telecompetitor

The broadband industry is at a unique crossroads. Between the many federal and state broadband funding opportunities that are now in play, well over $100 billion will be made available over the next five years. This funding cycle can help fuel the dramatic expansion of fiber broadband across the entire country, helping bring the promise of broadband to the unserved and underserved.

The highly competitive nature of the US mobile wireless business continues as Verizon announced that it is deploying 5G in the CBRS spectrum band and T-Mobile said it achieved speeds above 3 Gbps on a production network using 5G carrier aggregation. Verizon said it worked with Ericsson to complete a 5G data session using CBRS General Authorized Access (GAA) spectrum, which is mid-band spectrum that is essentially available on an unlicensed basis.

David Finn of Google Fiber outlined the company’s embrace of the open access model for broadband. Finn, a director of corporate development at Google Fiber, highlighted the company’s recent open access partnership in West Des Moines (IA) and a previous example with the public utility in Huntsville (AL) as examples of how they are using the model to expand broadband access. Google Fiber is now finalizing a similar partnership in Vermont that could potentially reach over 100 thousand rural residents.

Brightspeed will pass 130,000 addresses in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the next several years, with the first 60,000 of those passings to be completed by the end of 2023. The first phase of the Virginia rollout will include portions of Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle, Campbell, Henry, Page, Rockbridge and Smyth counties.

Starry emerged a few years as a fixed wireless broadband provider targeting large multi-dwelling units (MDUs) and has had considerable success in that market, averaging 25% take rates within the first year, when the company aims to reach payback on its investment. The company developed its own technology, which is rather different from that of other fixed wireless providers in that it can use coaxial distribution infrastructure within a building to distribute service.

Resound Networks, a winning bidder in the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, has successfully achieved gigabit speeds using fixed wireless access (FWA) in the 6 GHz band via an experimental license. The company reached a distance of more than three miles using 160 MHz-wide channels that will become available in the band. Fixed wireless providers have big hopes for the 6 GHz band, which contains a wide swath of spectrum that will be available on an unlicensed basis. The FCC voted in 2020 to free up spectrum in the band. 

Cox Communications talked up plans to invest more than $400 million over the next three years to expand its network to underserved areas in eight states, an effort it said is part of a broader multi-billion infrastructure initiative. The operator said expansion projects are underway in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Florida, Louisiana, California, Virginia and Arizona, which will use a combination of private funding and public-private partnership investments.

UScellular announced that it will roll out 5G service using mid-band spectrum by the end of 2023. The company previously rolled out 5G service in some areas using millimeter wave spectrum, which supports the highest speeds but over relatively short distances, and in low-band spectrum, which provides excellent coverage but relatively low speeds. Mid-band spectrum is widely considered to provide the optimum mixture of coverage and speed for 5G.