Telecommunication

Cherokee County (SC) and Charter Communications have announced a public-private partnership that over the next two years is set to expand high-speed internet access countywide. More significantly this could be a model for expanding rural broadband access across the United States. Initial dollars for the ambitious project will come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), a $20.4 billion fund established by the Federal Communications Commission to bring high speed fixed broadband service to rural homes and small businesses that lack it.

Internet service providers (ISPs) are telling the Federal Communications Commission not to require ISPs to allow broadband subsidy recipients to apply those subsidies to grandfathered plans, arguing that it would be burdensome and confusing, though they also said they should be free to apply the subsidies to select grandfathered plans.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocates $65 billion to support various broadband initiatives. Keller & Heckman previously examined the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (“BEAD”) Program and the $1 Billion Middle Mile Grant Program, each of which focuses on deploying broadband networks to unserved and underserved areas.

The slowdown in cable broadband subscriber additions may be even slower than anticipated after executives at two of the top three publicly traded cable companies -- Comcast and Altice USA -- hinted that customer growth is trending at an even more decelerated pace than expected. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said he expected to end 2021 with 1.3 million additional broadband subscribers.

With a much lighter debt load following a pair of asset sales totaling $1.8 billion in 2021, US broadband provider WideOpenWest (WOW!) set its sights on building greenfield fiber to as many as 400,000 homes by 2027. CFO John Rego said the company will start with an initial goal of building fiber-to-the-home to 200,000 locations by 2025 at an approximate cost of $160 million. If it finds success in its starter markets, he said, WOW!

President and CEO of The Permitting Institute Alex Herrgott laid out a discouraging amount of challenges to the permitting process in order to lay fiber in unserved areas. Herrgott said organizations that embark on a fiber deployment project to unserved areas may have to interact with multiple federal, state and local agencies, none of whom coordinate together, and none of whom are at all concerned about the time-value-of-money for the company that has capital on the line.

After the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the deep broadband divide across the country, lawmakers said the recently passed infrastructure bill will connect many communities that struggled as much of daily life moved online. The newly passed infrastructure bill allocates $65 billion for broadband access, aimed at rural areas, lower-income populations and Tribal communities.

Altice USA is jockeying to secure its fair share of broadband subsidy money as billions in federal funding flows to the states, with CEO Dexter Goei revealing it has already applied for $150 million in support and plans to chase significantly more. Goei said over the next six to 12 months Altice will likely apply for an additional $500 million in funding. Across all the territories contiguous to its coverage areas “we suspect there’s probably a billion of subsidy money to go after if we were to apply for all of the availability,” he added.

On November 15, President Biden signed the historic, bi-partisan infrastructure law, which provides $65 billion in funding for broadband deployment and adoption programs. By far, the most significant new deployment program is the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will oversee and States/Territories will implement by issuing grants to broadband providers. NTCA and ACA Connects have joined to establish the BEAD Program State-by-State Tracking Project.