broadband

A federal appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of the way the FCC hands out billions of dollars in subsidies for broadband and other advanced communications services.

Amazon has designed three satellite broadband user terminals and will start offering Internet service in 2024, the company announced Tuesday. The standard terminal, designed for residential and small business customers, is expected to cost Amazon less than $400 to make; Amazon did not say what it will charge customers for the terminals or for monthly service plans.

The FCC has paved the way for Amazon’s satellite-delivered broadband company, Project Kuiper, and its constellation of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. On the same day the House Communications Subcommittee held a hearing on satellite communications tech, the FCC’s International Bureau approved the orbital debris mitigation plan of Kuiper Systems as well as its license modification, which will allow the company to begin deploying birds and ultimately deliver high-speed broadband connectivity.

Florida awarded more than $144 million for broadband projects across 41 counties there, with Comcast scoring nearly a third of the money doled out from the state’s Broadband Opportunity Program. However, Charter Communications and Cox Communications also emerged as big winners. Comcast came away with a total of $45.2 million for 23 different projects, making it the largest grant winner by a wide margin.

Most customers will see their bills go up by $3, including those on promotional contracts.

Craig Moffett says bearish investors are concerned about broadband capex, but overlooking wireless.

The FCC has released its first draft of a new broadband availability map meant to more accurately represent broadband coverage as the Biden administration pushes tens of billions of dollars toward its universal broadband pledge.

Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Security & Privacy Institute has come up with what it says is a better and more consumer-friendly broadband service label after the FCC sought help in coming up with the right information for its own template. The FCC has been contemplating such a label for several years and came out with a voluntary version in 2016.

The Federal Communications Commission has authorized almost $800 million dollars more in rural subsidies from its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to six broadband providers reaching some 350,000 locations in 19 states.

Comcast and Charter, the two largest U.S. cable companies, have a broadband growth problem. As tens of millions of Americans canceled their cable TV subscriptions in the past decade, the cable industry focused on the more profitable business of selling broadband internet.
Now, the number of U.S. households paying Comcast and Charter for high-speed Internet is falling for the first time, with both companies reporting residential broadband declines in the second quarter.

Mix a skinny version of the traditional bundle with a few choice streaming services, add some cloud-based video gaming, deliver it all through a super-fast broadband connection and voila, you have a possible revival of what was the most lucrative entertainment sector of the past few decades.

With pay-TV losses likely to continue, wireless has rapidly emerged as the primary pairing with home broadband at Comcast. “You’re really seeing it become the lead bundle, having the connectivity bundle with broadband together with wireless,” Comcast CFO Mike Cavanagh said Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference.

Wells Fargo’s Eric Luebchow and Steven Cahall predict cable broadband market share could be halved in five years.

The trade group’s new president will focus on piloting independent broadband providers in a rapidly changing market climate.

The FCC, Department of Agriculture, National Telecommunications & Information Administration (all of which oversee broadband subsidy programs) and the Treasury Department have signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing to share “information about and collaborate regarding the collection and reporting of certain data and metrics relating to broadband deployment.” They have also agreed to, to the degree possible, develop “consistent, complementary, uniform formats, standard, protocols and reporting processes for that data.

Twenty internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to low-income Americans. The $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress last year included $14.2 billion funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides $30 monthly subsidies ($75 in tribal areas) on internet service for millions of lower-income households.

The FCC has issued its “Equity Action Plan,” which it said was “pursuant to the president’s executive order on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government.” The plan is primarily an outline of efforts already underway through a variety of legislative funding initiatives tied to COVID-19 and infrastructure upgrades, all of which have implications for closing the digital equity divide.

The FCC has unanimously voted to close what it says are loopholes that have allowed broadband providers to evade rules meant to give tenants in Multi-Tenant Environments (MTEs) — such as apartments, condos or mobile homes — choice among internet services.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration, the lead agency overseeing the Biden Administration’s tens of billions of dollars in new broadband subsidy aid authorized by the infrastructure bill, is seeking public input on just how to hand it out, primarily to states for their own broadband buildout efforts. NTIA, the White House’s chief communications policy adviser, has issued a request for comment, is distributing about $48 billion of the new law’s roughly $65 billion.

President Joe Biden has named former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu to oversee the administration’s massive infrastructure plan, including the $65 billion investment in broadband. Landrieu will be senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator, directing historic investments in universal high-speed internet access, as well as money for roads, bridges, rail, ports, airports, climate “resilience” and more.

Barbourville (Ky.) Utilities moves to a broadband video model. It is not signing up any new cable customers, but will help any current customers who want to keep traditional video service through a deal with Dish, while pointing broadband subscribers to all the over-the-top video streaming service choices available through their broadband connections.

Comcast has established a successful 10 Gbps network-to-modem connection using virtualized CMTS and the full duplex version of the new DOCSIS 4.0 standard, the cable company announced Thursday from the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers‘ once-again-virtualized Cable-Tec Expo conference.

The FCC has authorized more than $163 million to 42 providers in the second round of phase one of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund broadband buildouts. The second round will cover approximately 65,000 locations in 21 states. “More help is on the way to households without broadband,” said FCC Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.

Comcast stock fell Tuesday after its chief financial officer signaled a third-quarter slowdown in broadband subscriber growth, which had been a bright spot during the shift to work-from-home amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As of Monday, over 350,000 cable subscribers were without service in the path of Hurricane Ida, with 338,115 of those in Louisiana, where the category four storm made landfall with sustained winds of 150 mph. On the broadcast side, two TV stations reported being out of service, WGNO and WNOL, both in New Orleans.

In a victory for local broadcasters, the FCC has decided not to make them shoulder some of the costs of the FCC’s congressional mandate to collect better data on broadband, but, for now, won’t make Big Tech pay an FCC user fee for the benefit that tech companies receive from unlicensed spectrum or FCC-administered broadband subsidies.

Those who take 1 gig or higher now account for 10.5% of the market, OpenVault says.

The White House led off an infrastructure promotion fact sheet distributed to the media Thursday (July 8) with the impact of a bipartisan framework on high-speed internet, particularly in rural and tribal areas, and President Joe Biden’s pledge to get broadband into every home. The Biden administration also doubled down on its definition of availability as including speed and price.

Less than a month after it basically severed the last arm of its previous content-centric future strategy, AT&T Communications CEO Jeff McElfresh said the phone giant has “historically been complicated. It’s hard to understand AT&T’s future. Well, maybe I can clear it up here. We intend to be the nation’s premier broadband connectivity provider, period.”

Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wants broadcasters to promote their over-the-top (broadband) competition, but in a good cause. In an OTT video speech to the National Association of Broadcasters virtual State Leadership Conference this week, Rosenworcel praised broadcasters as vital first informers, including providing key help for small businesses, encouraging vaccinations, and other pandemic-related help, then hit them up for a public interest favor.