Top Broadband Developments of 2023

There’s a lot of optimism in the broadband industry, driven by new opportunities in rural broadband, technology advances and more. In no particular order, here are 11 important developments that we saw this year.

• Rural Renaissance Some rural areas have seen a reversal of long-term population decline. As funding for rural deployments flows into the states, providers large and small are pursuing and winning awards. And as investors realize that whoever deploys fiber in a community first wins, they’ve been racing to upgrade as many non-fiber markets as they can.
• BEAD Gains Some Serious Momentum The BEAD rural broadband funding program made a lot of progress this year, staying on schedule as more and more states submitted five-year plans, initial proposals and more to NTIA. 
• FWA Ups and Downs NTIA refused to budge on its decision to prevent fixed wireless access providers that use unlicensed spectrum from applying for BEAD funding. Nevertheless, FWA made some other gains including some substantial technology advances.
• Buy America Finds Success One area where NTIA barely had to budge on BEAD requirements was on Buy America, Build America (BABA) requirements. Initially, some stakeholders said there was no way BEAD winners would be able to meet those requirements. But whenever just one manufacturer of a network element arranged to build that element in the U.S., we soon saw multiple vendors of the same element doing the same thing.
• Enhanced ACAM The FCC did some budging of its own this year, opting to increase the minimum deployment speed requirement for ACAM Universal Service funding to match the requirements of the BEAD program. 
• Digital Equity The words “digital equity” were heard more frequently in 2023 than ever before. This occurred, in part, because the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law not only made funding available for broadband deployment; it also made $2.75 billion available for digital equity— ensuring that racial and ethnic minorities, rural residents and other “covered populations” can get the maximum benefit from broadband. 
• Artificial Intelligence 2023 was also the year when providers got serious about exploring AI.
• Satellite-to-cellphone One of the most exciting technology developments that emerged this year is satellite-to-cellphone communications, which potentially opens up a whole new market for wireless providers. 
• Cablecos Pursue Symmetrical Multi-Gig As fiber broadband becomes more widely available, the cable industry is beginning to feel the impact. While cablecos’ infrastructure can support multi-gig speeds downstream quite easily, the same is not true of the increasingly important upstream. To address this, the cable companies are pursuing a range of options, including distributed access architecture,  new split ratios and DOCSIS 4.0.
• Cablecos—Especially Charter—See Rural Funding Success Despite the cablecos’ HFC/DOCSIS upgrades, they’re also deploying fiber broadband in some areas – for example, in numerous rural markets for which they have won funding.
• The Quantum Internet The quantum internet promises to offer faster and more secure communications using a whole new approach to networking based on quantum physics. More development needs to be done before quantum networks move beyond the testbed phase, but the technology gained some serious traction in 2023.