Masha Abarinova

States have been chugging away at revising their Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment proposals for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, but the time crunch is gnawing away at broadband office resources. Meghan Sandfoss, Kentucky’s executive director of broadband development, said that the BEAD program’s “curing” process, where NTIA reviews the state plans and requests changes, has a “very aggressive” timeline. “Sometimes it’s like less than 12 hours that we have to resubmit something,” she said. “Sometimes [it’s] a couple of days.

Tarana originally made a name for itself deploying fixed wireless access in the rural U.S. Now, the company sees potential for the technology to reach new heights in more urban environments. The company recently launched G2, the next iteration of its FWA platform that offers 6.4 Gbps per sector (that is, the coverage area served by a base station).

As states continue to submit their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment proposals, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration seems to already be pushing for changes to the plans.

Telecommunications operators talk a lot about the need to build a network that’s resilient to both the expected and the unpredictable. But the meaning of resilience isn’t cut and dry, said Steve Song, senior director of infrastructure mapping and development at the non-profit Internet Society. Instead of trying to create “fail-safe network infrastructure, we’re looking for network infrastructure that’s safe when it fails,” said Song.

Gigapower is prepping for the next step in its open access growth plan. Since AT&T and BlackRock’s joint venture kicked off in May 2023, AT&T has been Gigapower’s first—and only—tenant. But that’s about to change, said Gigapower Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Seidenfaden. Without naming any names, he said, “we are currently engaging with multiple internet service providers to be part of our network in some way.

The road to copper retirement is paved with paperwork, but AT&T seems to be moving along just fine in its quest to shut down its legacy copper network by 2029. AT&T recently secured Federal Communications Commission approval to fully discontinue copper services in about 500 wire centers, or 10 percent of its footprint. The update comes after the FCC got the ball rolling to speed up the copper retirement process for operators.

The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program process is chugging along, as roughly half of the 56 states and territories have now released deployment plans and grant awards. While fiber remains the preferred technology, it’s a cable operator that’s amassed the most funds so far. Comcast came out on top of the other large wireline operators, scoring $745 million to cover approximately 127,000 locations across 25 states, per New Street Research’s analysis. The company plans to use a mix of fiber and hybrid-fiber coax for its BEAD bids.

As competition of all kinds of technologies ramps in the broadband market, policy experts debated about how much speed should matter as a metric for quality service. Foermer Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Reilly argued the industry is overselling the idea that the public needs “some certain minimum level,” like 1-gig. Consumers don’t really care that fiber providers are duking it out with cable, wireless and satellite – they just want the tech to work when they need it to work.

Change is afoot in the U.S. wireless market with EchoStar’s $23 billion spectrum sale to AT&T—a deal that also has implications for cable operators looking to make their mark in wireless.

States are showing fiber is still king in their plans for the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program—much to the dismay of Starlink. Starlink’s parent company SpaceX, which expected the lion’s share of BEAD money once the Trump administration axed the program’s fiber preference, has filed complaints against Louisiana and Virginia for awarding most of their funds to wireline providers. The company urged the states to re-evaluate, or it will ask NTIA to reject their final proposals.