Masha Abarinova

Wondering how the broadband equipment market is doing? Not great, according to Dell’Oro Group. In first quarter 2024, global revenue for the broadband access equipment market dropped 12 percent year-over-year to $4.1 billion, as spending in the market reached a two-year low. What’s the deal? Dell’Oro VP Jeff Heynen said that in some cases, operators are still working through excess inventory they built up in late 2022.

No surprise, consumers generally want flexible internet plans. Here’s a company that’s deconstructing the typical billing scheme. Althea is a startup that’s come up with a decentralized internet service that aims to remove the "manual pieces of friction at the last mile” so that rural areas get better access to broadband. The Althea platform is comprised of two core things, CEO Deborah Simpier explained. First, it’s a machine-to-machine payment.

Some broadband operators view fixed wireless access (FWA) as a looming, competitive threat.

In May 2024, Frontier posted positive quarterly revenue for the first time in nearly a decade. But maybe that’s not so surprising, given fiber has become its golden goose. Frontier Executive Chairman John Stratton recently reiterated the company’s year-end goal of building 1.3 million fiber passings.

Can cable get its groove back? It’s a common question as operators wade their way through a sea of fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) competition. Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts talked about where the company stands in the broadband space and how it sees itself. Roberts described Comcast as “more of a consumer innovation and technology driven company.” Analyst Craig Moffett asked Roberts to delve into the elephant in the room – broadband.

The cable industry hasn’t been doing too great with keeping broadband subscribers, and Charter is no different. CEO Chris Winfrey’s take on the situation?

Zayo Group’s North American and European businesses are breaking up. But rest assured, the separation is nothing if not amicable. The company announced plans to make Zayo Europe, which operates a long-haul fiber network across eight countries, a standalone company.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has said 2024 will be “the year of execution” for Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD). But the agency still has a ways to go in approving initial proposals for each state and territory. Louisiana was the first to get its plan approved in December.

Earth Day is here, and Fierce Network is celebrating by looking into how telcos are approaching their sustainability agendas. Fierce reached out to several internet service providers (ISPs) to ask how they're making their businesses more environmentally friendly. For companies Fierce didn't hear from, it took a look at their recent environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports to check their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Scope 1 emissions are a company's direct emissions from owned or controlled sources.

With the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) on the line, internet service providers (ISPs) want to ensure their low-income subscribers don’t lose internet access—and that nobody falls through the cracks. Identity verification company SheerID has launched a tool allowing telcos to verify that households are eligible for government assistance programs.