Fierce

MCC Iowa, which is a subsidiary of Mediacom Communications, has filed a lawsuit against the City of West Des Moines and its city council. MCC's petition of declaratory judgment alleges the West Des Moines City Council improperly used taxpayer-based financing bonds that were intended for urban blight and poverty projects to build a $50 million city-wide conduit network for exclusive use by Google Fiber. Filed in Iowa District Court for Polk County, the petition outlined seven specific violations of the law and requested that West Des Moines suspend activities related to the conduit network.

Engineers at Facebook Connectivity have been quietly working for the past two and a half years on a solution to economically provide coverage in rural areas, and what they’ve come up with is SuperCell, an alternative to macrocell sites. In a nutshell, they’re using taller towers and high-gain, narrow-sectored antennas to increase mobile data coverage range and capacity.

Verizon has bold ambitions to have its 5G Ultra Wideband enabled in 60 cities by the end of 2020, but to do that it needs more fiber in those urban areas. Verizon CTO Kyle Malady said the company was aggressively adding fiber in those urban areas through its One Fiber program. Through One Fiber, Verizon is adding 5G nodes on its fiber across the 60 cities where it is deploying the 5G Ultra Wideband service. Verizon's One Fiber project, which has been ongoing for several years, combined all of the comglomerate's fiber needs and planning into one project.