BBWN Bites: US House Writes Laws for Broadband Mapping
In today's round-up for broadband access news, C-Spire almost wraps up Mississippi project, Liberty Global bids adieu to Sunrise, FCC sinks money into satellite, Everstream crosses 5,000-fiber-mile threshold and more.
The House of Representatives this week passed two bills designed to answer this question: Who does and who does not have broadband in today's United States? The
Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (DATA) Act mandates government to gather granular info about those regions with and without broadband Internet access. The
Mapping Accuracy Promotes Service (MAPS) Act "prohibits the submission" of false access info for mapping purposes to the FCC.
C-Spire is wrapping up an $11-million fiber deployment in Mississippi, with a press conference planned on Thursday to celebrate completion. Today, the operator is rolling out 6,585 linear feet of continuous-span of fiber optic cable below the Ross Barnett Reservoir with partner and customer Entergy Mississippi. The network spans more than 300 miles across 15 counties in some of the most isolated and rural parts of the state.
Liberty Global is "moving on" from merging subsidiary UPC Switzerland with Sunrise Communications, said CEO Mike Fries in a release, blaming Sunrise's board and largest shareholder -- Freenet -- for disagreement over the provider's future. For now, Liberty Global is "excited by the success of UPC Switzerland's turnaround plan and free cash flow generation," Fries added. Liberty Global and Sunrise inked a binding agreement in February 2019, which regulators approved in September. But in October, Sunrise canceled its general meeting, with the deal collapsing.
The FCC this week approved almost $89.2 million for more than 123,000 rural homes and businesses in 21 states. Money comes from 2018's Connect America Phase II auction, and goes to fixed-access and satellite providers. Viasat, for example, will get $87.1 million over a decade to connect more than 121,700 remote and rural premises in 17 states at speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps,
FCC said.
Rocking n' Rolling in Fiber-Deep Cleveland
Everstream added 620 route miles of dense fiber in its home city of Cleveland, no doubt hitting a high note with its business customers.(Image source: David Lennon, Pixabay)
Enterprise-grade fiber-only provider Everstream added 620 route miles of dense fiber in its home city of Cleveland, bringing it to more than 5,000 route miles across Northeast Ohio and the Midwest US. Via acquisitions and network expansion, Everstream increased its overall route miles 30% in the region this year, the provider said.
Velocix released carrier-grade, geo-redundancy features for its Origin server software, designed to increase the fault tolerance and reliability of its Cloud DVR, live and on-demand video streaming services. The upgraded software also improves scalability and flexibility, plus support for high dynamic range (HDR10), 4K/UHD and Dolby Atmos content. Dubbed version 6.0, it's available now.
Global telecom systems and solutions vendor Intracom Telecom today unveiled R8 of uniMS, which includes uniMS Radio Planner and uniMS Connected Site. The new modules add intelligence, decision-making efficiency and proactive network-monitoring. (See Intracom Telecom Releases R8 of SDN-Ready Network Lifecycle Management Platform.)
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— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter or @alisoncdiana. Like what you read: Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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Here's where you can find episode links for 'The Divide,' Light Reading's podcast series featuring conversations with broadband providers and policymakers working to close the digital divide.
As we have for the past two years, Light Reading will present our Cable Next-Gen Europe conference as a free digital symposium on June 21.
Charter has sparked RDOF work in all 24 states where it won bids. The cable op booked about $19 million in RDOF revenues in Q1, and expects to have about $9 million per month come in over the next ten years.
As we have for the past two years, Light Reading will stage the Cable Next-Gen Technologies & Strategies conference as a free digital event over two half-days in mid-March.
Launch of 2-Gig and 5-Gig FTTP tiers in 70-plus markets puts more pressure on cable ops to enhance their existing DOCSIS 3.1 network or accelerate their upgrade activity centered on the new DOCSIS 4.0 specs.
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