Internet/Broadband

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) awarded grants under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) ‘Internet for All’ Initiative, including the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Workforce Planning Program and Digital Equity Outreach Program.

North Carolina native Dinni Jain doesn’t just run Google Fiber. In his spare time, he also helps oversee an equally complex business: a farm. Both endeavors have involved a lot of trial and error thus far. But with a winning formula for each now sorted out, the time has come for both businesses to mature from experimental adolescence to adulthood. According to Jain, Google Fiber’s willingness to experiment with new ideas – both good and bad –was almost the antithesis of the telecommunications model he was familiar with.

Sterling Ranch, a master-planned community in Douglas County (CO), has made fiber-based broadband the centerpiece amenity of its community. It is achieving its broadband goals through a partnership with Lumen Technologies and Lumiere Fiber, a network integrator. By expanding its relationship with Lumen, Sterling Ranch, the first all-gigabit community in Colorado, will offer its residents 8 Gbps symmetrical fiber-based internet services.

Georgia’s Clayton County, a growing community that includes Hartsfield Airport, has been ignored by large providers that have not upgraded their broadband facilities to support higher speeds necessary for remote work and learning. This leaves many residents, many of whom are low- or middle-income, with slow-speed DSL or cable connections. The lack of broadband facilities is just one problem for the county.

Years of working on deployments with varying geographic issues and operational challenges have imparted valuable lessons about timely project execution despite uncontrollable variables. Here are seven best practices and the stories behind them:

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) has signed a sweeping bill imposing a minimum age limit for social media usage, in the latest example of states taking more aggressive steps intended to protect teens online. The legislation appeared to contain vast loopholes and exemptions benefiting companies that lobbied on the bill and raising questions about how much of the industry it truly covers. The legislation, known as the Social Media Safety Act and taking effect in September 2023, is aimed at giving parents more control over their kids’ social media usage, according to lawmakers.

There is a good chance that if you are reading this blog you are well-versed in a fair amount of telecommunications industry jargon. Every segment of the industry has its own jargon. Wireless folks know what’s meant when a colleague talks about MIMO, QAM, and RAN. Fiber folks understand what is meant by OLT, jitter, and backscattering. Cable company folk can talk about DAA, CMTS, and DOCSIS. The folks that finance broadband networks talk about yield, basis points, and acid tests. Regulators all know what is meant by NARUC, NOI, and CPNI. It’s hard to avoid using jargon.

In the metropolitan hubs of the world, access to ubiquitous high-speed fiber within city limits is almost taken for granted these days. But for many people in rural areas, such access is limited. Service providers understandably often can’t provide fiber access to the last mile in rural areas because of the sheer expense of laying and maintaining fiber to each home in sparsely populated areas. This has left many people underserved for decades, relying on legacy copper networks to attempt to bridge the digital divide.

For decades, municipal broadband operations have been subject to a minefield of restrictions and barriers designed to make the prospect of establishing or maintaining a community broadband network costly, difficult, and unsustainable. There are currently 17 states in total that have restrictive legislation against municipal broadband networks in the US. Although no states have managed to remove their restrictions in 2022, 2023 could be the year that things begin to change for states that have historically been opposed to allowing for a public option.

A years-long debate slowed progress in the Keystone State, but in September 2022, Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA) announced that $500 million from the American Rescue Plan Act will go to local governments to invest in infrastructure, including broadband, accelerating the Commonwealth's efforts to close the digital divide.