Let the 6G Hype Begin

In case you haven’t been paying attention, wireless vendors are busy working towards the introduction of 6G starting around 2030. The industry has introduced a new generation of cellular technology every ten years since the first 1G network was introduced in 1981.

I’ve been reading a lot of industry press on the upcoming 6G generation of cellular. I have to admit that some of the claims gave me a good laugh, because the vendors in the industry are touting a lot of potential applications for 6G that seem to be a stretch, just like happened during the lead-up to 5G.

Before describing a few of the promises I’ve been reading for 6G, let me remind you of some of what we were promised with 5G that never really materialized. 5G was touted to be bringing:

  • A superfast network since 5G will enable clusters of 5G small cell sites that will bring the network close to everybody.
  • Super-low latency of 4 milliseconds, even in moving vehicles. It was promised that 5G would be able to compete with fiber for functions like real-time gaming and stock trading.
  • Speeds up to 10 Gbps by the widespread introduction of frequencies between 20 and 60 MHz.
  • A greatly increased capacity for simultaneous connections that would mean 5G subscriptions for cars, smart watches, and the many 5G-enabled smart devices in the home.
  • 5G would enable new technologies like stores having 5G-enabled hologram displays throughout a store. Experts envisioned a 5G network strung along every street and road to enable smart self-driving cars. There was even talk about being able to use 5G to enable medical operations using robots conducted by remote doctors.

The coming introduction of 6G also includes a lot of claimed benefits. 6G will:

  • Enable immersive communication and human-machine interactions. Use cases include immersive eXtended Reality (XR), remote multi-sensory telepresence, holographic communications, haptic sensors and actuators, and multi-sensory interfaces.
  • Lower operator costs will mean affordable and meaningful connectivity for all. This means universal coverage, including sparsely populated areas. 6G will create a seamless interface between terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks.
  • Be able to connect to a massive number of devices that will enable smart cities, smart cars, environmental monitoring, and sensors for agriculture. (Sounds like the same claim made for 5G).
  • Will enable connections to smart machines for the remote operation of robots, autonomous factories, and the creation of digital twins for factories, health care, and other complex use cases.
  • Peak data rates between 50 and 100 Gbps.
  • A target air interface latency between 0.1 ms and 1 ms.
  • Terrestrial-based locating technologies to locate objects within 1 to 10 centimeters.
  • AI-related capabilities to support distributed data processing, distributed learning, AI computing, AI model execution, and AI model inference.

Just like with 5G, the real-life implementation of 6G will be determined by the functions that wireless carriers can monetize. 5G is outperforming the hype in some areas, and most urban 5G networks today are considerably faster than the 100 Mbps goal included in the early 5G hype, yet most of the promised 5G functionality never materialized when carriers found that customers prefer free WiFi to paying for more cellular subscriptions. The same is going to be true with 6G. It’s hard to imagine that introducing 6G will automatically trigger widespread use of multi-sensory telepresence or somehow bring cell towers to rural America. But you can’t blame the vendors who want to get carriers excited about 6G and be willing to pay for the upgrades.

Is the FCC an Independent Agency?

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently told Congress that he doesn’t believe that the FCC is an independent agency. The FCC went so far as to remove the term independent from its website. The bottom line of Chairman Carr’s opinion is that he believes the FCC should take direction from the White House.

It’s an interesting position that contradicts the long-standing intentions that the FCC, and many other federal agencies are independent, meaning that they don’t take directions directly from the Administration, but are required to follow whatever enabling laws and rules established by Congress. There are a number of independent agencies other than the FCC, including the EPA, SEC, Federal Reserve, NASA, CIA, FTC, SSA, and NTSB.

There are several key characteristics of independent agencies. First, they are not part of, and don’t report to any of the fifteen cabinet departments like State or Treasury. Independent agencies were generally established by Congress to be somewhat shielded from political pressure. For example, it’s not easy for the President to fire the head of an independent agency. The agencies are often structured with a multi-member Board or Commission, which typically includes rules that require representation from both parties. Some agencies like the SEC and the FCC are accorded rule-making power within a specified range of issues.

