Jeff Baumgartner

Comcast has been pressing ahead with Project Genesis, a widescale hybrid fiber/coax network upgrade that will pave the way to DOCSIS 4.0, symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds and lower latencies. At the SCTE TechExpo in Washington, DC, Comcast's Elad Nafshi shared some updated stats on those upgrades, details about an emerging AI edge offering, and some thoughts about a quantum computing trial underway with a pair of partners. Virtualization is a centerpiece of the initiative.

US telephone companies of varied shapes and sizes will be retiring portions of their copper networks in the years to come. However, none are currently attacking copper phase-outs like AT&T. AT&T's initiative is simply much more massive in size and scope. As announced in 2024, AT&T is on a mission to shut down power-hungry and broadly inefficient copper-based services across the bulk of its US footprint by the end of 2029. AT&T is making progress. The Federal Communications Commission recently approved AT&T to discontinue legacy services in about 10% of its footprint.

The Federal Communications Commission is once again being asked to tread carefully around the shared CBRS band and the 6GHz band as the agency embarks on a mandate to free up and auction 800MHz of spectrum in the coming years via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The Starlink satellite broadband service remains largely relegated to rural areas and does not yet represent a major, direct competitor to wireline broadband service providers and fixed wireless access offerings in urban areas. But Starlink's expanding presence at retail sites—along with some recent price cuts—indicates the company isn't content for the service to be limited as a niche offering.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is already a big fan of SpaceX's proposed deal to acquire a swath of spectrum from Charlie Ergen's EchoStar to underpin an advanced direct-to-device offering. The deal "is a potential gamechanger for the American consumer—it promises to light up new spectrum and bring new sources of competition to the wireless and connectivity market.

Major US cable operators have been adamant that they'll return to broadband subscriber growth over time, but have been careful to avoid precise predictions on when the tide will turn. And for good reason. They remain under pressure from fiber and fixed wireless access competition, which is further amplified by a slowdown in residential relocation and new home construction.

EchoStar's path as the nation's fourth facilities-based wireless carrier is vanishing after the struggling Colorado-based company agreed to sell a swath of low-band and mid-band spectrum to AT&T for a tidy sum of $23 billion. However, it's not immediately clear if the agreement will fully satisfy the Federal Communications Commission's investigation into EchoStar's federa

AT&T CEO John Stankey shed a bit more light on how quickly his company will be able to deploy the spectrum it's poised to acquire from EchoStar for $23 billion.

Charter Communications continues to manage its way through broadband subscriber losses linked to the demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program in 2024.

In comments that should be comforting to ears in the cable industry, Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez stressed that the agency should continue to pursue sharing arrangements amid the FCC's mandate to free up and auction 800MHz of spectrum in the coming years. And that goes for the CBRS band—shared spectrum that Comcast, Charter Communications, Mediacom Communications, and Cox Communications are using to either offload mobile traffic in high-density areas or for fixed wireless access services.