Telecommunication

Federal Communications Commission nominee Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] could be running into more Republican and industry headwinds in the Biden administration's effort to get a Democratic majority on the agency.

Not long after Beth Ford became CEO of the Land O’Lakes cooperative in 2018, she toured agriculture co-ops and farms across rural America. By early 2019, she was alarmed that many small towns and rural residents lacked high-speed internet service, which she feared would leave them behind in the 21st-century economy. She recognized the technology deficit would greatly reduce access to education and health care and harm job creation. Ford became hell-bent on securing broadband funding at the federal level.

Before 2020, explaining why the US needed to invest in expanding high-speed internet infrastructure was not always easy. Lawmakers or community leaders often did not understand or could not justify spending money on what can often be an expensive venture. Fast forward to 2021, and the level of broadband-related federal funding is mindboggling – upward of $370 billion. Now that the infrastructure bill passed, that figure rises by billions of dollars more.

The explosion of the internet of things (IoT) is enabling communities across the globe to evolve into smart cities. Leveraging sensors, networks and data analysis, communities are addressing challenges in health care, energy, the workforce, public safety and many other sectors. But what’s behind the pulse of the smart city? Fiber infrastructure serves as the veins that support emerging applications, such as smart traffic sensors, connected vehicles and modern, cloud-connected medical devices.

Comcast has touted all the network upgrades it is doing as it pushes toward DOCSIS 4.0, but it appears to be planning one more key move: rolling out new Wi-Fi routers that can handle the speeds it’s aiming to deliver. Comcast Cable CEO David Watson said the company views Wi-Fi as a key element of its broadband package.

Overseas telecom providers, increasingly frustrated with American tech firms whose apps are gobbling up bandwidth, are pushing them to pay more for it. Any effort to reslice the "cost of internet bandwidth" pie could shake up the entire industry, make new winners and losers, and put new pressure on US tech giants.

While six large internet service providers (ISPs) dominate the United States fixed broadband market, Ookla's Speedtest Intelligence reveals smaller providers are sometimes the fastest ISPs in a given state in the Midwest, South and West. This analysis examines US states in which smaller ISPs were the fastest fixed broadband providers during Q3 2021. Major findings include:

The Senate voted 68-31 to confirm Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, the first woman to hold that title, to another five-year term, narrowly avoiding a Republican majority at the agency once her current term was set to expire at the end of 2021. Rosenworcel will be tasked with expanding broadband connectivity, supporting 5G implementation and bringing back net neutrality rules.

The supply chain is a top concern for nearly every industry and has significantly impacted service provider fiber buildout. New funding and training programs offer hope that supply chain and labor issues won’t stall fiber rollouts forever. Vendors can alleviate the backlog by providing parts or supplies that can scale (up or down) rather than satisfy a small or niche application. This will help consolidate inventory and materials, reducing time to market and leading to fewer supply failure points.

Real estate is complicated. Broadband is complicated. Together, they’re very complicated. The Federal Communications Commission recently launched a new proceeding to refresh the record on broadband competition and access in the multifamily and commercial real estate sectors. It sought similar information in 2017 and 2019.