Showing archive for: “Telecom”
Fiber Freeze: How Maple Grove Made a Cable Franchise the Price of Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Build America Agenda rests on a simple premise: Stop making it so hard to build. Federal and state policymakers have spent years reducing permitting delays, resolving pole-attachment disputes, and easing access to public rights-of-way—the public corridors used for infrastructure such as roads, utility poles, and fiber lines. These obstacles slow ... Fiber Freeze: How Maple Grove Made a Cable Franchise the Price of Broadband
The FCC Is Right To Keep Every Band on the Table for Direct-to-Device
Note: Our editor is on vacation. The image for this post and any errors in the body are solely the fault of the author. At its August 6 open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is scheduled to vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Unleashing Unlicensed Spectrum for Direct-to-Device.” This proceeding will ... The FCC Is Right To Keep Every Band on the Table for Direct-to-Device
The AI Boom Still Runs on Old-Fashioned Airwaves
AI may live in the cloud, but the cloud still needs roads. Those roads are communications networks—and the airwaves they depend on may determine how far and fast the AI boom can travel. That two-way relationship will take center stage tomorrow, when the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media holds a hearing titled ... The AI Boom Still Runs on Old-Fashioned Airwaves
The Cost of Holding Up Broadband
America’s multibillion-dollar broadband push rests on an unglamorous piece of infrastructure: the utility pole. Fiber may carry the future, but first someone has to pay for the wood holding it up. Broadband providers rarely own the poles their networks use. Reaching a new community usually requires attaching equipment to poles owned by a utility or ... The Cost of Holding Up Broadband
The State That Wouldn’t Hang Up: California’s Fight to Keep the Old Phone Network Alive
In 1877, Thomas Doolittle strung the first hard-drawn copper telephone wire in Ansonia, Connecticut, replacing the iron lines that had carried Alexander Graham Bell’s earliest calls. Nearly 150 years later, most of the country is finally retiring the last copper in its telephone networks, replacing it with fiber-optic cable and wireless connectivity. California, naturally, has ... The State That Wouldn’t Hang Up: California’s Fight to Keep the Old Phone Network Alive
The Roswell Loophole: How to Stop Wireless Deployment One Permit at a Time
A city does not need to hang a “no cell towers allowed” sign to keep wireless service out. It can get there the quieter way: deny one permit, then another, each for reasons that sound local, particular, and perfectly ordinary. The question at the heart of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is whether federal law ... The Roswell Loophole: How to Stop Wireless Deployment One Permit at a Time
The Lifeline Program’s Afterlife Problem
A subsidy program can survive many things. Paying benefits to the dead should not be one of them. That is the problem now facing the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Lifeline program, which was designed to ensure that low-income Americans can connect to the communications networks modern life depends on. As the program has expanded to ... The Lifeline Program’s Afterlife Problem
The Last Mile Is a Paper Trail: Why Broadband Gets Stuck
Everyone wants faster broadband—no one wants to wait for the permits. Modern communications infrastructure doesn’t stand still. Providers must keep investing in upgrades and expansion to meet consumer demand. Next-generation applications—artificial intelligence (AI), artificial reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR)—will require robust infrastructure to support them. That infrastructure depends on sustained investment from a wide ... The Last Mile Is a Paper Trail: Why Broadband Gets Stuck
Subsidizing Obsolescence: How FCC Rules Keep Copper Alive
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is close to finishing a long-running transition away from legacy telecom regulation—but outdated rules still pay carriers to stay in the past. Last month, the FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to eliminate payments to legacy telecommunications carriers that have not upgraded to networks based on internet protocols ... Subsidizing Obsolescence: How FCC Rules Keep Copper Alive
The FCC’s Sleeping Power Over the Press
The Trump administration says it wants to end federal censorship. Its recent statements suggest something else. In the executive order “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” the White House asserted: The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American ... The FCC’s Sleeping Power Over the Press
Gigabit or Bust: The Mirage of Insufficient Broadband Competition
Regulators keep searching for a simple test to declare broadband markets “competitive.” The California Public Utilities Commission’s Public Advocates Office (Cal Advocates) thinks it found one: count gigabit networks. If a market lacks multiple overlapping gigabit-capable systems, Cal Advocates suggests in a report released last month, regulators should treat it as effectively noncompetitive. That framing ... Gigabit or Bust: The Mirage of Insufficient Broadband Competition
Rules Down, Rockets Up: The Year Telecom Policy Hit Reset
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have had a busy year on numerous fronts, but perhaps none more important than their work on broadband deployment and adoption. At the FCC, Chairman Brendan Carr made his “Build America” agenda a key agency priority, while the NTIA implemented a variety of ... Rules Down, Rockets Up: The Year Telecom Policy Hit Reset
