Linda Hardesty

Wind Talker creates mesh wireless networks to extend existing broadband infrastructure

Wind Talker Innovations is a five-year-old startup whose software creates a mesh network out of wireless devices such as smartphones and tablets. Company executives say they don’t want to compete with wireless carriers, but rather they want to extend existing networks and make them more efficient. “The focus point for us is to partner with telcos and ISPs because they do have this infrastructure in place” such as macro towers, small cells and fiber backhaul, says CEO and Co-founder of Wind Talker Matt Perdew.

Small wireless carriers feel squeezed on multiple fronts

Small wireless carriers expressed dissatisfaction and concern about several aspects of their business at the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) Annual Convention. They’re concerned that digital-divide money will all go toward fiber, that Universal Service Funds (USF) are drying up, that their spectrum needs are being ignored, and that they’ve missed the boat on private wireless.

Verizon’s current fiber rollouts are all connected to 5G

When you think of Verizon and fiber, you tend to think of Fios, which is a fiber-based brand in the Northeast US that bundles connectivity, voice and video. But Verizon has other fiber as well, including long-haul routes, and the company is currently deploying lots of fiber as part of its 5G roll-outs. As part of its 5G/fiber rollouts, Verizon is also looking to help close the digital divide. And it sees fixed wireless access (FWA) as a technology to help with that.

Emergency Broadband Benefit still has $2.7 billion out of $3.2 billion available

According to the Federal Communications Commission, of the nearly $3.2 billion in available funds for the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program only $378 million has been allocated so far. That leaves more than $2.7 billion still available to help low-income households get broadband service at a reduced cost, according to the FCC tracker page.

T-Mobile asks the FCC’s permission to keep using unlicensed 600 MHz spectrum

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, T-Mobile wrangled additional 600 MHz spectrum from a number of companies and from unused spectrum held by the Federal Communications Commission to bolster its capacity for Americans during a crisis. On July 27, T-Mobile filed a sixth application with the FCC f

Fiber ecosystem gets stoked about the infrastructure bill

People involved in the deployment of fiber in the United States are getting pretty excited about the potential $65 billion for broadband in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will develop the program to manage and dispense the funding, with consultation from the Federal Communications Commission.

Cox fights municipal private wireless in Tucson

Tucson, Arizona has built a private wireless network to provide broadband to low-income households for free.

T-Mobile sees 2 categories of fixed wireless opportunity

Both T-Mobile and Verizon appear to have excellent timing in regard to their fixed wireless access (FWA) initiatives. They’re advancing FWA right when the US government is poised to spend billions to close the digital divide in America following the pandemic. In terms of the types of communities that are ripe for FWA, T-Mobile is targeting underserved areas of rural America, remote areas with challenging geographies, and lower-income neighborhoods in urban and suburban areas.

Providers dread ‘overbuilding’ to close the digital divide

While the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill could provide as much as $65 billion for new broadband infrastructure in the US to close the digital divide, incumbent telecommunication providers are wary of what they call 'overbuilding.' Roger Timmerman, the executive director of Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) Fiber, said service providers and their lobbyists created the term overbuilding to make new competition sound like a bad thing. “You could describe the same thing as a new competitive offering in the area,” Timmerman said.

Frontier extends fiber past more than 300,000 sites in Texas and Connecticut

Frontier Communications is advancing its fiber deployments in pockets of the US. The company said that as part of the initial phase of its multi-year expansion efforts it’s deploying fiber broadband connections past an additional 280,000 consumers in Connecticut and an additional 24,000 consumers in San Angelo (TX) in 2021. Frontier is positioning its fiber service as an alternative to cable, saying it provides “uploads up to 25X faster than our cable competitors," and plans to double its fiber network to ultimately cover more than 6 million homes and businesses.

Stephen Bye shares Dish's network progress at FCC Open RAN event

Dish Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Bye gave updates on the company's 5G network progress at the Federal Communications Commission Open RAN Solutions Showcase. Bye touted Dish’s operations support system and business support system, which the company has said it is getting from Amazon Web Services.

GCI strikes deal with Intelsat to expand service capacity in rural areas

The Alaskan service provider GCI has struck a $150 million deal with Intelsat to expand capacity for telecommunication services in rural areas. GCI has delivered geosynchronous (GEO) satellite-based connectivity for 35 years to provide data, video and voice services in the state. The new deal not only provides GCI with continued access to C-band and Ku-band capacity, which is already part of GCI's satellite service portfolio, but it also provides new access to statewide Ka-band capacity.

