Telecommunication

The $65 billion allocated to improve broadband internet access in the infrastructure law President Biden signed November 15 should make broadband more accessible and affordable for lower-income households across the US, including the 13 percent of Tennessee households that lack any broadband connections to the internet. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently praised Chattanooga (TN)'s city-owned utility, EPB, for pioneering the first citywide Gig internet service as part of its fiber-optic network built more than a decade ago to create a smarter and more versatile electric grid.

Despite its central role in Antarctic research, the McMurdo Station is lacking something most scientists working at 21st-century laboratories take for granted: high-speed internet. McMurdo sits on the only continent that doesn’t have a high-speed fiber optic cable connection to the rest of the world. In early 2021, the National Science Foundation began seriously exploring the possibility of building a fiber optic cable that would travel along the seafloor from Antarctica to neighboring New Zealand or Australia.

Many rural areas across the US lack access to high-speed, affordable internet largely because installing the infrastructure isn't worth the investment for internet service providers to take on. The unprecedented amount of federal funding for broadband included in the recently signed infrastructure law aims to fix the digital divide in a different way than the government has tried before. It will put money into the hands of communities that may know how to best address the issue.

US cable operators are increasingly threatened by the vast sums of money being plowed into fiber overbuilders, but cable industry legend John Malone believes that multiple-system operators (MSOs) such as Charter Communications are well-prepared to handle the hazards of more capable competition. Malone, whose Liberty Broadband unit holds 26 percent of Charter and owns Alaska's GCI, remains upbeat about Charter's prospects in the face of new and emerging competition from fiber overbuilders. "I believe they can defend their territory quite effectively," Malone said.

Towns in Maine are considering municipal-run networks that would reach residents who lack broadband access. At a recent Leeds (ME) town meeting, residents debated the creation of a town-run broadband network paid for through a $2.2 million bond. The Leeds broadband proposal sought a slice of the federal funds that have been flowing into the state since last year by leveraging a commitment from voters to borrow money to extend high-speed fiber to households who can’t get it, or that were unwilling to pay the thousands of dollars Spectrum, the only local provider, would charge them.

As millions more federal dollars flow to Mississippi for expanding broadband internet access, large cable and telecom companies and rural electric cooperatives are already sparring over the money. During two days of state Senate Energy Committee hearings, officials from both sides laid out their cases for how they could best provide more rural high-speed internet access.

Diversified broadband provider Cable One is on a path to launch 10 Gbps service. The company said it has already made gigabit service available to 99 percent of its footprint across 24 states, first offering it back in 2016. Cable One is actively upgrading its network to facilitate DOCSIS 4.0, which is the cable industry’s answer to the proliferation of fiber broadband from primarily telco competitors.

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill recently signed by President Biden aims to help alleviate the problem by setting aside $65 billion for investment in broadband. According to Kathryn de Wit, project director for the Broadband Access Initiative at the Pew Charitable Trusts, the package is a "significant down payment" in getting underserved households connected — in part because it also leant on the Federal Communications Commission to better determine exactly who lacked high-speed internet access.

The digital divide facing tribal communities is stark and has remained pronounced despite the best efforts of advocacy groups and tribes themselves to help Indigenous people get online.

A new report from Kagan, the media research unit of S&P Global, shows that broadband subscriber growth has "cooled significantly in the third quarter" of 2021, stalling in growth for the first time in three years. The decline can be attributed to "a difficult comparison with the booming gains of 2020," the report says. Cable providers Comcast and Charter Communications both had fewer internet net adds in the third quarter of 2021 compared to 2020. For the third quarter, Comcast reported 300,000 net adds in broadband customers.