Jon Brodkin

Starry, a wireless home Internet provider, says it has acquired enough spectrum to offer service to 40 million households in more than 25 US states. The company sells 200Mbps Internet service for $50 a month, but it doesn't reveal how many subscribers it has.  To expand its network, Starry spent $48.5 million on spectrum licenses in the Federal Communications Commission's recent 24GHz auction. 

AT&T has informed employees of plans to cut another 1,800 jobs from its wireline division. AT&T declared more than 1,800 jobs nationwide as "surplus," meaning they are slated to be eliminated in Aug or Sept, said the Communications Workers of America (CWA). AT&T said that most affected union workers will be able to stay at the company in other positions. 

Verizon has avoided paying local taxes on telecommunication equipment in many New Jersey municipalities over the past decade, but a proposed state law would force the company to pay back taxes for all the payments it didn't make.

The Federal Communications Commission has preliminarily voted to cap spending on the FCC's Universal Service programs, which deploy broadband to poor people and to rural and other underserved areas. The recent approval of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is a preliminary step—the FCC will take public comment on Chairman Ajit Pai's plan for three months before moving to a final vote. The FCC technically won't begin the public-comment period until after the NPRM is published in the Federal Register, but the FCC proceeding's docket is online.

After Hurricane Michael wreaked havoc on Florida in 2018, AT&T restored wireless service more quickly than Verizon because it relied on well-trained employees while Verizon instead used contractors that "did not have the proper credentials," according to the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers from both telecoms. The Federal Communications Commission recently found that carriers' mistakes prolonged outages caused by the hurricane. Many customers had to go without cellular service for more than a week.

AT&T has cut more than 23,000 jobs since receiving a big tax cut at the end of 2017, despite lobbying heavily for the tax cut by claiming that it would create thousands of jobs. AT&T in Nov 2017 pushed for the corporate tax cut by promising to invest an additional $1 billion in 2018, with CEO Randall Stephenson saying that "every billion dollars AT&T invests is 7,000 hard-hat jobs. These are not entry-level jobs.

More than 106,000 rural homes and small businesses in 43 states will get access to 25 megabit per second (Mbps) broadband at some point in the next decade thanks to a Federal Communications Commission policy change. The FCC's Connect America Fund (CAF), which distributes money to internet service providers (ISPs) in exchange for new broadband deployments in underserved areas, had been requiring speeds of just 10Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream over the past few years.

Comcast said its customers' monthly Internet data usage increased 34 percent between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019, rising to a median of 200GB. The rise is being driven by streaming video, and, in particular, 4K video. The median customer is using only about 20 percent of Comcast's 1TB data cap, which is enforced in 27 of Comcast's 39 states.

CTIA, the US mobile industry's top lobbying group, is opposing a proposed California state law that would prohibit throttling of fire departments and other public safety agencies during emergencies. CTIA recently wrote to lawmakers to oppose the bill as currently written, saying the bill's prohibition on throttling is too vague and that it should apply only when the US president or CA governor declares emergencies and not when local governments declare emergencies.

While all four major nationwide carriers in the US have overhyped 5G to varying degrees, T-Mobile made a notable admission about 5G's key limitation.