Verizon argues for TracFone purchase to Acting FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel

The Federal Communications Commission is still reviewing Verizon’s proposed purchase of TracFone Wireless from América Móvil. Verizon CEO of the Consumer Group, Ronan Dunne, and TracFone CEO, Eduardo Diaz Corona, met with Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to try and convince her that the transaction is in the public interest. Their main argument is that a combined Verizon/TracFone will introduce a third facilities-based provider in the prepaid segment to compete against T-Mobile’s Metro and AT&T’s Cricket.

WISPA addresses Rural Digital Opportunity Fund award concerns in letter to FCC

The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) sent a letter to Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel yesterday related to its concerns about Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) awards. The FCC has indicated a preference for fiber deployments, which offer the highest broadband speeds as well as symmetrical speeds for both the upstream and downstream.

Charter requests limited Rural Digital Opportunity Fund waiver after finding lots of inaccuracies

Charter Communications filed a waiver request on May 11 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) related to its award in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction. Charter, like all RDOF auction winners, promised to bring broadband to unserved areas.

Frontier plans 495,000 new fiber passings in 2021

Frontier Communications emerged from bankruptcy. The company's new strategy has everything to do with deploying more fiber. Frontier plans to double its fiber network to ultimately pass more than 6 million homes and businesses. In 2021, it plans to extend its fiber to pass 495,000 more locations. It’s already extended the network to pass an additional 100,000 new locations in the first quarter. Frontier’s network, comprised of fiber and copper connections, spans 25 states.

AT&T gives gratis bump-up in fiber speeds

AT&T Fiber is giving its customers a free bump in speeds, boosting its 100 Mbps customers to 300 Mbps, and its 300 Mbps customers to 500 Mbps. AT&T will still offer its 1 gig plan as well, and these customers get HBO Max included. For a number of years fiber has been regarded as too expensive to deploy in most places. But the Covid-19 pandemic is causing a renewed interest. With so many people working and learning from home, they’re clamoring for faster broadband. And they’d like it to provide symmetrical downstream and upstream speeds.

Verizon CTO compares fiber to fixed wireless access

Both Verizon and T-Mobile have been touting fixed wireless access of late as a way to help close the digital divide, take market share from cable companies, and reap new revenues. But the fixed wireless access players are being questioned about the desirability of wireless as compared to fiber. The analysts at Cowen recently hosted Verizon CTO Kyle Malady, who admitted that fixed wireless is not fiber-like. But Verizon also has experience with fiber via its Fios product, which has been in place for eight years.

Facebook lays fiber across the entire state of Indiana

Facebook is laying fiber across the width of Indiana to connect a couple of its own data centers, and it will lease excess capacity on the fiber to telcos or other providers that are interested. Facebook has completed the first phase of the build, laying over 77 miles of fiber to connect the I-70 corridor from the Indiana/Ohio border to downtown Indianapolis. Phase One was 100% funded by Facebook via its wholly-owned subsidiary Middle Mile Infrastructure.

WISPA claps back at fixed-wireless critics in RDOF dispute

The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) doesn’t appreciate all the scorn being heaped on fixed wireless access (FWA) technology, which is coming from some groups that didn’t win as many Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) awards as they had hoped.

The biggest RDOF winner, LTD Broadband, responds to naysayers

LTD Broadband garnered the largest award of any company in the Federal Communications Commission’s recent Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction. As part of its RDOF pledge, LTD will provide broadband in parts of 15 states at speeds of at least 1 Gbps down and 500 Mbps up. And it’s promised to lay fiber when necessary to achieve those gigabit speeds, which may mean it will primarily be laying fiber with its RDOF money. Corey Hauer, CEO of LTD Broadband, said LTD plans to deliver

How can wireless help close the US digital divide?

There are quite a lot of places in the United States where there is no wired or wireless internet connection. The Federal Communications Commission is currently in the first phase of creating more accurate maps to identify these unserved areas. Even if there are macro wireless towers in a rural area, those towers provide service to smartphones.

Communications Workers challenge Verizon’s purchase of Tracfone

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) is taking issue with Verizon’s proposed acquisition of Tracfone. The trade union says Tracfone is one of the largest providers of Lifeline services in the United States, and it fears those services could be jeopardized if Tracfone is acquired by Verizon. CWA also says the prospect of the acquisition raises significant antitrust concerns, which could negatively affect consumer prices and workers’ wages in the wireless industry. Verizon is trying to buy the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Tracfone for $6.9 billion.

Should the FCC oversee open RAN for the sake of national security?

The Federal Communications Commission held a ground-breaking, marathon virtual event Sept 14, hosting numerous stakeholders in the wireless ecosystem to discuss open radio access networks (RANs). The main impetus for the event was to promote open RAN technologies for 5G as an alternative to RAN equipment from the Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE. Currently, the choices for telecom equipment are fairly limited to the big vendors Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Huawei.