Fixing the Broadband Maps

There is a lot of talk about improving the FCC broadband maps. I published a blog a few weeks ago that described a bill passed by the Senate that would require a new review of the FCC broadband maps. The bill is labeled the Modernization, Accountability, and Planning (MAP) for Broadband Funding Act.

I’m all for changes that would create an accurate broadband map. But I’m fairly certain that the FCC is not going to consider making the changes that would actually improve the maps. The biggest problem with the current maps is that speeds claimed by ISPs are sometimes far different than what is being delivered. Fixing that would require the FCC to actually look at what’s in the maps and challenge ISPs that exaggerate speeds. I can’t imagine the agency adopting new rules that would saddle itself with that responsibility.

There is an existing tool that could be used  to compare claimed speeds to actual speeds. Ookla records millions of speed tests across the country for all ISPs. The FCC could buy the Ookla speed test records to compare against ISP claims. With AI and other new analytic tools, it wouldn’t be hard to compare Ookla speeds to FCC claimed speeds.

If speed tests were considered, ISPs would instantly yell that speed tests aren’t accurate enough to use to judge them. In many ways, they would be right. People often take speed tests when their broadband isn’t performing right. There are lots of homes where speeds are slower due to WiFi issues. A computer sitting close to the WiFi router will show faster speeds than a computer at the other end of a home. Many customers subscribe to lower speed tiers, which, by definition, don’t show the capability of the ISP.

But when large numbers of speed tests are used correctly, they are a valuable tool for understanding an ISP’s real performance. I’ve been lucky enough to work with counties that have purchased the full Ookla speed data set. Those tests provided them with enough data to do meaningful comparisons.

One of the things I learned in working with speed test datasets is that you must concentrate on the fastest speeds rather than average speeds. Doing so eliminates most of the concerns I discussed above. If an ISP claims data speeds of 100/20 Mbps to the FCC, but there are no speed tests over the course of a year that hit that speed, the ISP is exaggerating speeds. This kind of analysis can be used to ferret out exaggerated speed claims. This also worked in both directions – I’ve often seen faster speeds than the speeds claimed to the FCC, which means the ISP is underreporting speeds.

Speed tests can also be used to test broadband coverage claims. I was working with one county where a WISP was claiming coverage over more than half of the geography of the county. The Ookla speed test data for that ISP showed only a single speed test over the course of a year. It was clear that the WISP’s coverage claims were aspirational, not actual, and the County was able to use the Ookla results to challenge the broadband maps in the first BEAD map challenge. Without the Ookla tests, the County could not have made a map challenge, because the NTIA challenge rules wanted the County to find customers using the ISP in question and convince them to take speed tests. It’s obviously impossible to test an ISP that is not actually present.

Speed tests show all sorts of other interesting facts about ISP coverage. I’ve written several times in the past about how the speed for FWA cellular wireless quickly diminishes with distance from the tower. An FWA carrier might be delivering 300 Mbps to a customer within a short distance of a tower, but after a mile, speed drops to 100 Mbps. By two miles speed drops to 50-75 Mbps, and at three miles drop to the range of 25 Mbps. Most FWA speed claims in the FCC map will show 100 Mbps across the entire area around a tower, and much of that speed claim is overstated.

The FCC already spends a lot of money annually trying to get the mapping fabric right. But it’s pretty clear that the FCC doesn’t look at the speed data claimed by ISPs. The only time the FCC uses this data is when it published its annual report to Congress about the state of broadband. The FCC benefits by overstated maps since they tell a better story than what’s really available in rural America. If the FCC really wants to get serious about broadband mapping, why not buy the Ookla data twice per year to compare to claimed speeds?

Love Those Volunteers!

Today’s blog talks about volunteerism in the broadband/telecom industry. I was prompted to write the blog when a friend sent me the picture to the right of cookbooks published as a fundraiser by the Louisiana Chapter of the Telephone Pioneers of America. The Telephone Volunteers was a non-profit created by AT&T in 1911, first led by Theodore Vail, the famous AT&T president who oversaw the big growth of the company. The organization claims 800,000 members today. The Pioneers are organized into state and local chapters that tackle a wide range of local charitable causes. When I worked at Southwestern Bell, they gave employees one day off each year to participate in a non-profit activity organized by the Telephone Pioneers.

I know a lot of readers of this blog work for non-profits, and I know a number of people who donate time to broadband-related charitable causes. I’m involved in two non-profits in North Carolina, but this blog is not about me, but about the idea of using our accumulated industry knowledge to give back to the community.

