Doug Dawson

I want to take on the phrase ‘technology-neutral’. This phrase is being used to justify building technologies that are clearly not as good as fiber. The phrase was used a lot to justify allowing Starlink into the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants is that the funding is intended to make sure that everybody gets broadband. There is one section of the grant rules that talk about how the funding can be used to serve areas as small as a single home:

The Federal Communications Commission recently opened a docket, at the prompting of federal legislation, that asks for examples of digital discrimination. The big cable companies and telecoms are all going to swear they don’t discriminate against anybody for any reason, and every argument they make will be pure bosh. If people decide to respond to this FCC docket, we’ll see more evidence of discrimination based on income. We might even get some smoking gun evidence that some of the discrimination comes from corporate bias based on race and other factors.

A lot of smaller broadband providers are currently expanding their service footprints. They are often using grant funding to add more service areas and customers, while others are expanding using the more traditional route of borrowing to build new networks. But not all small providers are expanding, or are only expanding in small increments. The reasons why they aren't expanding:

• Fear of Being Able to Compete
• Fear of New Debt
• Staff Can’t Handle Change
• Reluctance to Change Habits
• Lack of Creativity/Innovation

Around the country, there are now elaborate alert systems in areas subject to tornados and other dangerous weather events.

Lumen is taking a different path forward than the other big telephone companies. The company announced a major upgrade to its long-haul fiber routes that cross the country. The company’s main fiber strategy is to beef up the intercity network with plans to add six million miles of fiber to existing fiber routes by 2026. The existing Lumen long-haul fiber network came to the company in two acquisitions. The original network came when CenturyLink bought US West, which had earlier merged with Qwest, a major builder of long-haul networks.

The old definition of a broadband passing is quickly growing obsolete and the Federal Communications Commission's mapping effort is missing the way that America really uses broadband today. After a decade of talking about the inadequate FCC broadband maps, we finally decided to throw money at the issue and devise new maps. But in the decade it took to move forward, we’ve developed multiple non-traditional uses for broadband, a trend that is likely to expand.

The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) recently issued its 2021 Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT). The goal of the CGA is to highlight and reduce damages done to all utilities when working underground. Here are the current trends discussed in the DIRT report:

In a recent article, Joe Madden wrote an article looking at the various wireless technologies he has used at his home in rural central California. Over time he subscribed to a fixed wireless network using Wi-Fi spectrum, cellular LTE broadband, Starlink, and a fixed wireless provider using CBRS spectrum. Madden was able to analyze his broadband performance in ways that are not easily understood by the average subscriber.

I understand why folks are confused about the Federal Communications Commission's maps, because there are several major mapping timelines and issues progressing at the same time. The first issue is the FCC mapping fabric. The FCC recently encouraged state and local governments and internet service providers (ISP) to file bulk challenges to the fabric by June 30. The first mapping fabric issued in June 2022 was largely a disaster.