The FCC was created by Congress with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934. The agency has been directed by Congress to regulate radio, television, wire, satellite, cable, and the Internet. The Act did not include language that specified the FCC was independent. The independent status is inferred from the structural provisions in the Act that define how the agency operates. The relevant language appears in Section 4(a) of the Act (codified as 47 U.S.C. § 154(a)), which establishes the structure of the Commission. The Act created a commission of five (originally seven) members who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Commission must be bilateral, and no more than three members can be from the same political party. Commissioners serve for fixed, five-year terms. The FCC is required to follow laws passed by Congress aimed specifically at the agency.

The Supreme Court has explored issues related to independent agencies over the years. Supreme Court rulings, like Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), defined a key element of an independent agency to be a lack of explicit legislative language giving a President the power to remove commissioners at will (i.e., for any reason). Instead, the ability to remove commissioners is widely understood to be limited to specific reasons like “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” This structure of independent agencies is done deliberately to insulate agencies from direct presidential control and ensure decisions are based on the public interest rather than political pressure.

Chairman Carr’s statements are a direct challenge to Congress. Historically, independent agencies like the FCC are given general marching orders from Congress through legislation, but even then, the agency is free to interpret specifically how to enact laws. Chairman Carr says that he feels empowered to take direction directly from the White House, and it seems likely this will eventually trigger a showdown. At some point, Congress will have to assert its authority or cede its power to the Administration.

The FCC has never been free from politics, because almost nothing in Washington D.C. can be. The FCC Chairman has traditionally been from the same party as the White House and is typically sympathetic to policies of the administration. But there has always been an uproar if an FCC Chairman has been accused of directly taking direction from the administration. An example of this happened when Republicans accused Chairman Tom Wheeler of too closely following the White House direction on the issue of net neutrality.

The long-term repercussions of a political FCC are not good for the industry. While ISPs, carriers, and programmers all have a wish list of regulations they don’t like, there has always been a huge benefit for regulated companies to have regulatory certainty, which means that rules don’t change drastically with every change of administration. Regulated companies might complain loudly about being overregulated, but they benefit financially from knowing the rules, since this allows them to develop long-term strategies. Every large ISP will quietly admit that regulatory certainty is far better for them than rules that change with each Administration.

Seven Stages of the Internet

In October, Dr. Mallik Tatipamula, the CTO of Ericsson, and Dr. Vinton Cerf, a VP and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, published an article in IEEE Spectrum that postulated that there will be seven stages of the Internet over time.

They say that we have already experienced the first three stages, which include the original Internet, integrating the Internet into mobile devices, and extending the Internet to connect to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The article postulates about what comes next.

The following are the seven stages:

The Original Internet. The objective of the original Internet was to connect computers and servers to share information. This evolved into the early World Wide Web, which largely democratized access to information.

The Mobile Internet. This was the process of developing apps to take advantage of the ability of mobile phones to connect to the Internet. This has evolved into an explosion of social media and transformational applications, like the ability to make cashless payments using phones. This opened the Internet to those around the world.

The Internet of Things (IoT). This phase of the Internet extended connectivity to machines other than computers and phones. The world is now full of smart appliances, connected cars, sensors, smart factories, and smart city applications.

The Internet of Agents (IoA). We’re now entering the next phase of the Internet where connectivity will be ubiquitously extended to AI agents that perceive, reason, and collaborate. Virtual AI agents include things like digital assistants, coding copilots, workflow orchestrators, and trading algorithms. Physical AI agents will manifest in devices like autonomous cars, drones, industrial robots, and smart medical devices.

The Internet of Senses (IoS). They predict the next phase of the Internet will integrate wearables that extend human perception of touch, taste, and smell. For example, a potential buyer will be able to ‘feel’ the texture of clothing online, or smell a perfume before buying it. These changes will come through advances in haptic wearables, digital olfaction, and brain-computer interfaces.

The Ubiquitous Internet. This will arrive when there is seamless global access to broadband across land, sea, air, and space. Every person on the planet and their devices will have access to the Internet.

