Joan Engebretson

Verizon currently cites a speed of 300 Mbps for its 5G fixed wireless offering. That speed could increase beginning as early as 2023 when the company gains access to additional spectrum that it won in the 2021 C-band auction, said Matt Ellis, Verizon executive vice president and chief financial officer. The company was the biggest winner in 2021’s C-band auction.

Nextlink Internet, which was one of the biggest winning bidders in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, said it has achieved speeds of 1 Gbps doanload and 500 Mbps upload using fixed wireless equipment in the 6 GHz band. The performance was achieved using a 160 MHz channel over distances of two miles, the company said.

The two public private partnerships that AT&T has announced in Indiana, including one expected with the City of Boonville (IN), could be the first of many, said Jeff Luong, AT&T president for broadband access and adoption initiatives. “We’re having discussions with communities across the country,” said Luong.

As fiber sees record-setting deployment levels, the demand for fiber optic technicians is stronger than ever. To meet this demand, we’re seeing a slew of training programs nationwide. Community colleges will play an important role in training a new generation of fiber technicians. In one example, the State University of New York Westchester Community College (SUNYWCC) offers a three-day fiber technician training course that does not require participants to be enrolled in a degree program.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote in late May 2022 on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) seeking input on a proposal to establish higher speed goals for small rural providers that receive broadband funding through the Alternative Connect America Model (A-CAM) program. The proposal was made by the A-CAM Broadband Coalition, a group of providers that receive funding through the program. According to the FCC, 447 providers receive a combined $1.1 billion annually in A-CAM support, which runs through 2028 for most participants.

A new association to be known as the American Association of Public Broadband (AAPB) was recently announced. AAPB aims to advocate for municipal networks and is open to government agencies that are planning to build or that currently own or operate a municipal network, as reported by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. These networks could involve public-private partnerships.

T-Mobile has a secret sauce for selling T-Mobile Home fixed wireless service in rural areas that involves a granular competitive analysis of 775 sub-markets, said CEO Mike Sievert. The company is seeing strong growth for the fixed wireless offering, having reached 1 million subscribers in less than a year.

Eleven New Mexico telecom and broadband providers are planning a statewide fiber network to be known as NM Fiber Network LLC. The network is a “multi-year, multi-million dollar” undertaking, NM Fiber Network said. Between them, the 11 providers already have thousands of miles of fiber across the state. The project is expected to augment those assets by increasing capacity and improving reliability. The genesis of the NM Fiber Network was in the New Mexico Broadband Initiative Consortium formed by the governor’s office to develop a state broadband roadmap.

The last two years or so have seen a slew of broadband providers rename either themselves or their services. Some are even using a brand name as though it was a company, issuing press releases that scarcely reference the official corporate identity, instead using only the brand name as the protagonist. In the latter category is Windstream, which routinely issues press releases under the Kinetic name.

As the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) gears up to administer the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) rural broadband infrastructure funding program, NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson gave an update at a Washington (DC) event on April 13. Among many broadband infrastructure funding topics discussed, Davidson seemed particularly upbeat about progress with the $1 billion Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program, which is a component of the larger $65 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.