Recently, a wireless company published a study about the cost to reach all the Unserved and Underserved. They estimated we need $307 billion to reach everyone. Generally, they make a case that the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will run out of money, so the federal government should settle for wireless technology. However, we have almost enough money to reach all the Unserved and Underserved, except for states that are particularly high-cost. Estimating how far the money will go does not require advanced math. We need an average cost to reach a location and the total number of locations. There are 12.8 million Unserved and Underserved locations nationally. Instead of using the FCC data, the wireless study estimates this number from Census data, then adds 10% assuming growth from challenges to arrive at 16 million locations. There’s an important practical takeaway from all this: a public cost curve for every state is critical. If states don’t have the cost curve data and the ability to run a grant program that optimizes on it, BEAD will run out of funding for sure, and it doesn’t matter whose numbers we use for an estimation now.

A $10 million project to bring broadband to rural areas of Lancaster County (NE) is underway, thanks to federal stimulus dollars earmarked by Lancaster County commissioners for the project. The project will install 175 miles of conduit throughout Lancaster County to and between the 12 incorporated cities and villages, and 10 unincorporated communities, according to county officials. Once that's done, telecommunications companies will lease the conduit from the county to install fiber technology to bring services to residents and businesses. In January 2022, the County Board committed $10 million of its federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars to expand broadband infrastructure in rural Lancaster County — a need the pandemic highlighted nationwide. The county got $62 million and the city $46 million from the ARPA— a $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package. The city and county worked together to allocate the money for a variety of programs, and the County Board prioritized the broadband project based on input from the community.

Broadband partnerships have emerged as an attractive option for deployment in many areas of the country. However, in order to be successful in developing a mutually beneficial Network Operating Agreement (NOA), the parties should keep the big-picture goals of the project in mind throughout the negotiations. A successful NOA will typically address the following ten core issues:

1. Will the Network Operator Construct the Network and/or New Facilities?;
2. What is the Relationship Between the Parties?;
3. Will the Network Operator Obtain a Dark Fiber IRU or Lease?;
4. Securing Right-of-Way and Pole Attachment Authorizations;
5. Network Performance and Maintenance Requirements;
6. Compensation and Revenue Sharing;
7. Regulatory Compliance;
8. Term; Dispute Resolution; Default; Termination;
9. Insurance; Liability; Performance Bonds; and
10. Force Majeure

Speed tests have barely changed in nearly two decades, even though the way we use the Internet has changed a lot. With so many more people on the Internet, the gaps between speed tests and the user’s experience of network quality are growing. The problem is so important that the Internet’s standards organization is paying attention, too. From a high level, there are three grand network test challenges:

1. Finding ways to efficiently and accurately measure network quality, and convey to end-users if and how the quality affects their experience.
2. When a problem is found, figure out where the problem exists, be it the wireless connection, or one of many cables and machines that make up the Internet.
3. Understanding a single user’s test results in the context of their neighbors’, or archiving the results to, for example, compare neighborhoods or know if the network is getting better or worse.

Cloudflare is excited to announce a new Aggregated Internet Measurement (AIM) initiative to help address all three challenges. AIM is a new and open format for displaying Internet quality in a way that makes sense to end users of the Internet, around use cases that demand specific types of Internet performance while still retaining all of the network data engineers need to troubleshoot problems on the Internet. We’re excited to partner with Measurement Lab on this project and store all of this data in a publicly available repository that you can access to analyze the data behind the scores you see on your speed test page, whose source code is now open-sourced along with the AIM score calculations.

Amazon’s satellite-powered internet business is closer to getting off the ground. The company recently unveiled the antennas that future subscribers of its Project Kuiper internet service would need to communicate with the satellites it plans to start mass producing in 2023. It isn’t clear when the first of those satellites will be blasted into orbit, but Amazon has said it expects to begin delivering broadband connections for some customers by the end of 2024. Amazon is one of several companies that either are offering or plan to offer high-speed, low-latency internet connections via satellites orbiting relatively close to Earth. They say that kind of performance will distinguish their offerings from other internet services that depend on satellites stationed farther away, where beams cover more of Earth at once but face longer times sending and receiving signals. Still, Project Kuiper and the others will have competition from within the satellite industry, as well as from companies that have built out on-the-ground internet infrastructure. 

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed schools to provide all their students with their own devices, often low-cost Chromebooks. But now, many of these Chromebooks are failing, according to a new report by U.S. PIRG Education Fund entitled “Chromebook Churn.” Doubling the life of just Chromebooks sold in 2020 could cut emissions equivalent to taking 900 thousand cars off the road for a year, more than the number of cars registered in Mississippi. “We can’t afford to stay on the disposability treadmill,” said Lucas Rockett Gutterman, the author of the report and the director of U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s “Designed to Last” campaign. “For the sake of Americans’ wallets and America’s environment, all tech devices should last longer. Google can lead the way by slowing down the ‘Chromebook churn.’” Chromebooks have a built-in “death date,” after which software support ends. Once laptops have “expired,” they don’t receive updates and can’t access secure websites. The report provides recommendations to Google that could double the life of these popular laptops. For example, Google should extend the Automatic Update Expiration (AUE) for all models to 10 years after their launch dates. The company can also push Chromebook manufacturers to produce spare parts and standardize part design to the greatest extent possible.

Verizon Communications reported first-quarter results, highlighted by increased cash flow and the largest number of total broadband net additions in more than a decade. Verizon saw a total broadband net addition of 437,000, reflecting strong demand for fixed wireless and Fios products. This result included 393,000 fixed wireless net additions, an increase from 379,000 fixed wireless net additions in the fourth quarter of 2022. Additionally, there have been 67,000 Fios Internet net additions, an increase from 60,000 Fios Internet net additions in the first quarter of 2022. Total wireless service revenue of $18.9 billion, a 3.0 percent increase year over year. Postpaid phone net losses of 127,000, and retail postpaid net additions of 633,000. Total wireless postpaid phone gross additions increased 5.3 percent year over year, primarily driven by an 11.5 percent year over year growth in Consumer phone gross additions.