I happen to live in an area in Western North Carolina which has very active broadband-related activities that are always looking for volunteers. There are groups here who refurbish smartphones, computers, and tablets to provide to those in the community who most need them. There are groups here who do hands-on digital training on how to use devices and apps, and how to navigate the Internet safely. There is a group here who provides smartphones and support for those getting out of long-term incarceration. There is a non-profit that advocates for policies that support broadband access. There is a lot of volunteer work in this region dedicated to resiliency and figuring out how to be better prepared for the next big storm.

I’m aware of many other volunteer efforts around the country. I know several people who help their local school systems navigate the E-Rate program to get funding for connectivity. There were a lot of people who volunteered to get households subscribed to the ACP program before Congress let the program lapse. I know several people who have been working for years to get affordable telephone rates in jails and prisons. There are several major cities with ad hoc wireless networks cobbled together by volunteers that provide broadband to households who can’t afford it.

I saw mountains of volunteers step forward in a lot of counties when they saw the opportunity to get faster broadband. There were people distributing and processing broadband surveys to understand community demand. There were a lot of people who worked on getting people to take speed tests for the map challenge processes. I witnessed a new cooperative being formed that was largely accomplished by dedicated volunteers. I remember working for cities where a lot of volunteers stepped up to pass ballot measures that authorized municipal broadband in their city.

Volunteerism is becoming increasingly important. Federal and state monies that were used to help people afford broadband have died or been cut back. I know many readers of this blog have a vast amount of telecom experience. If you have talents and haven’t thought about volunteering, you should consider it. There is a lot of fun to be had sitting in a room with a bunch of other tech geeks rebuilding computers. There is a lot of satisfaction from helping somebody learn how to safely use the Internet. You’ll probably never have more fun than an evening teaching computer safety to a group of older adults. No matter where you live, there is somebody nearby tackling broadband issues. If not, then start the effort!

Using Unlicensed Spectrum for D2D

The FCC recently adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that asks if it makes sense to give satellite providers access to unlicensed WiFi spectrum to support Direct-to-Device cellular service. The NPRM specifically looks at the use of 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. The NPRM specifically rejected the idea of using 900 MHz for satellite service.

The FCC seems all-in on the idea of satellite cellular service and has taken a number of steps recently that favor this budding industry. However, Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democratic commissioner, voiced concern about how using this spectrum might affect the many devices that rely on WiFi spectrum today.

It seems like a valid concern. WiFi has turned out to be the most important and valuable spectrum we have. The whole broadband world seems to run off WiFi modems in homes and businesses. We have outdoor WiFi hotspots to provide outdoor broadband access. WISPs largely rely on WiFi spectrum to deliver fixed wireless broadband to rural homes.

It’s easy to understand why the FCC would consider this. The agency is facing huge demand for spectrum from multiple industries. Cellular carriers want more spectrum to get ready for the upcoming introduction of 6G. Cellular carriers also need to feed the rapidly growing FWA home broadband industry. Satellite companies have an insatiable demand for spectrum since they envision eventually launching hundreds of thousands of broadband satellites. And now, the satellite cellular companies want to blanket the Earth with competing networks to deliver outdoor cellular service, and the Direct-to-Device (D2D) carriers have already requested approval to launch tens of thousands of satellites to provide outdoor cellular service. There are more requests for spectrum than what is available, so the FCC seems willing to raid the public WiFi bands to support a new industry.

This is not the first time that the FCC has allowed others to share WiFi spectrum. A number of years ago, the FCC allowed cellular carriers to use WiFi spectrum in busy markets. I recall a report from university students in Chicago who had documented that cellular usage of WiFi had killed outdoor WiFi on their campus. I don’t know if cellular companies are still dipping into WiFi now that they have been able to get more spectrum, but this was a failed effort that favored the carriers over the normal users of WiFi.

What seems to be different today is that the FCC is unabashedly pro-satellite. They seem to be giving satellite companies everything they ask for. It’s not unusual for regulators to make it easy for new technologies – the FCC took a hands-off approach to the creation of the Internet. But there seems to be a lot of risk in allowing satellite companies to broadcast WiFi from space. This idea is clearly favoring satellite carriers over WISPs.

