Wireless Internet

Another struggling rural carrier is shutting down. Carolina West Wireless struck an agreement to transition its wireless network to Verizon and will end its wireless services effective September 30, 2026. Terms were not disclosed. Based in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, Carolina West Wireless was formed 35 years ago and is owned by a partnership of Skyline Telephone and Surry Communications. The company provides wireless service across 11 western North Carolina counties.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the conclusion of its AWS-3 auction, which showed that the demand for spectrum is high. Auction bidding beat expectations with significant per-unit prices and gross winning bids exceeding $3.5 billion. Through the auction, valuable midband spectrum that was previously idle has been allocated for productive use. The auction also shows that the FCC’s Auctions program is running strong, despite the previous lapse in authority and a four-year gap in conducting an auction. The FCC is well prepared for its forthcoming Upper C-Band auction.

On the run-up to SpaceX’s historic initial public offering on June 12, commentators worried about who would get hurt. Their top concern was for everyday retirement savers: Major stock index providers like NASDAQ had changed their own rules to fast-track SpaceX’s inclusion in their market measures. These unusual moves would force holders of plain vanilla index funds to buy into a risky, unproven stock.

SpaceX had its initial public offering. Elon Musk is a trillionaire on paper. But what is SpaceX? On one level, of course, SpaceX is a company that builds rockets and spacecraft and launches them into space. (Occasionally the rockets explode.) It is also the company that birthed Starlink, a satellite-internet business that generated more than $11 billion in revenue last year. But the company can be defined in many ways. SpaceX is a financial instrument for Musk.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has released all but four states to begin signing Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment contracts with grant winners. NTIA has still not approved the grant proposals from California and Illinois. Now that the process of negotiating contracts for grant winners has started, news is seeping out of some grant winners backing out and refusing to accept the BEAD grant awards. The largest BEAD award being rejected is by Astound in Texas, which is walking away from $166 million in grants.

For years, the broadband industry has debated which technologies would ultimately win. Cable or fiber. Wireless or wireline.

California state regulators say AT&T lied to the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to shut off its old copper phone network without providing an adequate replacement. “AT&T asserts that California seeks to prohibit or hinder wireline carriers from discontinuing copper facilities and investing in fiber,” said a June 15 filing by the state of California and the California Public Utilities Commission. “Indeed, AT&T has been making this argument for years.

The Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum band is increasingly delivering many of the most important innovations, competitive pressures, and consumer benefits in the wireless marketplace. By enabling new entrants to deploy localized wireless infrastructure and offload traffic onto privately managed spectrum, CBRS is creating new forms of competition that were previously impossible without billions of dollars in auction spending. To support the wireless data needs of U.S.

After reselling Starlink's traditional service to business customers who are out of reach of terrestrial broadband connections, Alaska's GCI is now doing more with Starlink by tapping the satellite broadband service for backup connectivity at several locations. GCI, Alaska's top cable and mobile operator, said it plans to use Starlink's dedicated service with bonded gateways to provide more resilient and reliable connectivity to thousands of customers across several "major community hubs," including Bethel, Sitka, Kotzebue and Dillingham.

Verizon announced the next step in its ongoing transformation, replacing complexity and friction with simplicity and true customer choice. The company is putting its customers first—existing and new—by redefining loyalty and eliminating activation and upgrade fees. As part of the customer-centered reboot, Verizon is also launching “Verizon Simplicity,” the industry’s most simple and cost-effective plan. With Simplicity, there are no network tiers; everyone gets Verizon’s best 5G network.