 The Quantum Internet. The final stage of the Internet will integrate quantum information into the Internet using qubits and quantum entanglement. This will create ultra-secure communications that are resistant to interception and hacking, and will have unprecedented precision in measuring time, motion, and the environment.

BEAD on Hold?

It appears that NTIA missed an important step when it generated the new BEAD rules in June in the BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice. That is the document that changed the scoring of BEAD grants from using a dozen different scoring criteria to choose grant winners to a new method that focused on the character of the proposed technology (priority or not) and the cost per passing.

On December 14, NTIA got a ruling from the GAO that the changes made by NTIA in the Policy Notice are outside of the scope of NTIA’s authority. According to the decision from the GAO, a major change like the one implemented by NTIA requires approval by both Congress and the Comptroller General.

Agencies like NTIA are subject to the Congressional Records Act (CRA), which defines the administrative process that government agencies must follow to change rules. The GAO says that NTIAs Policy Notice implements, interprets, and prescribes law or policy, which triggers provisions of the CRA. The Policy Notice not only affected changes within NTIA of how it administers the BEAD program, but it changed the process of how Eligible Entities (State Broadband Offices) go about seeking funding under the program.

The GAO letter lists the possible ways that NTIA could be exempt from seeking Congressional approval and concluded that none of the exemptions apply to NTIA’s Policy Notice changes. The key trigger for the GAO ruling was that the rule changes created a substantial effect on non-agency parties, meaning States and ISPs.

The conclusion of the GAO is as follows: “The Policy Notice is a rule for purposes of CRA because it meets the definition of a rule under APA and no CRA exception applies. Therefore, the Policy Notice is subject to CRA’s requirement that it be submitted to Congress and the Comptroller General before it can take effect.”

The bottom line of this ruling is that NTIA had no authority to unilaterally change the BEAD rules in such a drastic fashion. The BEAD rules in the IIJA legislation were specific, and the changes NTIA ordered with the Policy Notice were significant enough to require NTIA to seek Congressional approval before making the changes.

This is an interesting twist. In normal times, this would mean that NTIA would have to put BEAD on hold until this is resolved. NTIA would not be able to enforce the changes in the Policy Notice, and if Congress didn’t approve the NTIA changes, the BEAD program would probably reset to the status in June before the Policy Notice. It would mean that all of the changes to grant scoring and the requirements for States to determine priority technologies would be invalid. It would means all tentative grant awards made under the revised rules are invalid. States would probably have to re-score grant applications under the original BEAD rules for selecting winners.

But we don’t live in normal times, and this Administration is currently ignoring the rules of the Congressional Records Act in many other venues and programs. So what does this mean? It may mean nothing, and NTIA might just ignore this GAO decision. This might trigger action from Congress. There has been a lot of unhappiness that the amount of grant awards was trimmed so drastically. This decision certainly gives an actionable reason for anybody who wants to take NTIA to court to halt the BEAD process during litigation. Like everything associated with BEAD, awards made under the new rules are going to be under a cloud, and that makes everybody uncomfortable.

Broadband Shorts December 2025

Library Grants Reinstated

In November, the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island ruled that the Administration had to distribute all of the grants to libraries that had been authorized by Congress. The Administration had decided not to distribute all of the grant funding normally handled by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency created by Congress in 1996 to consolidate grants for libraries. This court order has possible relevance to broadband since NTIA has refused to distribute grants from the Digital Equity Fund and is hinting at not distributing BEAD non-deployment funds.

Altice Sues Its Creditors

In a curious lawsuit, Altice, which recently rebranded as Optimum, has sued Apollo Capital Management, BlackRock, and six other financial firms and accused them of colluding to block the company from refinancing its debt. The group of companies each holds a share of Altice debt. The lawsuit says that the group signed an agreement in July 2024 that requires two-thirds of the creditors to approve any new financing deals with Altice.

Consumers Hanging on to Smartphones

A survey conducted by Reviews.org found that people are hanging onto phones an average of 29 months, and that the number is increasing. This is obviously a major concern for handset manufacturers and cellular carriers, which use the replacement and upgrade of  smartphones as an opportunity to lock customers into a new contract. I don’t know about readers of the blog, but I’m not seeing any major upgrades that are enough incentive to upgrade sooner.