I talked to several wireless engineers about the proposed use of WiFi spectrum, and they all voiced concerns. The satellites would blanket the countryside with new WiFi spectrum. The engineers told me that it is impossible for this to be completely neutral for a WISP. Every outdoor receiver will perceive the new use of the spectrum as interference. They said there was no way to tell how bad this might be without trying it, and that sounds like a scary experiment if it turns out that the impact is severe. It’s easy for the FCC to allow a new use of spectrum, but it’s unlikely that it would be undone quickly if there is a problem.

This is out of character for the historically slow and cautious approach that the FCC has always taken with spectrum ideas. And that’s even more the case when we’re talking about WiFi spectrum, which has proven its value many times over.

Remote Work Is Here to Stay

Working from home is still one of the most important uses of broadband, particularly in rural communities. Roberto Gallardo, who writes in Substack as the “Data Whisperer”, recently wrote an article discussing the change over time of those who work from home. For those who don’t know Roberto, he’s an Associate Professor and the Vice President for Engagement in the Agricultural Economics Department at Purdue University.

Everybody remembers the explosion of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of people decided that they liked working from home, and the percentage of those doing so has not dropped to anywhere near pre-pandemic levels.

The article starts out by comparing the percentage of those who worked from home in 2014 and 2024. Overall, the percentage of those who are working from home more than tripled over the decade. In 2014, 4.4% of the U.S. labor force worked from home, and in 2024 that had grown to 15.1%.

There is still a big disparity in the percentage of home workers in urban versus rural areas. In 2024, 16.1% of urban residents work from home while around 8.4% of those living in rural areas work from home. Gallardo credits the difference to two reasons. First, there is a higher percentage of jobs in urban areas that can be done from home. He says that over 36% of jobs in urban areas could be done from home, while only around 28% of jobs in rural areas can be done remotely.

But there is also still a difference due to the lack of good broadband in rural areas. While there has been a lot of grant funding aimed at rural America, a lot of it hasn’t been built yet. Even where there is broadband that supposedly meets the FCC definition of broadband, there are many rural ISPs that are not delivering a good enough upstream path to reliably work from home. For example, a recent Ookla report said that only about 45% of Starlink customers have speeds that meet that FCC speed definition.

One of the most interesting parts of his article is an interactive map that shows the percentage of people who work at home in each county in 2014 and 2024 compared to the number of jobs that could be done remotely. Gallardo acknowledges that a lot of remote workers work for somebody in another county or state, but this is still an intriguing map that shows the level at which remote work has become an important part of local economies. The map shows that remote work has been more accepted in New England, the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, and the Mid-Atlantic. Interestingly, the states with the highest level of remote work in 2014 had bigger gains by 2024 than other states.

As most people will do, I looked at my own county in North Carolina first. The county had 15.4% of eligible workers working remotely in 2014, which grew to 34.8% in 2024. I can attest that remote work is common here, and there are numerous people on my own block who work from home. But examining the map shows a lot of counties where the percentage of those working from home is below 10%, some at only half that level.

I’ve heard stories about how getting good broadband can transform communities. I talked to a cooperative in Alabama who told me that there were practically no rural home workers before fiber was built, but that many homes in the coop territory now have people working remotely. They said that higher incomes from remote work are transforming the economics for families and the local community, and that the fiber is also attracting some people who already work from home to move to the county.

Starlink’s Other Network

The Benton Institute recently wrote an article that reminded me that Starlink is operating a second satellite network, separate from the one used to serve residential and business broadband customers. The company announced this network, which it dubs Starshield, at the end of 2022. Today, this network is now highlighted on the SpaceX website.

Starshield is touted as a military-grade network, which in layman’s terms means a separate network that doesn’t share any traffic with commercial customers. In the U.S., the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has launched several hundred Starshield satellites. This is the federal agency that has always operated military and spy satellites. The British Ministry of Defense is also said to be migrating to the Starshield platform. Other militaries around the world that use SpaceX, like the well-known use of Starlink in Ukraine to direct drone traffic, use the normal commercial Starlink satellite platform. Benton reports that Starshield and Starlink are not yet fully separate, and that a Starlink outage affects Starshield performance, but it’s likely that the company is working towards total independence.

SpaceX touts several benefits of Starshield. They can use whatever level of encryption of traffic required by a government customer. The satellites can also carry custom payloads, which likely means spy cameras or other devices. SpaceX also says it can integrate Starshield into other satellite networks.

Since nobody I know will even be using a government spy satellite, you might wonder why I am writing about Starshield. I’ve been wondering lately about Starlink’s claim that it is interested in providing backhaul to cell sites and bigger broadband connections to rural businesses. This has always puzzled me because, at the local network level, a satellite network is no different than any other network. If Starlink were to connect to a handful of cell sites in a given rural area, the bandwidth used for the cell sites would reduce the capacity available to residential customers. There is only so much bandwidth available in a localized satellite footprint.

