Fierce

Ciena is well known in the telecommunications space as an optical transport vendor, but when the company saw all the money becoming available from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, it wanted to get in on that action. About two years ago, the company made the decision to get into the fiber access business to homes and businesses. Recently Ciena CEO Gary Smith said that investments in fiber broadband access, fueled by "massive public funding around the world," are projected to grow the 10G and above PON market by a 55% CAGR to approximately $7 billion by 2027.

We hear a lot of talk from the broadband industry about how there’s a labor shortage. But there’s not so much a labor shortage as there is “a shortage of good jobs,” according to Ceilidh Gao, senior research associate at Communication Workers of America (CWA). Wages “have gone down in recent decades” and the jobs are “less safe than they used to be,” she said.

Middle-mile may have become more important than ever in terms of fiber networks because all the last-mile networks that will be built for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program need to connect to something. But honing-in on a precise definition of middle-mile is a challenge even for industry insiders. Joe Pellegrini, president and COO with Great Plains Communications, said, “It’s an end-to-end system with real estate, points of presence….

Phenomenal cosmic power—that’s what it’ll take to support the data center demand of the future thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and its required compute power. There’s only one problem, according to Brian Janous, cofounder of data center siting startup Cloverleaf Infrastructure: not many folks in the industry have a good understanding of the challenges and limitations energy utility companies face when it comes to powering data centers.

Chances looked pretty good that a class action suit would be filed after T-Mobile said the “price lock guarantee” that many customers thought they had signed up for wasn’t actually a lifetime guarantee. Indeed, four named plaintiffs filed a complaint in U.S.

Alan Davidson, Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said that the agency is going to put out a guidelines document in a couple of weeks that will outline the use of alternate technologies in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) projects.  NTIA stated from the beginning that fiber is its preferred technology for BEAD projects. But in cases where that isn’t economical, other technologies such as licensed wireless or coaxial cable may be approved for BEAD funds.

Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPS) are making moves to either invest in their own fiber network or share an open access network because they see fiber as an opportunity to grow. Mike Wendy, communications director with the trade group Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) said that anecdotally he’d estimate about 30% of WISPA members are doing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH). One WISP that is doing both fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) is Cajun Broadband in Louisiana, a small provider with about 2,000 subscribers.