Masha Abarinova

With the “fiber wars” underway, cable’s got some catching up to do to ensure it’s not left in the dust with network deployments. Air Wireless, a newly formed company made up of former Comcast, Liberty Global and Vodafone execs, claims it has the solution with its proprietary wireless DOCSIS platform. The technology is “more or less” like fixed wireless access, said Air Wireless CRO Alex Salamon, as it uses radio frequencies to send internet signals.

If the data center is the brain powering artificial intelligence (AI), dark fiber is the central nervous system. So it makes sense that companies are spending big on such a critical piece of the puzzle. Almost $200 billion in capex last year went toward AI, according to DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi, and it’s not just data centers using that chunk of cash. DigitalBridge has a hand in various digital infrastructure baskets, such as fiber, enterprise and edge data centers, towers and small cells.

Render Networks is itching to get in on the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) action, especially as deployment costs are going up. The company is hearing concern from state broadband offices that “there’s a real possibility that some of these firms could walk away from money because they just don’t see a way to actually execute against the constraints and still meet all the cost conditions.” Render’s bread-and-butter is a digital construction management platform that aims to automate many of the manual construction processes that go into broadband deployments.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released long-awaited draft guidance on the use of non-fiber technologies for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, with unlicensed wireless spectrum and satellite broadband entering the funding fray.

What if you could deliver a connection that's as fast as fiber broadband but without the hassle and cost that comes with actually building fiber? Transcelestial, a Singapore-based startup, has a device that uses laser beams to transmit data between two end points, without the need for underground fiber infrastructure. The company's CENTAURI device, which comes in flavors of 10G and 25G, can “stabilize these laser beams over large distances” while taking into account various weather conditions. That ability caught the eye of a major operator.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband offering touts an edge in service reliability over its cable counterparts, despite most of its customers residing in rural areas. Recon Analytics found Starlink customers experience fewer service outages than cable customers, though they still face more outages than consumers on a fiber broadband connection. Unsurprisingly, the majority of Starlink customers (85%) reside in rural areas.

Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program money may be enough to connect most folks to 100/20 Mbps, but those speeds likely won’t cut it by the end of the decade, said Connect Humanity’s Brian Vo. We’ve heard from the White House that the BEAD Program will help connect everyone in the country to reliable and affordable high-speed internet by 2030.

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is often thought of as a way to connect remote areas where fiber can’t do the job. But the technology also has a place in the big city, as nonprofit DigitalC has shown. DigitalC kicked off in January an 18-month plan to construct a citywide FWA network in Cleveland.

We hear a lot of talk from the broadband industry about how there’s a labor shortage. But there’s not so much a labor shortage as there is “a shortage of good jobs,” according to Ceilidh Gao, senior research associate at Communication Workers of America (CWA). Wages “have gone down in recent decades” and the jobs are “less safe than they used to be,” she said.

When it comes to cable earnings, the outlook hasn’t been exactly optimistic. Cable broadband “may decline for the foreseeable future,” Wolfe Research recently predicted, as valuation multiples for Charter and Comcast “near all-time lows.” Charter and Comcast lost 149,000 and 120,000 broadband subscribers, respectively, in the second quarter.