Network management

New York City is shutting down NYC Mesh, a community-run low-cost broadband network that provided affordable internet access to underserved areas. The network relied on a decentralized model where users helped expand it.

City officials in Syracuse (NY) have formally approved a new project to provide heavily discounted wireless broadband to low-income city residents. The plan is being made possible courtesy of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), $123 million of which has been doled out to Syracuse city leaders for various urban improvement efforts. After issuing a request for proposals (RFP) in 2022, Syracuse officials say they’ve selected Community Broadband Networks FLX to help build the fledgling, city-owned network.

Charter Communications came out on top in the latest advertising claim challenge lodged by AT&T. In its response to a challenge plaint from AT&T, the National Advertising Division (NAD) announced that Charter substantiated its "most consistent download speeds" claim for its Spectrum-branded broadband service. AT&T used an expedited challenge process, dubbed Fast-Track SWIFT, to bring this "single-issue" ad case to the NAD.

Telecom carriers and analysts have been talking about lower capital expenditures (capex) for 2023, so it’s no surprise that Dell'Oro Group released a report citing a decline in worldwide telecom spending in 2023. Dell'Oro states that the decline is going to continue for a while.

Some questions about T-Mobile’s Home Internet service remain unanswered, including the cause of a deceleration of subscribers from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2022. However, the analysts at MoffettNathanson took a stab at examining that and other issues related to fixed wireless access (FWA) in a new report. The report is an update of one from a year ago in which MoffetNathanson worked with Opensignal, formerly Comlinkdata, to analyze where FWA subscribers are coming from. Not a lot has changed from a year ago; Opensignal’s estimates of T-Mobile’s FWA subscriber mix show sign

EnerTribe, a Native American and woman-owned consulting firm specializing in telecommunications and infrastructure projects, and Tarana, manufacturer of the Gigabit 1 (G1) broadband platform, the first of its kind in next-generation fixed wireless access (ngFWA), announced their partnership to enable the rapid deployment of reliable, high-speed internet in tribal communities across the US. EnerTribe serves as a resource for operators, value-added resellers, and other organizations that provide essential services to tribal residents, governments, and enterprises.

Several states have already announced that there will be multiple rounds of Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program grant applications. This makes a lot of sense for states that will be receiving a significant amount of BEAD funding.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission recently ordered a series of public hearings to investigate the quality of service on the CenturyLink copper networks. The hearings were prompted by a complaint filed by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The complaint listed the failures of CenturyLink to meet state service standards due to the deterioration of the copper network. CWA also noted that CenturyLink is planning to eliminate half of the remaining technicians who work on copper.

The hardest question I get asked by counties and cities is how to know if they can trust an ISP to fulfill its promises. I suggest a series of questions that makes them dig deeper into the real nature of a given ISP and why they want the local funding.

Many cable companies boast about having more fiber than coax in their outside plant, and according to recent research from Omdia, those numbers are expected to dramatically increase over the next decade. “Forty-three percent of MSOs have already deployed PON in their networks,” said Jaimie Lenderman, Principal Analyst and Research Manager at Omdia covering the Broadband Access Intelligence Service. “It’s split between the largest and smallest providers. Middle-sized organizations are expected to deploy PON in the next 12 to 24 months or longer.”