Sean Buckley

Georgia’s Covington Town Center Makes Fiber Connectivity a Community Thread

Covington Town Center, a $350 million development in Covington, east of Atlanta (GA), is the latest example of The Foxfield Company's (areal estate development firm) focus when it considers building a new master-planned community. Harry Kitchen, Jr., president of The Foxfield Company, has a philosophy to attract partners that offer premier amenities for residents and businesses. “We [try] to put in the horizontal infrastructure that provides the best-in-class broadband, fiber, and other technology as well as landscaping, walking trails, and connectivity.” After careful consideration, Foxfie

Sterling Ranch, Lumen Make Fiber Broadband Part of 21st Century Living

Sterling Ranch, a master-planned community in Douglas County (CO), has made fiber-based broadband the centerpiece amenity of its community. It is achieving its broadband goals through a partnership with Lumen Technologies and Lumiere Fiber, a network integrator. By expanding its relationship with Lumen, Sterling Ranch, the first all-gigabit community in Colorado, will offer its residents 8 Gbps symmetrical fiber-based internet services.

A2D Sets Path to Bring Digital Equity to Georgia’s Clayton County

Georgia’s Clayton County, a growing community that includes Hartsfield Airport, has been ignored by large providers that have not upgraded their broadband facilities to support higher speeds necessary for remote work and learning. This leaves many residents, many of whom are low- or middle-income, with slow-speed DSL or cable connections. The lack of broadband facilities is just one problem for the county.

Challenging the Broadband Status Quo

In 2023, broadband spending could taper off because of high-interest rates and economic challenges, but buildout expansions remain high. A few factors are driving this. Demand for household internet keeps growing. Leichtman Research Group (LRG) found that 90 percent of US households now get internet service, up from 84 percent in 2017.

Bulk Internet Services Take Hold in Multifamily Broadband

Multifamily property owners want to make broadband an amenity available to residents as part of their rental agreements. They’re working hard to enter into bulk service agreements with service providers. Commonplace for cable television, these deals are between a homeowners association or condominium association and a company to deliver internet services to everyone who is a community member. Bulk internet services provide several benefits for multifamily owners/operators and residents:

Closing Baltimore’s Digital Broadband Divide: Hollins House

The Hollins Market neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, is a desirable place to live and work. It takes its name from Hollins Market, the oldest public market building still in use in Baltimore, which is in the heart of the neighborhood. Hollins Market is also the location of Hollins House, a high-rise apartment building that houses seniors and people with disabilities. Most Hollins House residents qualify for Section 8 public housing vouchers, which help people with low incomes rent homes on the private market. A large number of residents are refugees or military veterans.

Dos Palos-Oro Loma, California, School District Bridges Homework Gap

Located in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, Dos Palos (CA) is halfway between San Jose and Fresno. It’s a remote community, which created challenges for the Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District (DPOL) when it needed to implement distance learning plans during the pandemic. Paoze Lee, the district’s technology systems director, said it was obvious that the district could provide wireless and broadband coverage only to about 50 percent of its students via commercial wireless operators. “As we tried to bridge the digital divide, we wanted to fill in the gaps,” Lee says.

Sterling, Massachusetts, is a community controlling its broadband destiny

Sterling, a town of about 8,000 in Worcester County (MA), has become another example of a community controlling its broadband destiny. The Sterling Municipal Light Department (SMLD) is building the Local Area Municipal Broadband (LAMB) network, which will bring fiber-based internet to Sterling’s residents and businesses. Set to be fully completed in the fourth quarter of 2024, SMLD will proactively notify residents as construction begins in their neighborhoods.

New York State regional planning board syncs up with local providers to deploy fiber broadband

Southern Tier 8 Regional Board, a multifaceted planning and development agency in New York state, sees broadband as an opportunity to improve the economic situation of the rural communities it serves. Jennifer Gregory, executive director of Southern Tier 8, recently announced Project Connect, an initiative to connect the agency’s entire eight-county region to high-speed broadband.

Fort Collins, Colorado, Lights Up Community-Owned Broadband Utility

In Fort Collins (CO), Connexion broadband service broke ground in early 2019, but the desire to equip the city with service dates back more than a decade. Broadband discussions have been incorporated into Fort Collins' strategic plans since 2014. The city's plans now include broadband as a specific strategic objective: “Encourage the development of reliable, high-speed internet services throughout the community.” After years of thoughtful planning and community feedback, Fort Collins began building a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network in February 2019.

Telephone Companies Escalate Pressure on Cable with Ongoing FTTH Builds

Telephone companies (telcos) may still be trailing cable operators in the broadband race, but their continuous fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) builds could help narrow the subscriber divide. As more customers want higher speeds, this group is moving to deploy fiber to the home (FTTH) across select markets as their traditional DSL and POTS voice base dwindles. This is being driven on two sides: Tier-1 telcos and Tier-2 telcos. The big three--AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen—are Tier-1 telcos that are all seeing growth in fiber-based broadband.

Verizon snags 92K thousand more Fios broadband subscribers in Q2

Verizon’s Fios business continued to flourish in the second quarter as its broadband subscriber base rose again. During the quarter, Verizon added 92,000 Consumer Fios Internet customers. Total Fios revenues were up 5.4 percent year-over-year, driven by continued broadband subscriber growth. It ended the quarter with a total of 6.4 million Fios subscribers. Consumer Fios revenues of $2.9 billion in second-quarter 2021 were the highest since the company's new operating structure was introduced in 2019.

