless network.

Fans of Title II-based network neutrality rules are once again flooding the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality comment docket with identical calls for restoration of the rules, as the Democrat-controlled agency has proposed. The docket already has almost 20,000 comments and, as such, is the commission’s most active proceeding, far outstripping the second-place docket for rules on international communications and spectrum issues, which has less than 3,000.