Doug Dawson

USTelecom has a press release about the same time every year that claims that broadband prices are dropping. The claim this year is that the ‘real price’ for the most popular broadband services dropped 8.7 percent in 2025 and that the price for gigabit service dropped 6.2 percent. USTelecom claims that broadband prices have dropped 43 percent since 2015, while the price for everything else, using the Overall Consumer Price Index, rose 35.8 percent in the same time period.

It’s clear that federal funding for digital inclusion activities is dead. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the White House killed the funding for the Digital Equity Act, and it’s looking increasingly certain that NTIA is going to kill most or all of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program non-deployment funds. These two sources of funding were going to be used to get a lot of computers and devices into the hands of people who need them and train millions of people to better use broadband.

The big cellular carriers are devoting a huge amount of network resources to fixed-wireless access (FWA) while reaping only small financial benefits. FWA use may already account for more than half of the traffic on the Verizon cellular network while only accounting for 3% of Verizon’s revenues. FWA makes up only 6% of T-Mobile’s revenues. The difference in monthly data usage between cell customers and home broadband customers is immense. CTIA, the association for cellular carriers, recently reported that the average cell customer uses 17.2 gigabytes of data per month on cellular networks.

KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispel recently said that “There are reasons to believe that cable is permanently impaired.” By that, he believes that cable companies are going to continue to lose broadband customers as they compete with fiber and fixed wireless access. The problem that cable companies are experiencing stems largely from the time when they enjoyed a near-monopoly status in broadband markets across the country, when their only real competition was DSL provided over copper wires.

For many years, Cisco issued reports that regularly reported that the demand for speed was growing at roughly 21% per year for residential broadband, and a little faster for business broadband. Cisco and others noted that the demand for broadband speeds was on a relatively straight line back to the early 1980s. I can’t think of any fundamental industry changes that would change the historical growth rate in the near future.

ACA Connects, an industry group that represents midsize cable companies and fiber overbuilders, recently asked the Federal Communications Commission to issue regulations to streamline permitting and the acquisition of rights-of-way.  The ACA Connects comments were filed in response to the open Notice of Inquiry that asks for comments that can eliminate barriers to wireline deployments. The ACA Connects comments ask the FCC to investigate and regulate three issues.

We have several sets of broadband priorities at odds with each other in the country. The federal government is on a big push to move all transactions with the government to digital. The government is also clearly supporting an AI revolution where AI is supposed to revolutionize the way we work and live. According to federal government rhetoric, we are a little bit ahead of the Chinese in terms of AI development, and politicians seem to support the idea of doing whatever is needed to make sure that the U.S. wins the AI race.

There is no question that this has turned into one of the oddest years for broadband during my career. We’ve seen Digital Equity grants killed. We’re seeing the spending for BEAD being cut in half. And maybe oddest of all, we’re seeing States make sizeable Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment grant awards to Kuiper, although the company isn’t close to having its first broadband customer. For the last month, I’ve been perplexed by the magnitude of the BEAD awards being made to Kuiper.

The City Assembly of Toyoake, Japan, a city with 68,000 residents, recently introduced a rule limiting the use of digital devices to two hours per day outside of work and school. The idea was introduced by mayor Masafumi Kouki. He’s grown concerned that residents, particularly children, have become addicted to digital devices. The new law has no penalties for exceeding the 2-hour limit, and the government will not be tracking cellphone and tablet usage.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration Assistant Secretary Arielle Roth recently made a speech at the Hudson Institute that outlined her policy positions related to reshaping the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. The changes to BEAD were initiated by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and are now being finalized and implemented by Assistant Secretary Roth.