A recent Politico article quoted a National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) spokesperson as saying that the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program was intended to be completed on a 10-year cycle. This is the first time I’ve heard that BEAD was intended to be a 10-year plan. States will be making BEAD awards starting sometime in 2025. A state can’t make a grant award until they find an internet service provider to serve every unserved and underserved location and also gotten NTIA approval for the full pile of awards. I don’t expect more than perhaps a few token customers to be connected to a BEAD-constructed network in 2025. 

And just like that, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted Dish parent company EchoStar’s request for more time to meet 5G buildout requirements in exchange for accelerated deployments in certain markets and other commitments. The approval appears to have come in near record time as the FCC typically isn’t known for quick decision-making, to put it mildly. EchoStar submitted its request to the FCC on September 17 and the application was granted by September 20. The approval basically means EchoStar’s construction milestones for four spectrum blocks (AWS-4, lower 700 MHz E, 600 MHz and AWS H) will extend to December 14, 2026, instead of the previous deadline of June 14, 2025. 

Building on his calls for school districts to restrict the use of smartphones on school campuses, Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed Assembly Bill 3216, the Phone-Free School Act, to require every school district, charter school, and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026. Authored by Assemblymembers Josh Hoover, David Alvarez, Josh Lowenthal, and Al Muratsuchi, the bipartisan legislation will support the mental health, academic success, and social well-being of California’s students. The development of the policies will involve significant stakeholder participation to ensure they are responsive to the unique needs and desires of the local students, parents and educators and must allow students to use their phones in the case of an emergency, or in response to a perceived threat of danger, or as allowed by a teacher, administrator, doctor or the student’s individualized education program. 

There are more than 400 small fiber providers in the U.S. that are ripe for picking by investors or larger fiber companies when the "inevitable" major fiber consolidation wave occurs, according to the consulting firm AlixPartners. The firm conducted a survey in August of 60 executives at different fiber companies in the telecom space. According to the survey, 93 percent of respondents said consolidation is happening or will happen soon. Partner and managing director Andrej Danis said that there are about 900 privately owned small fiber providers in the US. He said that realistically there are about 400-500 fiber companies available for the picking, because some of the 900 “will never reach critical mass.”