Telecommunication

Infinera will join the Build America, Buy America (BABA) movement by bringing semiconductor component manufacturing to the US. Infinera is joining a cohort of equipment providers that have onshored operations as the industry prepares for $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding. To help operators comply with the BEAD's BABA requirements, Infinera will leverage its optical compound semiconductor facility in California and testing and packaging facility in Pennsylvania.

In rural areas, many large internet service providers (ISP) offer voice-over-IP. Nathan Smith, Director of Economics and Policy at Connected Nation said, “It’s likely that a lot of [Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD)] sub-grantees will add voice for an additional revenue stream." However, the BEAD Notice of Funding Opportunity does not require grant applicants to offer voice service, though the actual grants will be made by state governments who set their own rules. Ciena’s Solutions Marketing Senior Adviser Vinicius Santos expects some state broadband offices to ask applicants

Fallout continues from the Wall Street Journal’s investigative journalism exposé that showed telecommunications companies in the US have left behind a massive network of copper cables covered in toxic lead. AT&T CEO John Stankey said “there is no public health crisis” to worry about, citing the release of lead test results by AT&T, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the state of New York.

As what we can do with the internet has expanded, so too has the way we connect, and how we use it—at home and on the go. In the United States today, it has become the norm for a majority of households to have two types of subscriptions to the internet—mobile data for their phone and fixed (and for the most part) wireline service for their residence. Over 75 percent of households whose annual incomes exceed $50,000 have cellular data and wireline broadband subscriptions. For households below that level, 44.7 percent have both types of subscription plans.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is greatly concerned with the preservation and advancement of the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program—a vital Universal Service Fund program that must continue to be improved to achieve its goals, broaden its reach, and expand access to those who can benefit the most. Lifeline was created nearly 40 years ago with the aim of providing low-income households with low-cost landline telephony options. Now, nearly all U.S. households have telephone service and the Lifeline program plays an essential role in ensuring affordability.

There is a huge disparity in regulating two distinct but highly intertwined industries – broadband and voice. Voice regulation includes the cellular business, and, in terms of revenue, the voice market is larger than broadband. JD Powers reported in April 2023 that the average household is spending $144 for cellular per month. I call these industries intertwined because the players at the top of both industries are the same. The big internet service providers (ISP) are Comcast, Charter, AT&T, and Verizon. The biggest voice players are AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

There are a large number of wireless and wired telecommunications trade associations; so many that it can be hard to keep track. Fierce Telecom created this list of the most well-known trade groups in the industry.

Low take rates have broadband experts talking about how to pique subscriber interest in the high-speed internet capabilities now available across the US. Matt Collins, chief commercial officer at Calix, said that building higher speed tiers as many providers have been doing “is an incredible capex investment strategy," and "something we all have to do.” Although, in spite of providers racing against each other to provide the highest speed tiers on the market, he noted “subscribers don't understand

At the end of July 2023, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $20 million penalty against Q Link and Hello Mobile for not complying with the Customer Propriety Network Information (CPNI). The FCC concluded that the two companies violated the CPNI rules when they failed to protect confidential user data. The companies both had security flaws in their apps that allowed outside access to customer account information. There are stringent privacy rules in place at the FCC for voice providers, but nothing similar for broadband.

The Federal Communication Commission used FCC Form 477 to collect subscribership information from providers of voice telephone services – incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), and mobile voice providers – since December 1999. The FCC has required interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (“interconnected VoIP”) service providers to report subscribership information since December 2008. Also, starting with the data reported for 2014, FCC Form 477 has been modified to distinguish “over-the-top” (colloquially, “bring your own broadband”) inte