
Small ISPs are scrambling to meet a September 1 deadline to submit coverage data to the FCC, or risk being locked out of the $42.5 billion BEAD program.

This week in broadband builds: Charter goes live with RDOF and CARES Act builds; Meta supports DigitalC FWA; Cisco gets in on Neighborhood Wi-Fi; Kinetic and Conexon build in Kentucky; Brightspeed in Arkansas; Glo Fiber in Pennsylvania.

For the first time, the FCC has indicated a willingness to consider a fee on Big Tech to pay for telecom services. But the agency is looking for Congressional approval for such a move first.

'We are confident it will be granted in the near term,' Starry said of its application for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) money. That's noteworthy considering the FCC rejected LTD and Starlink from the RDOF.
This episode features Conexon's Jonathan Chambers and Central Georgia EMC's Herschel Arant. We discuss their work delivering fiber broadband in Georgia, why rural customers are taking gig speeds and why co-ops are well placed to deliver on federal funding.

The state's first ConnectAll grant will help fund an open access fiber build in the Village of Sherburne that the mayor says has been years in the making.

Starry, a fixed wireless operator that expects to end 2022 with over 100,000 subscribers, is 'exploring a combination of debt, equity and other financing vehicles' to get to break-even, CEO Chet Kanojia says.

LinkNYC's deal with the city, amended in 2021, includes not just a 5G-based business model but the goal of 4,000 kiosks starting in underserved areas.

Many in the industry have been raising concerns about the federal government's 'Buy America' rules for subsidized broadband builds. But some also see an opportunity.

This week in broadband builds: Charter and Windstream win in North Carolina; Comcast gets $10 million in Maryland; Lumen launches 8 Gbit/s; Internet Society awards EPIC grants. Plus construction and launches from Fidium Fiber, Brightspeed, Metronet and more.
David Zumwalt, CEO of WISPA, joins the podcast to discuss how fixed wireless providers are tackling the digital divide. We also get into WISPA's take on federal funding rules, unlicensed spectrum and why Zumwalt calls the FCC's broadband mapping effort 'an area of great concern.'

As Yellowstone Fiber builds out its open access network in Gallatin County, Montana, the company is now looking to ARPA and BEAD grants to reach the most unserved parts of the region.

This week in broadband builds: Starry goes to Vegas; USDA doles out $401M; Florida co-op enlists Conexon; AT&T, Comcast, Charter get GUMBO grants; Consolidated's construction in Ellensburg, Washington; Metronet declares Greencastle a 'gigabit city'; Brightspeed's plans for Pennsylvania.
John Roese, the global CTO at Dell Technologies, discusses the company's views on edge computing and why the private 5G networking space is just starting to heat up.

While NTIA's notice of funding opportunity prioritizes fiber builds for those applying for BEAD grants, a 'high-cost threshold' exception has been a point of concern for fiber advocates.
In this podcast, Broderick Johnson, EVP for public policy and EVP for digital equity at Comcast, offers a brief history lesson on 'digital equity' and why identifying and lowering barriers to Internet adoption are critical.

The FCC proposed over $4 million in fines against defaulted RDOF applicants, with $2.3 million of those fines for the auction's largest bidder, LTD Broadband.

The FCC set aside $9 billion in 2020 to help fund the construction of 5G networks in rural areas of the US. But the operators serving that market are arguing for more, to the tune of $36 billion.

Airbus will enter the 'connectivity services business' by formalizing a division around its Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS). In doing so, it's engaging a space fraught with failures.

Nick Feamster, director of research for the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago, recently joined the Light Reading Podcast to discuss his team's research based on the Internet Equity Initiative data portal, which uses Ookla Speedtest data to map out Internet inequities.