Joan Engebretson

Internet service provider EarthLink has joined a growing number of companies offering fixed wireless service. The company’s offering, dubbed EarthLink Wireless Home Internet, uses LTE or 5G for connectivity to the internet and can support up to 64 devices, in comparison with 10 devices for a mobile hotspot. A typical household has 11 connected devices, EarthLink notes on its website.

T-Mobile plans to make its Ultra Capacity 5G service available to 100 million more Americans in 2022, and as the company’s President of Technology Neville Ray told investors, it will have to expand its geographic coverage five-fold to achieve that goal, reaching many rural areas. Ultra Capacity 5G is the name that T-Mobile uses for 5G deployed in mid-band spectrum, which is widely viewed as supporting the optimum mixture of range and speed.

After years of broadband subscriber losses, larger telecom companies are poised to see subscriber gains in the 2023 to 2024 time frame, according to researchers at investment bank Cowen. This will occur as the telecom companies complete “record-setting” fiber broadband deployments. But the cable companies’ broadband market share will decline only slightly, from 60 percent today to 58 percent in 2027, the researchers argue. Meanwhile, the size of the broadband market will increase.

ViaSat sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the Commission not to approve any Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) funding for ViaSat’s satellite broadband competitor SpaceX. SpaceX is in the process of deploying thousands of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide broadband service with lower latency in comparison with the geostationary satellite broadband service that ViaSat offers. SpaceX was one of the biggest winners in the RDOF auction and was tentatively awarded $885 million to cover some of the costs of providing broadband to unserved rural areas.

Bluebird Networks is bringing internet exchanges to its midwest roots, adding capability to its smaller market footprint and helping to avoid more congested larger markets. The company said it is now operating internet exchanges in two of its data centers. The exchanges are in Bettendorf, Iowa, and in Springfield, Missouri. Both exchanges have about 30 internet providers signed on to exchange traffic, and 10 more providers are in the process of connecting to the Bettendorf exchange.

WeLink, a service provider founded in 2018, has rolled out fixed wireless service offering symmetrical speeds up to a gigabit per second in metro Las Vegas (NV) and Phoenix (AZ). WeLink founder and CEO Kevin Ross said the company plans to be in a total of 10 major metros in the next 18 to 24 months. The company will use 5G millimeter wave technology and 60 GHz wireless technology that it developed, according to Ross. The latter frequency will be used for backhaul and access. Ross also noted that the access equipment uses a mesh approach.

Private wireless networks are poised to play an important role on the nation’s farms, potentially creating opportunities for rural network operators. A deal between computing provider Trilogy Networks and Inland Cellular aims to provide farm-wide coverage and address connectivity as an obstacle to the adoption of precision agriculture. It calls for Inland Cellular to offer private wireless to farms in its service area in the northwestern US to blanket the farm with wireless coverage.

In the latest round of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund awards, the Federal Communications Commission said it is ready to authorize funding for Windstream and 11 other companies. Windstream winning bids fill more than 60 of the 80 total pages that comprise the list. The FCC said it is ready to authorize Windstream winning bids in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio. LTD Broadband is not among them and the company got some bad RDOF news from the FCC.

According to advocates of the Convergence Apocalypse theory, telecommunications companies’ increasingly ambitious fiber deployments pose a big threat to major cable companies at the same time that cable companies’ increasing success in offering mobile service poses a big threat to the major telcos. Both threats are real, researchers argue, but they don’t see the threats as symmetrical. Instead, they see cable companies having the advantage. MoffettNathanson offers several data points to illustrate the threat that telco fiber deployments pose to cable companies.

The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) has sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states asking them to ignore a prohibition against using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) broadband funding for fixed wireless deployments. The prohibition is included in the interim rules issued by the US Treasury for $350 billion in ARPA funding directed to state and local governments.