Saddleback Communications’ Fiber Network Serves as Blueprint for Advancing Tribal Broadband

The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC) in the greater Phoenix (AZ) area comprises two Native American tribes: the Onk Okimel O’odham (Pima) and the Xalychidom Piipaash (Maricopa). Like many Native American communities, it has limited broadband and telecom options. But Saddleback Communications, a provider of fiber-based voice and data communications to business and residential customers, recently completed a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) deployment, enabling internet access up to 500 Mbps to all homes in the community.

Blue Ridge Mountain EMC Transforms Broadband Have-Nots Into Broadband Haves

Electric cooperatives have given hope to the rural broadband market, and Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Corporation (BRMEMC), in the broadband industry for more than 17 years, has earned the right to call itself a pioneer in that emerging space. Several electric co-ops in the Southeast have contacted BRMEMC for advice about how to deploy a broadband network. BRMEMC, founded in 1938, is a member-owned electric cooperative headquartered in Young Harris, Georgia, serving more than 53,000 member-customers.

Verizon Targets New York State’s Rural Communities with FTTH

Verizon is breathing new life into its rural New York state markets, launching plans to make Fios fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service available in parts of Coogan, Schenectady and Washington (NY) counties. Upon completion of the network in the next two years, Verizon will offer fiber-to-the-home services to about 15,000 rural NY premises. This deployment of FTTH broadband service was made possible through the company's partnership with NY state and the Federal Communications Commission through the New NY Broadband Program.

Is the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee falling apart?

The Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) was dealt yet another blow when New York City CTO Miguel Gamiño Jr. resigned from the committee's Model Code for Municipalities Working Group, raising questions whether the BDAC is going to survive much longer. Gamiño said in a letter sent to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai that the BDAC process has favored the interests of large service providers over the communities involved in crafting next-gen broadband strategies.  His departure comes at what has been a trying time for the BDAC.

Verizon asks FCC to accelerate Philadelphia copper retirement to accommodate new bridge construction

Verizon has asked the Federal Communications Commission to accelerate its request to retire some of its copper facilities in Southern Philadelphia (PA) due to two bridge replacements being conducted by Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). In its request to the FCC, Verizon said that SEPTA and PennDOT planned to replace two bridges in Philadelphia: the Allens Lane Bridge in Verizon’s Chestnut Hill, wire center and the Woodland Avenue Bridge in its Saratoga wire center.

Yomura says it can help struggling municipal fiber broadband providers

Yomura, a UK-based wholesale fiber services provider for Europe and North America service providers, sees an opportunity to help struggling US municipal broadband providers. “In some cases, there are municipalities that have built a network and they are hemorrhaging,” said Owen Stephens, marketing director for Yomura.

Verizon says FCC should adopt speed measurement methodology before CAF auction begins

Verizon says that as it mulls its involvement in the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming $2 billion Connect America Fund auction this July, the regulator needs to provide more guidance on how it will determine whether a CAF-supported service meets speed requirements.  In an FCC filing, Verizon said that potential bidders need to know two main elements:  how the FCC will measure speed and whether the tested service is compliant, i.e., the statistical standards that the speed measurements will be required to meet.

Verizon, CWA settle New York copper network dispute, agree on repairs, improvements

Verizon and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have reached a settlement requiring the telco to repair and make improvements to its copper network infrastructure throughout New York state. Under the terms of the agreement, the service provider agreed to repair 54 central offices across the state; replace bad cable, defective equipment and faulty backup batteries; and take down 64,000 double telephone poles.

From AT&T to Cable One: Who has the highest data caps in wireline, wireless and cable?

In this report, we consider which carriers have implemented data caps and how large those caps are. Each provider is ranked by the size of the data cap they offer and the charge they incur for exceeding it. Service provider groups that have no caps are ranked according to company size.

Slower spending by AT&T, Level 3/CenturyLink results in lower North American optical capex, says analyst

AT&T and CenturyLink have cut back or delayed big purchases of next-generation optical gear. The slower spending trends at these two carriers combined with weak cloud and colocation capital expenditure spending by other providers drove what Cignal AI says is a weaker-than-expected North American optical capex situation. “Anemic cloud and colo optical capex—combined with brutal 200G pricing, weak deployments by incumbent and wholesale vendors, and a decline in long-haul WDM purchases—resulted in lower overall spending during 2017,” said Andrew Schmitt, lead analyst for Cignal AI.

President Trump’s new infrastructure plan allocates $50B to rural area investments, eases small cell deployments

President Donald Trump issued a new $1.5 trillion infrastructure package that his administration claims will help drive rural broadband and ease permitting processes for wireless operators installing small cell infrastructure. Under the plan, $50 billion would be made available to the Rural Infrastructure Program for capital investments in rural infrastructure investments. Out of the $50 billion figure, 80 percent of the funds under the Rural Infrastructure Program would be provided to the governor of each State via formula distribution.

AT&T forced to migrate copper to fiber in areas of fire-ravaged California

AT&T is going to replace copper wiring in parts of its California market damaged by fires due to drought conditions and high winds with fiber facilities. Major damage to public facilities was caused five counties of Northern California: Napa, Solano, Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino due to the result of 21 reported fires. AT&T filed an application for emergency authorization under Section 214(a) of the Communications Act and Section 63.63 of the Federal Communications Commission’s rules to suspend AT&T’s interstate telecommunications services until services can be rebuilt.