Light Reading

A contentious battle over spectrum between the US Commerce Department and the US Department of Defense (DoD) may have finally come to an end.

The Federal Communications Commission announced new rules governing commercial operations in 3.5GHz CBRS that will expand unencumbered services in the band to an additional 72 million people across more than a dozen states. At issue are the Dynamic Protection Area (DPA) neighborhoods along coastlines and around federal facilities throughout the country.

As part of its ongoing strategic review, Crown Castle said it will cut between 3,000 and 5,000 small cell nodes out of its 2024 construction plans. The company also announced it will cut 10 percent of its workforce. Crown Castle's move casts yet another shadow over the small cell industry in general.

Much as it is in North America, Europe's wireline future is tied to fiber. However, widely deployed hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks will continue to live on and support customers for years to come. Fiber is clearly the fastest-growing access technology in Europe.

Millions of new fixed wireless access (FWA) customers at Verizon and T-Mobile haven't affected the performance of the operators' respective 5G networks, according to new findings from network-monitoring company Opensignal. "Despite adding more than eight million 5G FWA subs using 400+ GB per month of data since Q1 2021,

In the world of rural broadband, all eyes are on the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program as individual states continue to assemble their plans. NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association CEO Shirley Bloomfield believes that BEAD has interesting potential for her members, while acknowledging that there are some wrinkles that need to be ironed out.

Amid slowing broadband subscriber growth, service providers are exploring ways to drive up overall revenues alongside average revenues per user with new services and applications. Some operators are pursuing that with premium whole-home Wi-Fi offerings, low-latency gaming tiers and home security or bundling in streaming services that take advantage of the high data speeds. Support of such strategies and initiatives is of growing importance at the Broadband Forum, an organization that works with standards that support the end-to-end broadband ecosystem.