We know this is true, because even today, there are stories of localized Starlink areas getting overwhelmed. There were reports during the Burning Man festival last year that nearby Starlink customers complained about loss of bandwidth when festival attendees brought along their Starlink Mini satellite dishes.

This makes me wonder if Starlink plans to have separate satellites just for backhaul. We know what that might look like. OneWeb, owned by Eutelsat, provides big bandwidth to European government locations and large businesses. The company currently has around 650 satellites in orbit to support bigger bandwidth users.

It wouldn’t be hard for Starlink to carve out satellites that specialize in large customers. The company currently has 11,100 satellites in orbit and should be close to its original approved constellation of 12,000 by the end of the year. The FCC has already given the company permission to grow the constellation to 15,000. And since SpaceX is never satisfied, it’s already asked the FCC for permission to double the constellation to almost 30,000 satellites. It doesn’t seem like it would be much of a challenge for Starlink to carve out 500 satellites from the large constellation to specialize in backhaul. This would not only open up new revenue opportunities but would also mean not diluting bandwidth delivered to its millions of residential customers. This is all pure speculation on my part, but its an idea that makes sense.

Where Are the Missing BEAD Locations?

It seems that almost everybody I’ve talked to in the last week is wondering what NTIA is up to when the agency said that non-deployment funds can be used to serve locations missed by the first round of BEAD grants. The common question I’m being asked is where NTIA and State Broadband Offices are going to find more BEAD-eligible locations. It’s a great question.

I can only think of three sources of locations for that were missed by BEAD the first time around. One group of locations are the ones being turned back to State Broadband Offices when BEAD awardees decide not to accept a BEAD grant. The broadband offices have been trying to find other ISPs to take these locations at the original award price. But I already know of several examples where there are no takers – at least at the dollar level of BEAD that was awarded after the Benefit of the Bargain round. Perhaps NTIA will loosen the purse strings a bit to allow for higher awards for some of these locations. I’ve also hear speculation that unclaimed BEAD locations will all go to satellite.

This option is risky for NTIA. The first time an offer is made to a new ISP that is higher than the original award, ISPs everywhere are going to be clamoring for more money. One of the cooperative associations recently made that request. I can foresee lawsuits arising if NTIA allows increases in funding for some locations but not others.

Another potential source of locations comes from each update of the FCC mapping fabric, when new locations are added to the FCC map. Some of these are new construction, and others are corrections of the fabric. I can’t imagine that is a whole lot of places in this category, but there are always going to be some with each new map. What’s not being talked about is that with every release of a new fabric, there are also locations that are being removed from BEAD. NTIA is quietly whittling away at the BEAD grants that have already been awarded, and almost everybody I know with a BEAD grant is seeing some reduction in eligible BEAD locations.

The only other source of new BEAD locations I can think of would be from fixing the many errors introduced in the BEAD map challenge process. The only word I can use to describe the map challenge process is ludicrous. NTIA created a set of rules to challenge the BEAD maps that were impossible to comply with. I know counties, cooperatives, and other ISPs that made numerous claims to the map challenge that were denied. Many of these challenges tried to add legitimate locations that were missing from the fabric.

A much larger number of challenges tried to add locations where an ISP was falsely claiming speed capabilities of 100/20 Mbps or faster that were overstated. A successful speed challenge required a local government to find actual customers of suspect ISPs and get them to take a complicated series of speed tests at defined times and intervals. That whole process was largely unachievable, particularly when the map challenge process was rushed through. In my opinion, the folks who designed the map challenge rules were either completely out of touch with the real world, or else the process was rigged on purpose to hold down the number of BEAD-eligible locations. I’ve seen some credible estimates that there are at least a million locations that were incorrectly thrown off the BEAD map. My own back-of-the-envelope estimate, which is admittedly based only on work in about twenty counties, is that this could be more than two million locations.

I can’t imagine a process where NTIA reopens the map challenge with challenge rules that work. I could see that process dragging out for a year.

There is an easier way to do a map challenge, which would be for NTIA to buy the entire Ookla speed test database of actual speed tests and compare it against ISP speed claims in the fabric. I’ve already written a future blog about how that might work. But I suspect this would lead to lawsuits and chaos as ISPs fight to not get overbuilt with BEAD grant funding.

