CCG Consulting

The State of Colorado has entered the fray by providing better access to broadband for those living in multi-dwelling units (MDUs). Colorado enacted HB 24-1334 which takes an aggressive position on granting internet service providers (ISPs) access to MDUs. The law says that an MDU building owner can’t deny access to an ISP that wants to install broadband infrastructure. I call this an aggressive law because it gives a building owner 60 days to respond to a request by an ISP to build broadband infrastructure.

On February 22 AT&T had a massive cellular outage. Ookla’s service Downtector said it recorded over 1.8 million reports of customer problems during the outage event, making this the most widespread outage since a big T-Mobile outage in June 2020. The biggest immediate concern is always 911 and emergency services. Many local 911 centers issued an alert about the problem and warned people to use alternate ways to reach 911.

NATOA, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) recently made Community Broadband and Digital Equity Awards to three communities and recognized the strides the cities have made in tackling the digital divide.

It’s now clear that State Broadband Offices are going to put a lot of pressure on Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) winners to spend grant awards and build networks as quickly as possible. Internet service providers (ISP) generally have the same goal, because getting customers quickly is the best way to make sure an ISP can pay for the network. However, there are numerous reasons why BEAD fiber construction might be delayed:

There are a lot of regulations other than the ones created by or enforced by the Federal Communications Council. Anybody who builds fiber networks can describe the litany of state and local regulations involved in constructing fiber. Following are some of the primary kinds of such regulations—and there are others in some places:

Anybody not involved in the telephone business will probably be surprised to find that the old TDM telephone networks are still very much alive and in place. The old technologies were supposed to be phased out and replaced by digital technologies.

At the end of the first quarter of 2024, T-Mobile and Verizon together have accumulated 8.6 million customers nationwide on fixed wireless access (FWA) cellular home broadband. This is amazing success for a product that was just launched in 2021. The combined FWA customers represent 7 percent of the entire U.S. broadband market. Nobody knows exactly where the companies are finding the new customers because they aren’t telling, and the companies losing customers are mum about it. The appeal of FWA is obvious.

A recent Harris-Guardian poll shows that the public’s perception of the economy is different than economic reality. Most things that the majority of Americans believe about the economy are wrong. I have to say this surprised me more than it probably should have. 

It is becoming clear that the broadband market is reaching maturity. This is already causing havoc in the industry for internet service providers that relied on year-over-year customer growth to prop up stock prices. New Street Research, a company that specializes in research in the telecommunications and technology sectors, said that it estimated that new broadband customers would grow by about 1 million this year. That’s roughly equal to the number of new households expected to be created during the year.

Cable companies often make it sound like DOCSIS 4.0 is right around the corner.