Ownership

The US Copyright Office is undertaking a study of the copyright law and policy issues raised by generative AI and is assessing whether legislative or regulatory steps are warranted. The Office will use the record it assembles to advise Congress; inform its regulatory work; and offer information and resources to the public, courts, and other government entities considering these issues. The notice of inquiry (NOI) seeks factual information and views on a number of copyright issues raised by recent advances in generative AI.

Wall Street is churning out billions of dollars in complex bonds to bankroll construction of broadband fiber-optic networks, part of a nationwide push to widen high-speed internet access. Telecommunications companies have already sold more than triple the number of so-called fiber bonds they borrowed in all of 2022.

Nextlink Internet has acquired Echo Wireless, marking an expansion into Indiana. Echo Wireless has been providing Internet connections to rural communities in Knox, Davies, and Lawrence Counties (IN) since 2007. Echo employees will continue their employment with Nextlink, in Vincennes, and they will now help support other Nextlink customers across twelve states.

Dish Network isn’t the only entity eyeing T-Mobile’s 800 MHz spectrum. Someone else who’s intimately affiliated with the spectrum is showing an interest, and it’s not one of the big wireless carriers. Burns & McDonnell (B&M), a large engineering and consulting firm, is seeking permission to participate in the court proceeding where Dish is asking for more time to buy T-Mobile’s 800 MHz spectrum licenses, according to a research note by New Street Research (NSR). Dish filed for an extension with the US District Court for the District of Columbia earlier in August, 2023.

Great Plains Communications is one of a growing number of tier 2 and 3 providers with long-term roots that has been acquired by an investment firm, a move that has helped the company expand rapidly.

In July 2023, wireless and broadband provider Vistabeam acquired Airbits, which served the towns of Estes Park and Pole Hill, which are in Colorado’s Front Range area. Vistabeam also established a digital empowerment Center in Yuma, Colorado. The move into Colorado’s Front Range area is a sign that fixed wireless access (FWA) technology is maturing. The acquisition includes 25 towers. Vistabeam’s footprint is 40,000 square miles and covers more than 100 towns in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

Dish Network wants to buy 800 MHz licenses from T-Mobile, but it doesn’t have $3.5 billion on hand to finance the purchase, so it’s asking the US government to give it 10 more months to come up with the capital. In a filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Dish argues that turmoil in global capital markets in the past few years have made Dish’s ability to buy the licenses more onerous than anticipated. Dish figures that 10 months is enough time to raise additional capital and obtain financing, in part because its just-announced 

In a deal involving Ohio service providers, NKTelco has acquired Hometown Cable. The deal includes more than 6,000 addresses in and around the communities of Coldwater, St. Henry and Montezuma, as well as fixed wireless access assets serving Mercer, Auglaize, Miami and Darke counties. Former Hometown Cable customers will be supported by NKTelco’s fiber ring, which offers status monitoring and continuity services. They also will have access to the Flight Data packages and multi-gigabit broadband, NKTelco says.

The latest battle between free and expensive information started with a charitable gesture. Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive, a venerable tech nonprofit. In that miserable, frightening first month of the Covid pandemic, he had the notion to try to help students, researchers and general readers.

Lumos Fiber successfully signed a $1.1 billion sustainability-linked infrastructure financing to fund its ambitious fiber roll-out plans and refinance existing indebtedness. This represents the first ever project finance style fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure financing in the US for an existing and integrated FTTH platform, and the first US FTTH sustainability-linked financing structure.