Governor Kim Reynolds (R-IA) and the Department of Management’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) announced the results of the OCIO’s Invitation to Qualify (ITQ). Ninety-six Broadband Intervention Zones were identified by Iowa communities across the state from a total of 99 applications. The ITQ process asked communities to propose areas across the State of Iowa that should be prioritized in funding decisions made under the Empower Rural Iowa Broadband Grant Program. In future grant opportunities, providers who apply for Empower Rural Iowa grant funds to construct service within these Broadband Intervention Zones may be eligible to receive enhanced incentives and higher prioritization for funding.

Viasat intends to toss its hat into the ring for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program following the recent launch of a new high-capacity satellite that will enable the company to deliver speeds in excess of 100 Mbps nationwide. Calling the launch of its first ViaSat-3 satellite a "game-changer" for states poised to bring in BEAD dollars, Viasat said it intends to concentrate its push for funding on "Extremely High-Cost" areas that are expensive to reach with fiber. ViaSat-3, a geosynchronous (GEO) satellite packed with about 1 Tbit/s of capacity, was lofted into orbit on the evening of April 30, 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Viasat expects the satellite to complete its journey to its final orbital location (89.9 degrees west longitude) in less than three weeks and begin service to the Americas region in mid-2023. Viasat said the new satellite will enable the company to offer speeds of 100 Mbit/s downstream nationwide, with plans underway to offer speeds up to 150 Mbps in some markets. Some plans for US businesses will offer upload speeds of up to 20 Mbps in some markets. Among the potential concerns with GEO-based satellite broadband architectures are high latencies that don't provide strong support for certain interactive applications such as online gaming.

Legislation aimed at regulating telecommunications operators is in the works and companies should hasten to prepare for what’s to come. A bill introduced to the Senate in March 2023 proposes to do away with “junk fees,” which are financial charges that President Joe Biden denounced in his State of the Union address. These could include early termination fees, which are widely utilized across the industry to recover up-front costs incurred for equipment, installation, and activation. A current draft of the legislation puts the onus on the Federal Communications Commission to establish the specifics. The proposed rules uniformly apply to operators offering voice, broadband, television, and wireless; whether satellite is included is unclear. If enacted, the Junk Fee Prevention Act would prohibit providers from charging a fee or imposing an “excessive or unreasonable” requirement on consumers for terminating a covered service early, but there is room for debate on how to define those terms. Industry associations need to mobilize to help influence language included in the law so that it does not prevent their members from recovering real costs and preserving the value of their investments. It may be useful to present arguments to regulators in a way that also addresses transparency in billing. The challenge for most telecom operators, however, is that early termination fees aren’t “junk.” In most cases, they represent real costs that need to be recouped in order to survive and grow.

[Dan Hays is a principal with PwC and leads the firm’s enterprise strategy consulting practice for the technology, media, and telecommunications sector]

UTOPIA Fiber, an open-access network provider operating in the Western US, disclosed on May 3 that it reaches 55,000 subscribers. The updated count comes after UTOPIA revealed it added more than 20,000-gigabit customers in 2022. UTOPIA executives said the company is continuing to add cities across Utah, Idaho, and Montana, though they didn’t specify the exact locations UTOPIA is targeting in 2023. UTOPIA Executive Director Roger Timmerman added UTOPIA is well-positioned to help cities enhance their networks to handle increasing bandwidth demands. UTOPIA, through its partner broadband providers, offers three service tiers, 250 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10-gig service. CMO Kim McKinley said the operator is seeing more uptake for the 10-gig offering due to an increased number of “10-gig consumer-grade devices” in the market.