My gut reaction when I heard this announcement is that won’t amount to a hill of beans. I talked to several people who think this announcement is just another way for the NTIA to put off the announcement of how they will spend the remaining $22 billion in nondeployment funds. NTIA had promised to make that announcement before the end of summer – which is next week. I sure hope this was not that announcement, because I don’t think there is any hidden stash of BEAD-eligible locations that will use more than a tiny amount of the nondeployment funds.

My Favorite Telecom Books

One of my recent blog posts reviewed a new book, Digital Equity Ecosystems, by Colin Rhinesmith. A reader asked me about some of my other favorite telecom books. I have a personal interest in the history of telecom, so many of these books discuss major events in telecom history. I’m sure I’m missing some great books, but here is the list that first came to mind. Feed free to add others in the comments.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and The Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner. I’ve always been fascinated by Bell Labs and was lucky enough to visit it in its heyday. The scientists and engineers at the lab generated more than one new patent per day for new technologies.

Fundamentals of Wireless Communication by David Tse & Pramod Viswanath. This is the only textbook on the list. This describes the fundamentals of wireless communications and a huge range of wireless technologies.

Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age by Susan P. Crawford. This is an interesting look that examines how the U.S. was poised to be the world leader in broadband, but how much of the rest of the world was able to build networks that delivered faster speeds with lower prices. This is the story about an industry hijacked by a small handful of monopolies.

Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race: The Origins of Global Satellite Communications by Hugh P. Slotten. As a kid, I was fascinated by satellites and remember tracking the path of the first communications satellites, Telstar 1 and Telstar 2, across the sky at night. This is a good history of the development of satellite communications networks.

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley with a foreword by Steve Wozniak. This book describes the history of long-distance calling and how hackers learned to exploit the weaknesses in the AT&T network to steal billions of dollars of long-distance calls.

Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom by Lisa Endlich. This is a story about the 2000 telecom crash by concentrating on Lucent, the manufacturer spun off from AT&T. In a short period of time, Lucent went from the sixth largest company on the stock exchange to being in complete shambles. Great read to learn about that momentous period.

The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells & Info-Scandal by Bruce A. Kushnick. This is one of a series of books by the author that looks at how the Baby Bell companies like Bell Atlantic and BellSouth were able to gain huge concessions from regulators in return for promises to build future-looking broadband networks, and how most of those promises were broken.

Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity by Christopher Ali. This book discusses the federal broadband policies that led to the stark digital divide between urban and rural broadband. I wrote a review of this book when it first came out in 2021, and it’s still an interesting read today.

Tough Calls: AT&T And The Hard Lessons Learned From The Telecom Wars by Dick Martin. This is an interesting book written by an ex-head of public relations at AT&T that tells the story of the struggles the company faced after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the telecom market to competition.

Don’t Ignore Remediation

One of the most common tasks required when building a new fiber network, particularly when burying fiber, is fixing the damage caused during the construction process. In the industry, we refer to this work as remediation, which means, in plain English, putting everything back to the way it was before the start of construction.

There is a huge list of things that can go wrong and messes that can be made during the fiber construction process. The problem that often gets headlines is when the construction crews hit and damage other buried utilities like water, gas, electric, or other communications lines. The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) issues periodic reports that tally the reasons for damaged underground utilities, and one of their recent reports said that one-fourth of all damage to underground utilities has been coming from fiber contractors.

The more common problems that plague contractors are damages to property. The construction process can damage sidewalks and driveways, cut water system lines, cut into a buried sewer tank, or damage the utilities entering the home. I heard about a recent incident where a cut sewer line ended up filling a home with raw sewage. There are a lot of complaints made about damaged flower beds, injured shrubbery, and cut watering systems. A really common problem is the mess created from excavated dirt, particularly after it rains.

Every construction contractor is supposed to clean up any mess they made, and most do a good job. But some contracts only pay contractors for completing specific units, like the feet of fiber installed or the number of splices made, and some contractors put in only the minimal amount of effort to fix damages. Full remediation can be expensive. It might mean replacing sections of sidewalk. It might mean re-sodding grass. It definitely means carting away leftover debris.

The key to doing remediation well is to react immediately to homeowner complaints. Most ISPs understand that they will be operating the market for a long time after the contractors are gone, and don’t leave it up to the contractor to make amends. The ISPs I know who do this well have an ‘ambassador’ who immediately goes to see people who complain about problems, and who makes sure the problem gets fixed. Anybody who has worked construction knows that some homeowners get incredibly irate over any disturbance to their property, and this is not always an easy job.