Chinese LEO Satellites

On December 6, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. announced the fourteenth launch of LEO satellites that will be used for broadband. Guowang (the National Network) has plans to launch a constellation of 13,000 satellites for broadband to compete with Starlink and Amazon One. There is a second effort constellation underway called Quinfan (Thousand Sails), being funded by the city of Shanghai, that has plans for a constellation of 15,000 satellites. These efforts are significant because they can create a lot of competition for Starlink and Amazon LEO around the globe.

Acceptance of 5G

According to a survey conducted by YouGov, 62% of Americans now say that 5G has improved their digital experience. Approval is higher (67%) for those between the ages of 18 and 30. The highest approval of 5G, at 69%, comes from households that earn twice or more of the median household income.

Congress Takes up Wi-Fi

 Congressmen Troy A. Carter, Sr. (D-LA) and Bob Latta (R-OH), along with Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), announced they will co-chair the relaunch of the bipartisan, bicameral Wi-Fi Caucus. Initially founded in 2018, the Wi-Fi Caucus is dedicated to assisting Members of Congress in better understanding how Wi-Fi benefits the American public, consumers, economy, and the larger geopolitical standing of the United States. This is an interesting effort when considering that Congress passed legislation that required the FCC to fine 800 megahertz of mid-range spectrum for auction, some of which likely will come from the 6 GHz Wi-Fi band.

A Rural Polycrisis?

A polycrisis is a situation where multiple distinct problems interact and amplify each other, resulting in a more severe outcome than the sum of the individual crises. The term is being used to describe the complex interconnections between related problems, which can lead to cascading and overwhelming ompacts. The term is mostly applied to large geopolitical issues, but perhaps it can also be applied to more local issues.

Consider the numerous problems that plague rural America today. Every rural area is a little different, but much of rural America already had problems with access to healthcare, which are magnified as rural hospitals and clinics are closed. Rural America struggles with low incomes that are the result of globalization and the closure of many factories over the last decades. Much of rural America has a population crisis, in that populations are shrinking from the out-migration of younger residents, leaving an aging remaining population. Rural America has a connectivity problem since many rural areas have inadequate broadband, and even more have nonfunctional cellular coverage. The populations in rural America tend to have lower levels of achieved education. I have to think that all of these problems collectively create a polycrisis.

It’s never easy to fix a polycrisis because the problems interact with each other. As I’ve worked around the country in rural areas over the last decade or two, I’ve talked to many local governments that put high hope that better broadband can improve many of the issues that plague their area. Consider what fast, affordable broadband can mean to a rural community.

  • Telehealth becomes essential when local hospitals and clinics close. Even when they don’t close, telehealth can enable residents to consult with specialists in distant cities when the need arises. Lack of telehealth can lead to numerous negative repercussions, such reduced ability to work and earn a living.
  • A lot of communities have told me that allowing residents to work from home is the primary benefit after a rural area gets good connectivity. Working from home can allow people to find work when there are no local jobs. Working from home can mean higher household incomes, which has a positive multiplier effect across the whole community.
  • Reliable connectivity means improved education opportunities. Several studies have shown that K12 students in homes with broadband significantly outperform students in homes with no broadband. Broadband also brings the opportunity to pursue training and advanced degrees online, which improves the opportunity for higher earnings.
  • Good connectivity increases the opportunity for entrepreneurship. For example, the Etsy platform, where people can sell homemade goods and products, says that being an Etsy seller increases household income by an average of 11%.
  • Good broadband has become essential to rural agriculture, and farming communities without broadband are at a significant disadvantage to peer communities with good broadband.

Broadband alone doesn’t automatically make these things better for everybody, and communities are learning that they must pursue all aspects of solving the digital divide to make a real difference. That means not just making better broadband available. It means having broadband at affordable rates. It means making sure that everybody has access to computers and devices and knows how to use them. Communities that make a concerted effort to tackle all of the aspects of good broadband should see improvements over time in some of the issues that trouble them.

