Reporting

Around the world, governments are moving simultaneously to limit the power of tech companies with an urgency and breadth that no single industry had experienced before. Their motivation varies.

Cord cutting is coming to home internet access, not just pay TV – but not every embittered broadband customer will be able to fire their current provider and switch to residential wireless from T-Mobile and Verizon. Both carriers offer connectivity at speeds that may not match those of cable internet but should be fast enough for many home uses. They also don’t inflict cable’s data caps or modem-rental fees.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX rolled out its Starlink early access program to the public six months ago, with the satellite internet service growing to more than 10,000 users in the first few months. CNBC spoke to more than 50 people who have been using Starlink. Those surveyed included households in Canada and 13 states: California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology is upgrading its state-run education network, the Illinois Century Network (ICN), from Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) to software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN). The state consulted with Fujitsu Network Communications on the project and Fujitsu designed an SD-WAN solution using equipment from Silver Peak. The ICN project includes Silver Peak appliances that are deployed at each location with a centralized orchestrator.

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr is urging Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to publicly release the draft text of a forthcoming proposal allocating $7.1 billion in pandemic relief subsidies for distance learning. Commissioner Carr says she should publish it before commissioners vote on the item to make it easier to coordinate with the Departments of Education and Treasury on broadband spending, which he sees as a matter of good governance with taxpayer money.

Of all the disruptions unleashed by the Trump White House on how the federal government typically works, the saga of one small project, called the Open Technology Fund, stands out. The fantastical tale incorporates the spiritual movement Falun Gong, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, the daughter of a late liberal congressman and a zealous appointee of former President Donald Trump.

Dominance in broadband services has buoyed Comcast stock and other cable TV firms for years, but now a host of issues — including President Biden's latest plan to fund municipal-backed broadband services — are making investors fret. Another concern is fixed 5G broadband services to homes now ramping up due to efforts from Verizon and T-Mobile. A second worry is the expansion of fiber-to-the-home broadband services by AT&T and other phone companies.

An analysis by JP Morgan looks to dig through sparse information into the overlap that key cable providers have with different telecom providers. Among conclusions the firm has drawn, it notes cable companies compete with one fixed telecom operator in essentially every home in their footprint. And it says that fiber broadband from legacy phone operators (or insurgent fiber providers) is available in about 46M homes - about one-third. Comcast has an approximate 30% overlap with fiber (Verizon's FiOS and AT&T Fiber).

The debate in Congress over President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan has featured a clean, simple attack line from Republicans: Most of the money wouldn’t really go to infrastructure. Of course, that depends entirely on how you define infrastructure.

More than 30 million Americans live in communities that lack broadband infrastructure, or don’t provide minimally acceptable speeds to log onto the internet successfully. Rural areas, some tribal lands, and under-served Black and Brown communities are among those often lacking adequate access. The broadband access issue is getting major attention right now.