Fierce

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.

As with every U.S. election in recent memory, 2024’s is turning out to be a bit of a rollercoaster ride. We took a dive into how a Trump Federal Communications Commission (FCC) might look and act different from a Harris FCC, and what issues each might run into. 

When it comes to cable earnings, the outlook hasn’t been exactly optimistic. Cable broadband “may decline for the foreseeable future,” Wolfe Research recently predicted, as valuation multiples for Charter and Comcast “near all-time lows.” Charter and Comcast lost 149,000 and 120,000 broadband subscribers, respectively, in the second quarter.

To hear well-known Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett tell it, Verizon spent a mind-boggling $52 billion on C-band spectrum which “isn’t very good” and fixing its 5G coverage problem is going to require even more money—“lots of money.” That was one of the hottest and most publicized take-aways from Verizon’s Q2 earnings call. While Moffett described Verizon’s overall wireless Q2 results as “fair,” the gist of his report focused on “Verizon’s C-band problem,” one that he said will take a whole lot of densification to rectify.

We're in the thick of the process to distribute $42.5 billion of government funds to companies that will ultimately win Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) funds. Carol Mattey, a former deputy bureau chief with the Federal Communications Commission who now works as a broadband consultant said a handful of states, that are early in the game, are allowing pre-qualification applications for BEAD grants. Some of the states doing this include Missouri,