This is not to say that broadband is a panacea, and that broadband alone can fix an ailing rural community. But bringing good, affordable broadband can make things better if the community fully embraces what good broadband can bring.

CRS on LEO Broadband

The Congressional Research Service (CRS), which is a nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress, recently updated a report titled Low Earth Orbit Satellites: Potential to Address the Broadband Digital Divide.

The document seems to be a primer of satellite broadband, which I assume is for folks on Capitol Hill. It’s not a bad primer, and it lays out the latest industry understanding of the LEO satellite industry. One of the challenges CRS will have, which we all share, is keeping the information in this type of paper up to date. It seems like the facts surrounding LEO satellites shift significantly every six months.

The paper is nonpartisan in that it doesn’t take a specific stance on whether satellite broadband solves the rural digital divide. Interestingly, the paper explores this issue by diving into the comparative cost of deploying fiber versus satellite. The paper acknowledges that it’s cheaper to reach remote rural customers with satellite than with fiber. But the paper also acknowledges the high recurring cost of fully replacing satellites every five years. CRS even speculates that if LEO providers don’t meet business plan goals, they might eventually pare back on replacing satellites.

In making the cost comparison between satellite and fiber, the paper makes a common error and assigns a useful life to fiber of 20-25 years. That low expected life was introduced more than twenty years ago when the IRS suggested that fiber can be depreciated over twenty years. That tax ruling has nothing to do with the actual useful life of fiber. It turns out that the life of a specific fiber mostly relates to how often it gets cut over time. While some fiber from the 1980s has clearly deteriorated, there are still plenty of examples of fiber from forty years ago still chugging along. There have been huge improvements in fiber manufacturing and installation methods, which means that fiber deployed properly today might easily still be working 60-75 years from now – we’ll have to wait to find out. Anyway, comparing fiber costs over a more realistic timeline makes fiber look even better as a long-term investment.

The paper makes an interesting statement that fiber is used to deliver broadband with symmetrical speeds between 200 Mbps and 20 Gbps. The only ISP I can find that offers symmetrical 20 Gbps service to residents is GFiber. I’d love to hear if there are ISPs doing this. But those cited speeds miss the bigger picture. ISPs routinely buy sell 100 Gbps and even 400 Gbps connections to large businesses and carriers. There are working field trials of terabit fiber.

The paper raised the question if there will be any need for future broadband grants if LEO satellite is considered as broadband. The paper uncomfortably cites me as the genesis of that idea due to a blog that asked that question. Anybody who has been following my blog knows that I think that there will be many millions of homes missed by BEAD, and I have to wonder if satellite will have the capacity to add the millions of additional customers it will take to fully solve the rural digital divide.

The paper also tries to address the satellite cellular issue and wonders if technology improvements might negate the need for some federal programs that provide support for the build-out of terrestrial cellular networks, such as the 5G Fund for Rural America. The paper does acknowledge that many industry experts question the ability of satellites to handle the volume of traffic handled by cell sites. It’s also going to take some interesting technology to allow people to communicate with satellites from indoors and from moving cars.

Overall, this paper ought to be useful for the folks on Capitol Hill. It’s a daunting task to go to the web to answer even basic questions about the state of LEO and the broadband industry.

BEAD and Affordability

One of the big glaring weaknesses of BEAD was that the enabling legislation and the NTIA rules made it impossible to consider affordability as a criterion of selecting BEAD grant winners. A few states tried to stress affordability during the BEAD process, but were largely shut down by the NTIA. After the Benefit of the Bargain rules, consideration of affordability went out the door, along with all factors other than the construction cost per passing.

In a speech made to the Hudson Institute, NTIA Assistant Secretary Aerielle Roth was quoted as saying, “This administration does not want BEAD to become just another well-intentioned broadband program that falls short. Its mission is nothing less than to close the “digital divide” once and for all.”

Unfortunately, the BEAD infrastructure grants alone were never going to close the digital divide. When we talk about solving the rural digital divide, we’re really talking about several different issues. A primary element of solving the digital divide is broadband availability, which is what infrastructure grants tackle. BEAD focused on making sure that BEAD-eligible locations got at least one broadband option with a speed of at least 100/20 Mbps.

