 |
 |
||
|
|
||
FCC to Shrink Digital Divide – Without Expanding Broadband With a 3-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to end the digital divide next month -- but don't expect any improvement in broadband connectivity if you live in rural or under-served regions of the United States. While many nations including Italy, Australia and Hong Kong are in various stages of nationwide gigabit broadband deployment, at its Feb. 3 meeting the FCC is widely expected to include 10Mbit/s upstream and 1Mbit/s downstream wireless broadband services in its definition of broadband, Hot Hardware reported. Wired broadband classification would remain the same: 25Mbit/s down, 1Mbit/s up. But the FCC's plan would include a wireless broadband spec -- 10Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up -- then use the combination of faster (albeit nowhere near high-speed) and wireless (slow and often costly) to decide whether a region already receives broadband coverage. The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai has discussed this approach for a while. Now, the day of reckoning looms only weeks away. (See Broadband Downgrade: How the FCC Is Failing the Nation ) In other words, rural residents who can connect to the Internet via wireless speeds of at least 10Mbit/s will no longer be deemed "uncovered" and, therefore, their regions will no longer be eligible for federal or other government funding to deploy fiber-based broadband. No doubt urban regions without fiber immediately will lose their eligibility since it's tough to imagine any area of a city, regardless of income level, lacks cellular service. With the elasticity of this revised definition, the number of people on the wrong side of the digital divide dramatically is reduced. Of course, they still cannot log on to telehealth systems, videoconference with education or work colleagues, access streaming media or live in a smart home. But if the vote goes through, they may be comforted in the knowledge that three people in Washington, D.C. (home to almost 40 ISPs using everything from fiber DOCSIS 3.1 to VDSL, including Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) FiOS, Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) and RCN Corp. ), think 10Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up via cell phone is more than enough to power broadband connectivity in the US in 2018. Or maybe they won't. Related posts:
— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana. |
In a flurry of activity throughout the week, Donald (DJ) LaVoy, Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at the US Department of Agriculture, and his team spent about $145.8 million in the non-urban or suburban areas of seven states.
Calix reported revenue of $120.19 million – up 4% – in Q4 2019, putting a bounce in the step of company president and CEO Carl Russo and a shine to Calix's ongoing transition from hardware vendor to a provider of platforms enabled by cloud, APIs and subscriber experience.
Looking to curtail e-waste and improve the bottom line, BT will require customers to return routers and set-top boxes, although subscribers will not have to pay a fee when they receive regular broadband equipment.
The industry standards organization is looking to ease operator pain from residential WiFi, while it also sees initiatives in connected home and other projects bear fruit.
Deploying DOCSIS 3.1 across its entire footprint gave Rogers Communications the ability to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s,
contributing to a broadband segement that generated about 60% of the Canadian operator's $3.05 billion (US) in Q4 cable earnings.
 WebinarsARCHIVED
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
1:00 p.m. New York / 6:00 p.m. London When your broadband business adds new services and connected devices, do they also add complexity, slowing customer support teams as they navigate multiple data sources to uncover connectivity issues? We’ve worked with hundreds of support teams to help them implement a subscriber experience management platform that gives greater visibility into subscriber issues. They can proactively troubleshoot amid complexity—improving the subscriber experience and raising customer satisfaction ratings like Net Promoter Scores. Join this webinar with experts from Calix and global research leader Omdia who will share exclusive research about how you can:
|
|
|
||
