Doug Dawson

I noticed an article that said that Optimum was in danger of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. NYSE automatically issues a warning to any stock when the average share price over thirty days is below $1.00. This warning was given to Optimum on August 13, and the company has until February 13, 2027, to get the 30-day average stock price above $1.00 to remain listed on the exchange. The company’s stock has plummeted over the last year. A year ago, the stock was trading at $2.33 per share. Five years ago, the stock traded at more than $28 per share.

Before the Senate paused for recess, it passed a bill introduced by Senator Deb Fisher of Nebraska that would require the Federal Communications Commission to undertake a major review of its broadband mapping system. The bill is labeled the Modernization, Accountability, and Planning for Broadband Funding Act. It’s not hard to understand why there are folks who lobbied Congress to ask the FCC to pay more attention to the maps.

There has been a lot of talk about how AI is putting stress on broadband networks, and many analysts are claiming that we need faster broadband speeds to accommodate growing AI traffic. I was particularly struck by a comment from NTCA – the Rural Broadband Association in a filing at the Federal Communications Commission in the FCC docket looking at Universal Service Fund reform.

There seems to be an increasing chance that the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program is back in play. In a status report filed by the Department of Commerce in the lawsuit where the National Digital Inclusion Alliance filed to reinstate the grant program, the government said it is targeting a December 2026 opening date for applications for the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program. Like everything associated with the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program and the Digital Equity Grant programs, nothing is final until this is put in place.

Regulatory fights between state and federal regulators sometimes get messy, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything as messy as AT&T’s attempt to retire and walk away from copper facilities in California. AT&T asked the California Public Service Commission for the ability to start retiring copper telephone networks in March 2023. It wasn’t an unusual request since AT&T is in the process of retiring copper in every other state where it owns last-mile copper networks. The CPUC finally ruled on that petition in June 2024 and unanimously rejected AT&T’s request.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals recently made a ruling that could end up eliminating one of the biggest rights-of-way issues that slow down fiber construction projects. In the case of CSX Transportation v. Zayo Group, LLC, the court ruled that the easement that CSX owns for its railroad tracks only applies to the surface of the Earth and that the railroad right-of-way does not extend either above or below the tracks.

One of the most interesting positive things that came out of the COVID pandemic was that communities and organizations across the country deployed public WiFi hotspots. This was done at the time to support students and workers who were expected to find a way to work remotely. And this worked well in a lot of places, and I’ve talked to communities who said the public flocked to the free WiFi during the pandemic. There was another benefit of the free hot spots—they created places where people who couldn’t afford broadband suddenly had a place to access the Internet.

In 2025, John Horrigan wrote an article for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society that predicted that as many as 5.6 million households would drop their home broadband connection due to the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill. He based that assessment on the changes that the OBBB will make to federal programs that benefit low-income families. Now that we are halfway through 2026, there are also cost increases hitting households that Horrigan didn’t anticipate.

Today’s blog is a tale of two counties that were successful in attracting broadband grant investments and now want to pivot to making sure that residents are able to take advantage of the newly constructed fiber networks. Both counties are encountering an unexpected roadblock. Both counties that did things the right way. Both counties put a lot of effort into attracting better broadband. They funded major feasibility studies.

In a recent request filed with the FCC, Starlink asked to increase the size of its broadband satellite fleet to 100,000. This coincided with the FCC’s announcement that it wants to ease the process for approving new satellites, so I have to think the idea will sail through. There was one extraordinary statement in this filing that is the topic of today’s blog. SpaceX said it has the goal of handling the majority of the world’s Internet traffic. Elon Musk has always been one for huge hyperbole, so statements like this are not surprising.