Telecommunication

The company Ooma has been around for about 20 years, offering its voice-over-IP and unified communications as a service phone technologies, but now Ooma has come up with a product that lets residential Starlink broadband subscribers add voice to their Starlink service. Ooma’ StarDial is targeted to Starlink internet users in rural, remote or off-grid locations who may want to also tap their satellite broadband service for voice.

Spectate or participate. Those are the options on the table for operators as the AI revolution rolls on, Alianza CEO Brian Beutler argued. And the choice could mean the difference between hitching up to a growth engine or being left behind as a dumb pipe—again. Alianza recently unveiled Crux, a new orchestration platform designed to enable operators to tap into the AI voice market.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Managing Director (OMD) announced that the proposed universal service contribution factor for the fourth quarter of 2026 will be 0.42 or 42.0 percent. The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB), in consultation with the OMD, instructs the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to apply $69 million in unused funds to offset the Schools and Libraries program demand and $56 million in unused funds to offset the Rural Health Care program demand.

Comcast has sparked a plan to transform its cost structure and the overall business in a way that will save billions of dollars and enable Comcast to redirect those funds toward growth initiatives, CFO Jason Armstrong revealed at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. "We embarked earlier this month on the largest cost transformation in the company's history. This will be billions of dollars in costs," he said. "I frame it [as] more of a transformation. It's not a budget exercise.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the September Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 30, 2026:

AT&T and Verizon (and now the newly purchased Frontier) have continued with their big push to shut down copper networks. There are good reasons to finally walk away from this obsolete technology. Copper networks are largely far past the end of economic life and are rotting on the poles. Vandalism is rampant since the price of copper is making it attractive for people to rip down copper for the resale value. A large majority of customers who have a good alternative have fled the copper networks, so there are fewer people each year on the remaining copper networks. 

We are continuing the Federal Communications Commission's push for more builds, more spectrum, and more out of our public safety and consumer protection rules. First up—permitting reform. For too long, outdated and unnecessary environmental rules have slowed America’s builders down. This has left communities stuck and waiting on the wrong side of the digital divide. That is why we will be voting this month on an order that overhauls the FCC’s approach to NEPA. Second, we are making way for more spectrum that can be used for faster broadband from space.

The General Services Administration is responsible for ensuring that federal agencies have access to telecommunications services. GSA recently managed 221 agencies’ transitions from expired telecommunications contracts to the replacement contract. This transition was delayed by over 3 years, and agencies had to extend their old contracts to try to avoid service disruptions.

A new "consensus-driven roadmap" on the future of the Universal Service Fund argues that universal service should be understood as an ongoing responsibility, not a goal to achieve, and offers six principles for Universal Service Fund reform.

Telecom providers and cable companies are ditching areas where they no longer want to serve customers. Nebraska Technology and Telecommunications just filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to discontinue all its voice and data services in the states of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The discontinuance will affect approximately 3,756 customers.