Telecommunication

TDS Telecom’s leadership said that the company believes that there is a “sense of urgency” around its fiber strategy and it plans to increase its fiber build within its existing wireline footprint and also in expansion markets outside its footprint. In fact, the company feels such a sense of urgency that it is not naming the markets or the number of markets and addresses where it plans to expand its fiber footprint because of the growing competition in the 1-Gig space.

Telecommunications giants are among the winners of the infrastructure bill, according to Protocol. The package includes $65 billion to expand broadband connectivity and does away with some parts of President Biden's initial proposal that were the least popular with the telecommunications industry, including more aggressive requirements regarding network speed and provisions that would have targeted grant funding to municipal networks.

Frontier Communications ramped up its fiber expansion plan, aiming to reach a total of 10 million locations by the end of 2025 rather than its original target of 6 million. The operator also plans to rollout symmetrical 2 Gbps service in Q1 of 2022.

The Biden administration’s broadband plan has been steadily scaled back by “bipartisan compromise” and telecommunications lobbying. While Congress is finalizing a $65 billion version that contains some excellent improvements, experts say it falls well short of fixing the real problem: broadband monopolization and the high prices that result. Roughly two thousand companies and organizations have been lobbying Congress to impact the infrastructure proposal, telecommunications giants among them.

This analysis evaluates claims of a “broadband affordability crisis.” First, we review several international comparisons of broadband prices alongside the data on differing deployment. Any consideration of how US broadband prices stack up must take into account such deployment differences as well. Second, we provide a new analysis showing how broadband and telecom industry revenues have significantly declined as a share of the overall economy. Major findings include:

The current state of the broadband market is unlike anything seen over the past two decades, with operator enthusiasm high and money pouring in from all sides, according to Corning’s Director of Fiber-To-The-Home Market Development Joe Jensen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jensen pointed to the pandemic as a catalyst for much of the current activity, noting it validated the idea that broadband is critical infrastructure and helped spur higher fiber take rates among consumers.

Lumen Technologies plans to sell a swath of its US telecommunications network to Apollo Global Management for $7.5 billion, including $1.4 billion of assumed debt. The investment giant will carve out some of Lumen’s so-called incumbent local exchange carrier assets, a collection of telephone and broadband infrastructure that covers 6 million residential and business customers across 20 states, mostly in the Midwest and Southeast. Lumen’s remaining operations will focus on large business clients, who generate most of its revenue, as well as home-broadband subscribers in 16 states including C

Lumen Technologies is worsening the digital divide and failing its customers and workers by not investing adequately in the essential fiber-optic buildout that is the standard for broadband networks worldwide.

T-Mobile is introducing a new prepaid promotion with incentives for customers on other prepaid MVNOs to switch to Metro by T-Mobile, including waiving switching fees, a discount on an unlimited plan with 5G, and a trade-in offer for a new 5G phone. In other words, it’s doing exactly what it told regulators it wouldn’t do when it acquired Sprint a year ago.

Verizon’s Fios business continued to flourish in the second quarter as its broadband subscriber base rose again. During the quarter, Verizon added 92,000 Consumer Fios Internet customers. Total Fios revenues were up 5.4 percent year-over-year, driven by continued broadband subscriber growth. It ended the quarter with a total of 6.4 million Fios subscribers. Consumer Fios revenues of $2.9 billion in second-quarter 2021 were the highest since the company's new operating structure was introduced in 2019.