Telecommunication

Co-chair of the Senate Next Generation 9-1-1 Caucus Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) announced a bill to create a $10 billion federal grant program for upgrades to the US's 911 centers (S.2754). Expanding 911 to accept more kinds of digital data would add more resiliency to a system that's still built around a copper-based telephone network. A next-generation 911 would allow the nation's 6,000 911 centers to accept texts, videos and photos.

Fiber Minnesota merged with two other fiber transport carriers – Broadband Visions (BBV) and SM Broadband (SMB) – to create what it says is one of the state’s largest transport networks. The new entity will operate under the Fiber Minnesota brand. It will have a backbone of 3,900 route miles, which is 60 percent more than the network had before the move. The newly constituted company will reach “nearly all corners of the state,” including rural areas that often are left behind, with redundant connectivity.

Comcast Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh reported that subscriber additions for Comcast’s cable business—which consists of the Xfinity-branded broadband, pay-TV, landline and mobile phone units—slowed at the end of August 2021, and lags behind the same period in 2019 before the pandemic. Cable peers, such as Charter Communications, Altice USA and Cable One, also experienced stock share-price selloffs. During the height of stay-at-home pandemic orders at the beginning of 2020, companies such as Comcast and Charter added record numbers of broadband customers as people

Billions in federal funding have been made available to expand broadband access since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) CEO Claude Aiken argued some of that money is being wasted on wireline rollouts in areas already covered by fixed wireless access service.

Charter Communications brushed off the idea that it should be concerned about increased competition from fiber overbuilders, insisting the company has the network and marketing capabilities necessary to stay ahead of the game. CFO Chris Winfrey noted such competitive activity is “not new.

As public safety leaders and longtime citizens of cities directly impacted on September 11, 2001, frontline workers’ responses deeply affected us.

The arrival of new space ventures like Starlink and OneWeb is bringing about a disruption of sorts in the telecommunications sector, specifically the broadband internet market. That’s because the International Telecommunication Union estimates that just over half of the world’s total population has access to the internet.

Speedtest by Ookla analyzed how much internet speeds have increased over the past four years, and which countries have seen some of the largest gains. Major findings include:

Research indicates that people living in rural areas struggle to obtain broadband connections mainly because of the low density of housing. Fewer people living in a community, especially over large swaths of land, translates into higher costs to build and maintain the most common broadband technologies. This white paper on the rural broadband industry was researched and written by Doug Dawson, President of CCG Consulting, a telecommunications consulting firm that works with rural communities and providers.

Just as nations were beginning to invest significant capital in broadband infrastructure developments, COVID-19 crippled the Caribbean. The pandemic highlighted the need for critical infrastructure and connectivity around the globe, but especially for island nations. The effort to provide adequate broadband gained some traction in 2021 as some Caribbean nations restarted economic development plans that include telecommunications infrastructure rollouts from years before 2020. In these plans, fixed broadband leads growth, mostly supported by the expansion of fiber optic networks.