Solving the digital divide means two more things. First, it means making sure that people have computers and devices and know how to use them effectively. Finally, solving the digital divide means having broadband that people can afford.

Congress intended to tackle all these elements of the digital divide solution. The Digital Equity Act was intended to provide the funding needed to make sure that folks had devices and knew how to use them. That effort was going to be bolstered by BEAD non-deployment funds that didn’t get used for infrastructure. Unfortunately, NTIA and the Administration have refused to distribute the funding from the Digital Equity Act, and it appears likely that most or all of the non-deployment funds won’t be made available to States.

At the time that the BEAD legislation was approved, the ACP program was underway to provide low-income homes with a monthly $30 discount off broadband. The BEAD legislation mandated that BEAD winners enroll and use the ACP program. Unfortunately, Congress let that program lapse.

There were State Broadband Offices that tried to tackle the affordability issue through the scoring of grants. These States tried to assign a lot of grant points to ISPs that offered lower rates. For example, the proposed grant scoring in some states would have given an edge to a cooperative with $65 rates over satellite broadband priced at $120 or another ISP with $100 rates.

The BEAD legislation said that States couldn’t use BEAD rules to ‘set rates’, and there were a few States that tried to do that in their grant scoring and tried to force rates as low as $30 or $40. NTIA nixed State attempts to force lower rates even before this year’s Benefit of the Bargain rules.

It’s a shame that overall rates couldn’t be considered in BEAD, because household incomes are lower in rural areas than in non-urban areas, meaning that affordability is more of an issue in rural areas. This is not true for all BEAD areas, but many of the areas covered by BEAD are both rural and poor. According to statistics published by the Federal Housing Finance Agency at the end of 2024, 18% of rural homes have household incomes under $25,000 per year, compared to 15% in non-rural areas. There is also a significantly higher percentage of rural homes with household incomes between $25,000 and $50,000 (21% vs. 17%).

To me, the bottom line is that BEAD is not going to solve the rural digital divide since it focuses only on infrastructure. NTIA has to shoulder the blame for nixing the grant funding that would have provided devices and digital skills training. Congress has to take the blame for ignoring profitability when it required  ACP participation as a component of BEAD, and then let ACP lapse without a replacement.

AI and BEAD Non-Deployment

Yesterday, President Trump signed an Executive Order that gives the federal government the sole authority to regulate AI. The EO provides three justifications for asserting federal authority.

United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.  But excessive State regulation thwarts this imperative.  First, State-by-State regulation by definition creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups.  Second, State laws are increasingly responsible for requiring entities to embed ideological bias within models.  For example, a new Colorado law banning “algorithmic discrimination” may even force AI models to produce false results in order to avoid a “differential treatment or impact” on protected groups.  Third, State laws sometimes impermissibly regulate beyond State borders, impinging on interstate commerce.

Within 30 days, the U.S. Attorney General is required to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with the sole responsibility to challenge State AI Laws. It seems likely this will result in a series of federal lawsuits trying to preempt any State AI regulations.

Of concern to the broadband world is that the EO includes specific language that singles out BEAD grant funding. The EO says:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce, through the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, shall issue a Policy Notice specifying the conditions under which States may be eligible for remaining funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program that was saved through my Administration’s “Benefit of the Bargain” reforms, consistent with 47 U.S.C. 1702(e)-(f).  That Policy Notice must provide that States with onerous AI laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order are ineligible for non-deployment funds, to the maximum extent allowed by Federal law.  The Policy Notice must also describe how a fragmented State regulatory landscape for AI threatens to undermine BEAD-funded deployments, the growth of AI applications reliant on high-speed networks, and BEAD’s mission of delivering universal, high-speed connectivity.

In case you are wondering the extent of State AI regulations, the following map comes from BCLP, which is accompanied by a description of existing and pending AI regulations, by State. As this map shows, over half of the States already have some form of AI regulation, and only three states don’t have existing or pending AI regulations.

