AT&T will increase its investment in fiber this year and focus on filling in areas where the company already has fiber to a neighborhood but hasn’t yet expanded to fiber to the home. It will also focus on buildings where it might have dedicated access to one customer but can fairly easily add new customers in the building at a lower cost. AT&T believes it benefits from fiber deployments in three ways:
While cellphones, and now modern smartphones, have brought new ways to access information to more people than ever, there are still many left behind. Martin Cooper, who led the team at Motorola and is credited as the father of the cellphone, estimates that 40% of the students in this country don't have access to broadband wireless. "Just imagine what that means over the long term," he said.
DISH Network announced its plans to acquire Republic Wireless, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service operating on the T-Mobile network. Upon close, DISH will assume approximately 200,000 customer relationships, the Republic Wireless brand, and other supporting assets. Once acquired by DISH, Republic customers will not see any immediate changes to their experience or plans, and there is no need for customers to take action.
Despite years of effort and billions of dollars, many parts of rural America remain stubbornly unconnected to robust broadband networks, because unlike dense urban and suburban markets, widely dispersed populations in rural areas simply cannot be served profitably with conventional technologies. Thankfully, broadband likely will be included in a legislative package that aims to significantly upgrade America’s infrastructure.
A Federal Communications Commission notice published in the Federal Register announced the reestablishment of four computer matching programs the FCC and Universal Service Administrative Company will conduct with Missouri’s Department of Social Services, North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services, and Tennessee’s Department of Human Services. The purpose of these particular matching programs is to verify Lifeline eligibility by establishing that applicants or subscribers in Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee are
You might think Washington state director of broadband Russ Elliott would be pleased about private companies winning $223 million in federal subsidies to expand broadband in rural WA. Instead, Elliott is frustrated. He’s under direction from WA’s Legislature to bring the entire state up to superfast internet speeds by 2028. Yet in Dec, the federal government announced plans to award hundreds of millions of dollars to companies Elliott is afraid won't meet the state’s standards. For Elliott, the awards to private-sector companies such as SpaceX and CenturyLink pose another problem as well.
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