Competition/Antitrust

President Biden's transformative push to expand internet service by treating broadband more like a public utility is on a collision course with laws in 17 states. And, the potential conflict is raising questions about whether his administration is willing to use federal infrastructure dollars to twist the arms of mostly Republican-run states to change laws they have on the books restricting municipal broadband projects.

WideOpenWest (WOW!) unveiled plans to invest $215 million in capital expenditures this year, including $80 million in expansion efforts, and named Orange County (FL) as its second greenfield target market. CEO Teresa Elder said the company expects to spend $40 million over the next two to three years to build fiber to more than 40,000 homes in Orange County. The project is the second greenfield market the company has announced in the state. It named Seminole County (FL) as its first target earlier in February, outlining plans to reach 60,000 locations there.

T-Mobile struck out again in its effort to claim America’s most reliable 5G network after an unsuccessful appeal to an advertising industry review board. T-Mobile said it will follow recommendations from the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) to stop all express and implied claims of having the most reliable 5G network based on data from network testing company umlaut.

Using terms like “predatory” and “anti-competitive,” four retail wireless dealers filed suit against T-Mobile in recent weeks, all saying they were basically run out of business since the operator's merger with Sprint. Absolute Wireless, Maycom, Solutions Center and Wireless Express each named T-Mobile in their complaints. All of them previously sold wireless services for Sprint.

Frontier stuck to a promise to roll out its first multi-gigabit service tier in Q1 of 2022, debuting a 2-gig internet offer that is available across its entire fiber footprint. The company plans to make the new service tier available to all of the new locations it builds to as its plan to expand to 10 million locations by the end of 2025 unfolds. The new plan is priced at $149.99 per month.

TDS Telecom added 35,000 new fiber-enabled locations in the fourth quarter of 2021, bringing its total fiber-enabled addresses to 400,000 at year-end. That is up significantly from the 20,000 new fiber locations the company added in the third quarter. The company added 86,000 new fiber addresses in 2021, which is lower than its target of adding 150,000 new addresses in the year. However, TDS Telecom SVP and CFO Vicki Villacrez warned investors that the company would miss that target because of permitting problems and contractor delays.

UScellular lost more postpaid customers in the fourth quarter of 2021 – about 12,000 – on top of the 8,000 it lost in the third quarter of 2021. “We have to continue to do better,” said UScellular President and CEO Laurent Therivel. But the company's share of gross adds was quite strong in 2021, particularly in the fourth quarter. “It’s really a churn story,” Therivel said. “The churn dynamic is going to be affected by the upgrade promotions.

Free Press called on the Federal Communications Commission to reinvent its Universal Service Fund (USF) policies so that millions more people can afford the costs of connectivity in the United States. Free Press urged the FCC and Congress to redraft policies crafted in the late 1990s, and last overhauled more than a decade ago, to reflect the sector’s many changes. Free Press wrote, “the good intentions that fueled that effort are no longer a reliable blueprint in a fundamentally changed marketplace.

With a 4-0 vote, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules banning revenue-sharing agreements for internet service providers (ISPs) and multi-tenant environments (MTEs), requiring disclosure of exclusive marketing arrangements and closing loopholes around indoor cable wiring regulations. The FCC has banned revenue-sharing agreements that it says inhibit competition.

INCOMPAS is pressing the Federal Communications Commission to make the smart, transparent and expedient choice to save the Universal Service Fund. By evolving USF to include contributions from broadband internet access service providers, which the FCC could do immediately without an act of Congress, INCOMPAS says low-income families, schools and rural hospitals would all benefit from this renewed commitment to ongoing affordability solutions. INCOMPAS warns that the USF program is spiraling toward disaster, with contribution levels set to rise to nearly 40%.