It’s been clear that NTIA has been seeking a mechanism for denying non-deployment funds, which are the portion of the $42.5 billion in BEAD that is not being spent on infrastructure. Current estimates are that non-deployment funds will be more than $21 billion. These funds are supposed to be distributed to States under the IIJA legislation. This EO gives NTIA the grounds for denying non-deployment funds for a lot of States.

If you read through the existing AI regulations, most are of two types. Many States have enacted legislation that makes it illegal to use AI to defraud people, adding AI to laws that already forbid using emails, telephone calls, and other forms of communication. There are also States that have legislation that tries to protect citizens privacy. There are a few States with other restrictions.

State Broadband Offices in States that have AI regulations do not have the power to overturn AI regulations, and State legislatures must act if they want to cancel AI regulations to preserve non-deployment funds. That may be a futile effort, because my best guess is that we haven’t seen the end of attempts to deny non-deployment funds and that this is only the first volley. For what it’s worth, there is opposition to overturning State regulation of AI in Congress, but it would be extraordinary for this Congress to override an Executive Order with legislation.

Future Satellite Competition

I’ve been thinking about the long-term trajectory for satellite broadband in rural areas. I saw a recent estimate that Starlink has around 2.6 million customers in the U.S. and is still growing. I have to think that most of these customers live in places that don’t have a fast broadband alternative to satellite broadband.

I got to thinking about satellite after a recent conversation with an Uber driver. She lives in a small rural town in my county, and she and most of her neighbors use Starlink today. She says that it works adequately well for the way her family uses broadband, but that it’s far too expensive. She expects to be changing to fiber in 2026 when Frontier builds fiber in her area. She said she already knows people nearby who changed to Frontier fiber that was built in 2025. I researched her neighborhood, and Frontier is building fiber with the help of a broadband grant funded by the State of North Carolina.

There has already been a lot of rural fiber built with grant funding. There are fiber construction projects underway from CAF II, RDOF, ReConnect, NTIA Tribal, and EA-CAM. States awarded a huge amount of grants from the Capital Project Funds, from ARPA, and from State general funds. My best estimate is that these various programs will fund the construction of fiber to around 8 million rural fiber passings. My estimates are that there are still 2.2 million passings to be built from these programs in 2026 and another 1.2 million passings in 2027. On top of these programs, it looks like there will be roughly another 2.5 million rural fiber passings coming from the BEAD grants that have been tentatively announced.

I don’t have a good estimate for the coming passings from rural fixed wireless construction, but there is still construction of WISP networks being funded by RDOF and other grant programs. It looks like BEAD has tentatively awarded grants for fixed wireless to a little less than half a million new passings. WISPs are building networks with speed capabilities in the range of 500 Mbps download, which is a lot faster than what is being delivered by Starlink today.

These various grant programs are going to cover a lot of rural America with fast broadband, and that is going to eat into the potential market for Starlink and Amazon LEO. Starlink faces the issue of having a price that is significantly higher than the large majority of ISPs that are building grant-funded networks. That’s something that the company can fix by lowering rates. But even with lower rates, Starlink will not match the speeds of the grant-funded networks, at least with current satellite technology.

We have no real ideas about the pricing and speed capabilities of Amazon LEO. There is a lot of speculation that the company will create interesting bundles for satellite broadband with Amazon video and shopping.

The bottom line of my speculation is that the U.S. households that will be interested in satellite broadband will be shrinking over the next few years as millions of rural homes get faster broadband alternatives from fiber or fixed wireless.

It’s also likely that there will be serious competition between Starlink and Amazon LEO as they each try to lock down a share of the U.S. market. Will the two companies collude to keep prices high, or will they devolve into the kind of fierce competition we see in the cellular industry today?

On a worldwide basis, both U.S. satellite providers are going to see significant competition from the Guowang (the National Network) from China and the Quinfan (Thousand Sails) constellation from Shanghai. My best guess is that these two companies will undercut the prices of the U.S. providers to try to corner the markets in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Starlink has a unique market opportunity today since it brings the only fast broadband option to huge numbers of homes. But in North America and Europe, those opportunities will decrease as faster terrestrial networks are constructed. Starlink’s unique monopoly disappears when Amazon LEO enters the market, and possibly gets really competitive when other worldwide constellations come online.