Reporting

AT&T has stopped making connections to users subscribing to its DSL Internet as of Oct 1st. It looks like the most conservative number of those affected by the decision will be about 80,000 households that have no other option. Analysis using the Federal Communication Commission’s Form 477 data shows that the Deep South will be hit the hardest, with 13,200 households in Georgia, 11,700 in Florida, and 9,700 in Mississippi. South Carolina and Texas have just under 8,000 households affected.

Millions of children are encountering all sorts of inconveniences that come with digital instruction during the coronavirus pandemic. But many students are facing a more basic challenge: They don’t have computers and can’t attend classes held online. A surge in worldwide demand by educators for low-cost laptops and Chromebooks — up to 41 percent higher than last year — has created monthslong shipment delays and pitted desperate schools against one another.

Trapped between the financial hardships of the pandemic and the technological hurdles of online learning, the millions of low-income college students across America face mounting obstacles in their quests for higher education.

As a whole, the cable industry's upstream held up well during the Covid-19 pandemic, but with the increased use of video conferencing and other tools associated with work-from-home and online learning, cable operators need to accelerate their efforts on expanding the upstream according to CommScope CTO Tom Cloonan. "In the upstream, we've seen that it's grown by about 25% over what it was in February," Cloonan said. "So that's a big jump.

Microsoft adopted a whole slew of "fairness principles" for its Windows app store.

Europe’s internet infrastructure is riddled with gaps and bottlenecks, exposed over the past seven months by surging hospital admissions to the rise of home working and explosion of e-commerce.

Nearly 9,000 residents of public housing in Los Angeles will receive free broadband internet access for the rest of the 2020-21 school year as part of a new partnership between the city, Microsoft, and the startup internet service provider Starry. Starting in early Nov, residents of the Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens and Imperial Courts housing projects in Watts and the Pueblo del Rio complex in Central Alameda will be able to sign up for the service. They join residents of the Mar Vista Gardens, who have had access since Aug. The new partnership comes as L.A.

Gov Laura Kelly (D-KS) announced that 49 million dollars is being sent out to Kansas communities to provide or improve access to the internet. As the coronavirus crisis has highlighted the need for better internet access across the state, government officials are hoping the expansion project will help more Kansans get connected. The money is part of more than $1 billion in CARES Act funding that state leaders had to decide how to spend. There are 67 projects. One is $5.9 million to help a group of underserved cities in Southwest Kansas, including Plains, Fowler, and Meade.

Comcast's broadband internet access service still has a heavy emphasis on download speeds, as even its gigabit-download service only comes with 35Mbps uploads. But that may not be the case forever, as the company announced a "technical milestone" that can deliver gigabit-plus download and upload speeds over existing cable wires.

T-Mobile is expanding its fixed wireless markets, bringing the service to 450 additional cities and towns. T-Mobile claims many of those markets are experiencing AT&T’s recent stoppage of new DSL orders, giving impacted subscribers a new option for home broadband. T-Mobile says this fixed wireless markets expansion will reach 20 million people. T-Mobile Home Internet uses 4G LTE-based fixed wireless service to deliver average speeds of 50 Mbps for $50 per month.