Wireless Telecommunications

The $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program to bring high-speed internet to every American, which the Biden administration launched three years ago, can sometimes feel like it’s proceeding at a dial-up pace, a group of broadband experts confessed last week.

Wireless internet service continued to outscore wired service in customer satisfaction this year, but wired broadband providers closed some of the distance, according to the JD Power 2026 U.S. Internet Service Provider Satisfaction Study. Wireless providers earned an overall score of 645 on a 1,000-point scale, compared with 560 for wired providers, a gap 8 points smaller than in 2025. JD Power credited the wired segment’s progress mainly to better ratings for digital tools and value for price paid.

Thirty-three New Mexico schools and districts will use $385,785 in state grants to buy lockable phone pouches, device lockers and network controls designed to support safe and focused connectivity during the school day. The funding comes from the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion’s (OBAE) Wireless Communication Device Policy Implementation Grant (WCDPIG) program, a joint effort with the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED), to curb screen time during instructional hours and support educational use of technology.

SpaceX reached a deal to buy cellular spectrum licenses from investment firm Grain Management, its biggest move yet into a wireless market dominated by traditional telecom companies. The Elon Musk-led space company will pay about $8 billion in cash for the assets. The U.S. licenses, which are in the 800-megahertz band, are tailored for wireless service from cellphone towers rather than satellites.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the October Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, October 29, 2026:

Maybe for the first time ever, we’re seeing some real price competition affecting the largest internet service providers. Fierce Network recently quoted Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong as saying that he is seeing irrationally low prices from some fiber overbuilders who are selling gigabit broadband for as little as $30–$40 per month.

The Federal Communications Commission recently banged the gavel and closed out our first spectrum auction in nearly 4 years. Bringing that one home was part of a broader effort we are undertaking to reinvigorate the agency’s work on a wide range of spectrum matters. This month, we’re continuing to push ahead with a packed agenda—from kicking off the process for another spectrum auction to supercharging wireless competition and making more good progress on national security, consumer protection, and rural broadband.

In 2025, Edgebeam Wireless was formed to take advantage of the unused spectrum of TV stations. The business is a partnership between the E.W. Scripps Company, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair. You may recall that a few years ago the FCC held an incentive auction to lure TV stations to sell their spectrum, and many station owners decided to do so. However, many TV stations, including these companies retained the spectrum because they perceived that the value in using the spectrum was greater than the value of selling it.

British Telecom is buying TalkTalk Telecommunications and its subsidiary PlatformX Communications for about $540 million. BT said it’s buying the companies to “keep them out of administration,” which is a U.K. process similar to bankruptcy in the U.S. BT said that by buying the companies it is protecting services for 1.5 million TalkTalk residential broadband customers along with 1 million wholesale customers. TalkTalk and PlatformX were taken private by Toscafund in 2021 and subsequently backed by major creditor Ares Management. TalkTalk is not an infrastructure-based broadband provider.

The Federal Communications Commission's Space Bureau and Wireless Telecommunications Bureau grant-in-part and defer-in-part the application, as amended, of Space Exploration Holdings, LLC to deploy and operate a new constellation of 15,000 non-geostationary orbit satellites. The D2D System is authorized for the provision of direct-to-device services using Mobile Satellite Service and Supplemental Coverage from Space operations in the United States, MSS and MSS direct-to-cell outside of the United States, and related Fixed-Satellite Service operations. With this action, SpaceX’s planned depl