The FCC recently released its Internet Access Services report for December 31, 2024. The report is generated to provide a mandated update to Congress annually on the state of broadband. The data fo…

Opportunity Zones were created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and provided an opportunity for equity investors to defer and reduce capital gains taxes when they reinvested profits from an existi…

Starlink is in the industry news so often that it feels like I ought to have a recurring blog just for Starlink updates. The company recently made an interesting announcement that should make waves…

I’ve worked with rural counties across the country, and one of most common recurring themes is a hope from elected officials that local ISPs will step up and build fiber and solve the broadband gap…

FierceNetwork recently published a thought-provoking article by Steve Saunders that asks, “is four nines the new five nines?”  That’s a question that only network engineers will understand, but it …

Chris Mitchell, Doug Dawson, and Sean Gonsalves break down the latest telecom mergers, Starlink’s push to reshape BEAD rules, and new research showing how lack of competition drives higher prices for ...

In December, the White House issued a short Presidential Memorandum titled “Winning the 6G Race”. The document states that 6G technology will be “foundational to the national security, foreign poli…

On February 5, the FCC issued a Memorandum and Order related to a pole attachment dispute between Comcast and Appalachian Power Company (APCO). The Order was issued under the authority of section 2…

February 8 is the thirtieth anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The legislation brought sweeping changes to the industry and was the impetus for me to start my consulting company in …

Pew Research Center released the results of a major survey that asked how Americans use the Internet, about smartphone ownership, and about the digital divide. There were over 5,000 completed surve…

The NTIA should be getting close to approving all of the state BEAD initial grant proposals. Once that has been done, one of the last big steps will be for NTIA to announce how States can receive a…

The pandemic exposed a huge weakness in cable company networks when it became clear that their networks did not have enough upload capacity to support people working and schooling from home. That p…

In a short period of time, Starlink has taken three actions that demonstrates the company’s growing market power. The companies market power will be strengthened with the impending merger between S…

This blog covers topics that I found interesting but which don’t warrant an entire blog. Indoor CBRS. Federated Wireless announced a new product and a system that allows cellular carriers to use CB…

We’ve spent a lot of time and money in recent years to get better broadband for rural America. I thought it would be of interest to look at who lives in rural America. The statistics in this blog c…

A partnership has been announced that has the goal of creating a low-latency private Internet for AI traffic. The three partners involved are Moonshot Energy, a manufacturer of electrical and modul…

Bento J Lobo, PH.D, of the University of Chattanooga, authored a report, From Gig City to Quantum City: The Value of Fiber Optic Infrastructure in Hamilton County, TN 2011-2035, that quantifies the…

The Supreme Court has accepted a case that will determine the FCC’s ability to levy fines against the companies it regulates. The lower court cases that brought the issue to the Supreme Court come …

One of the more curious undertakings done by the FCC every year is the Urban Rate Study. This is an exercise undertaken every year to determine the highest monthly broadband rates that can be charg…

Cellular carriers seem to be on a winning streak with federal regulators. In the Big Beautiful Bill last year, cellular carriers were able to insert language in the bill that mandates the FCC to au…

A recent article in Fierce Network quotes AT&T’s CEO John Stankey as saying that he’s not too worried about competition from satellite cellular providers. He said the new technology is be…

NTIA issued new General Terms and Conditions dated November 2025 that include dozens of changes to the BEAD rules for recipients, but also changes that impact state Broadband Offices that have wide…

County Broadband in Norfolk, England, recently lost service to 442 customers over a weekend when rats chewed through fiber and caused an outage during a snowstorm. The ISP battled bad weather condi…

Sensors That Beat Lidar and Radar The Boston startup Tarador has developed a sensor that co-founder Matt Carey says beats the performance of radar and lidar. The sensors are solid-state, meaning no…

Ookla published a WISP Report Card in November that looks at the speed performance of eight large WISPs – Etheric Networks, GeoLinks, NextLink, Resound Networks, Rise Broadband, Starry, Unwired Bro…

Starlink did something new and recently issued an update discussing the recent history and the outlook for the company. Perhaps the company will update this kind of report periodically. Coverage an…

The industry spends a lot of time focusing on potential federal broadband regulation, and bills introduced in Congress get a lot of press. It’s easy to forget that a lot of broadband legislation ha…

There have been a number of articles in the industry press predicting a major shortage of fiber in 2026. Fiber manufacturers have already been working at full capacity due to the large amounts of f…

Charter plans to leverage one of its competitive advantages and offer wireless backup to residential broadband customers. This service would mean an automatic rollover to cellular data any time Cha…

Ookla recently published a report looking at broadband speeds being delivered with FWA cellular broadband offered by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The report includes the chart shown below that …

At the start of a new year, I thought it would be interesting to take a fresh look at the state of the Internet around the world. The following statistics come from the DataReportal Digital 2026 Gl…

There is still some glimmer of hope that states will see some of the BEAD non-deployment funds. I call it a glimmer of hope because the issue is far from settled. In a December 21 online post, Comm…

It’s the time of the year for New Year’s resolutions, and I asked some of my ISP clients if they are carrying unfinished tasks into the new year. Some of my clients laughed and told me that some of…

A friend of mine, Frederick Pilot, recently asked me an interesting question. Is digital literacy that comes from using a smartphone the same as digital literacy from using a computer? It’s a great…

When I first entered the industry in the 70s, Bell Labs held an exalted place in the industry that was responsible for inventing and perfecting the technologies we all used. Bell Labs was founded a…

We’re near the end of the year, and Congress is recessed until the new year. That hasn’t stopped Congress from introducing interesting new bills related to broadband. Any bill introduced in the fir…

Several industry news outlets are reporting on a recent survey from Parks Associated that shows that 19% of homes with broadband have a professionally monitored security system, and another 7% pay …

The largest WiFi network you may have never heard about is eduroam. This is a global WiFi roaming network operated by and for the educational community. The eduroam network is huge and is currently…

In case you haven’t been paying attention, wireless vendors are busy working towards the introduction of 6G starting around 2030. The industry has introduced a new generation of cellular technology…

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently told Congress that he doesn’t believe that the FCC is an independent agency. The FCC went so far as to remove the term independent from its website. The bottom li…

It appears that NTIA missed an important step when it generated the new BEAD rules in June in the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice. That is the document that changed the scoring of BEAD grants from…

Library Grants Reinstated In November, the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island ruled that the Administration had to distribute all of the grants to libraries that had been authorized by Congress. T…

A polycrisis is a situation where multiple distinct problems interact and amplify each other, resulting in a more severe outcome than the sum of the individual crises. The term is being used to des…

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), which is a nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress, recently updated a report titled Low Earth Orbit Satellites: Potential to Address the Broad…

One of the big glaring weaknesses of BEAD was that the enabling legislation and the NTIA rules made it impossible to consider affordability as a criterion of selecting BEAD grant winners. A few sta…

Yesterday, President Trump signed an Executive Order that gives the federal government the sole authority to regulate AI. The EO provides three justifications for asserting federal authority. Unite…

I’ve been thinking about the long-term trajectory for satellite broadband in rural areas. I saw a recent estimate that Starlink has around 2.6 million customers in the U.S. and is still growing. I …

In my recent annual predictions for 2026, I predicted that the FCC or the NTIA would declare that the rural digital divide has been solved since everybody in the country now has access to adequate …

For many years, competing against the bundle referred to anybody who tried to compete against a cable company that offered the triple-play of broadband, cable TV, and telephone. I conducted market …

This is my first-ever list of annual broadband turkey awards, which I’m awarding for the worst industry events of 2025. I’ve never done this before, because there have never been enough negative ev…