Telecommunication

The owner of a New York City barbershop has filed a $20 million class-action lawsuit against Altice, claiming that Altice reneged on its Keep Americans Connected pledge during the pandemic. Artem Shalomayev, owner of 3715 Barber Shop in the Bronx, is suing on behalf of potentially thousands of other similarly-situated small business owners, according to the plaintiff's lawyer Jon Norinsberg.

Facing heightened scrutiny for its social media policies and relentless quest for growth, Facebook is now turning its attention to getting more people high-speed internet access in hard-to-reach places. The move comes with some irony, as it comes on the heels of Facebook’s own massive outage, which temporarily took down all of the apps in its empire.

AT&T will work with Frontier Communications to bring fiber-optic connectivity to large enterprise customers outside AT&T’s current footprint. The two companies signed multi-year strategic agreements that will also support the deployment of AT&T’s 5G mobility network. As the demand for edge computing and 5G networks grows, so too does the need for resilient fiber pathways for a connected society. Enterprises need more bandwidth to keep data moving fast.

Facebook’s October 4 outages across its platforms and the company’s handling of it raise a far-reaching question: Should we simply rest content with a complete shutdown of service across four platforms, which underpin much of the planet’s economic and cultural interaction and one of which, WhatsApp, has become an essential and free substitute for phone calling and many other communications?

US Ignite invited Gigi Sohn, Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a Benton Senior Fellow & Public Advocate, to brief leaders of US Ignite Communities on the Infrastructure Bill.

Rep Brett Guthrie (KY-02) introduced the Simplifying Management, Reallocation, and Transfer of Spectrum Act, or SMART Spectrum Act (H.R.5486). The SMART Spectrum Act would create an information sharing capability at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to allow more commercial use of spectrum licensed for federal government use. The federal government is currently not fully utilizing all of the spectrum licenses that are allocated for federal use.

T-Mobile is cutting the price of its new 5G wireless home broadband service by 17 percent, stepping up efforts to steal internet customers from cable and phone companies. The new price is $50 a month, a decrease of $10, T-Mobile said October 5. The six-month-old service is available to more than 30 million homes, but that’s just a fraction of the US total.

Convergence between wireline and wireless networks is one of those ideas that feels like it’s perpetually on the horizon. But a perfect storm of industry trends – virtualization, disaggregation, 5G, fiber, cloudification – has finally come together to bring the long-sought-after approach within reach. Dave Allan, distinguished engineer at Ericsson and leader of the Broadband Forum’s Wireless-Wireline Convergence Work Area, summed up why convergence is such a big deal and why operators continue to chase it.

Reps Jahana Hayes (D-CT), and Marc Veasey (D-TX) introduced the Preventing Disruptions to Universal Services Funds Act (H.R.5400) to extend access to federal funds for telecommunications programs for three years, eliminating the need for a yearly fund recertification. The bill was created to ensure internet access for millions across the country is not disrupted by federal funding costs allowing for continuous access to available resources.

In August 2021, AMC+ landed what has become every streaming service’s holy grail: a coveted Verizon partnership. As part of a deal between the two companies, certain customers of Verizon’s broadband and unlimited phone plans are entitled to a free year of the AMC Networks streamer, featuring ad-free programming across its entertainment networks and early access to original shows. The giveaway offered a major marketing boost to the streaming service, which aims to clear 9 million subscribers by the end of 2021.