There can be serious consequences for an ISP who bungles remediation. Bad local press can kill their marketing efforts. In the most extreme cases, ISPs have lost construction permits. There are a lot of examples of when construction remediation didn’t go well, but there are no sizable buried fiber projects that didn’t have plenty of stories. But some ISPs lose control of the construction and remediation process. The following are a few examples that were bad enough to make the press.

The City of Albuquerque, New Mexico issued a stop order on fiber construction being done by Ezee Fiber and Vexus Fiber. Construction contractors had hit multiple gas and water lines, including a broken water main that resulted in over $100,000 in residential damages. Crews routinely left open potholes, tore up sidewalks without restoring them, worked outside allowed hours, and failed to display proper identification. The City pulled the ISPs’ permits and required the ISPs to comply with strict new regulations, including stricter work area rules, a 30-day notice for residents before construction, and fines for violations of $500 per day, per event.

The Village of Orland Park, Illinois, ordered a complete freeze on Astound Broadband after the company cut an underground electrical line that knocked out power to 300 homes during freezing weather. The village also had numerous complaints about unrepaired property damage and open holes left in public sidewalks. The village required stricter rules before allowing a resumption of construction.

As expensive as mediation can be, it’s not as expensive as the lost goodwill of a community that will likely manifest in lower penetration rates.

The Consequences of Shutting Copper Networks

AT&T and Verizon (and now the newly purchased Frontier) have continued with their big push to shut down copper networks. There are good reasons to finally walk away from this obsolete technology. Copper networks are largely far past the end of economic life and are rotting on the poles. Vandalism is rampant since the price of copper is making it attractive for people to rip down copper for the resale value. A large majority of customers who have a good alternative have fled the copper networks, so there are fewer people each year on the remaining copper networks.

But there are still good policy reasons for not tearing down the networks. For many rural households, a telephone landline is the only way to reliably reach 911 or to make the daily calls needed to connect to doctors, banks, and other necessities of daily life. The FCC and state regulators have all said they support tearing down copper as long as customers have an equivalent alternative for voice. And that’s where the rub comes. The Internet is full of stories of people who have lost their copper with no alternative available. Unless a telco is replacing copper with fiber, they generally tell customers to change to wireless broadband. Everybody who lives in rural America knows that cell coverage is poor or nonexistent in much of rural America. But the lack of cell coverage doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for the big telcos that want to get rid of the copper.

People can always change to Starlink, assuming they live in a place where they don’t have to cut down a bunch of trees or put up an expensive tall pole to receive service. But this means replacing a $30 landline bill with a $130 Starlink bill. Even then, a customer has to be sophisticated enough to subscribe to a WiFi calling service through a web connection and worry about losing 911 when power goes out.

I recently read an article on Medium by Bruce Kushnick that points out another motivation for the big telcos to tear down copper. When a telco eliminates the last copper infrastructure in a state, it is theoretically no longer subject to Title II traditional regulation. The FCC and courts have rules that broadband and voice services carried across all other technologies are subject to Title I regulation as an information service.

This is a big deal that is not being talked about. Carriers subject to Title II regulation are required to offer just and reasonable rates. Title II carriers are subject to strict rules about protecting customer information. Title II carriers are subject to all sorts of rules for things like having specific rules about when and how a customer can be disconnected for nonpayment. Title II carriers are subject to mandatory obligations to interconnect with other carriers.

If a telco can change to become regulated by Title I rules, all of these regulatory obligations would go away. If a big telco could get every single customer off copper in a state, they’d have a good case to make that they are no longer subject to any Title II regulation. I’m positive that this is where AT&T and Verizon are headed. They would probably have to petition a state to make the change, but in most states they will win their argument.

An argument that can be made that smaller telco that has fully converted to fiber could petition to walk away from Title II regulation today. I haven’t heard of anybody who has tried this because there are still advantages to sticking with Title II regulation. Small telcos aren’t ready to cavalierly walk away from the ability to interconnect with other carriers. Many small telcos don’t want to lose the ability to participate in various subsidy programs funded by the Universal Service Fund or from similar State funds.

But if AT&T or Verizon are successful in walking away from Title II regulations, even if it’s only in a few states, then I expect we’ll see smaller telcos doing the same thing, particularly if the FCC guts the High Cost as it is contemplating. It’s odd that the whole Title II regulatory scheme is so closely aligned with copper, but that alignment is going to be challenged when the big telcos no longer have any copper.

Broadband Shorts September 2026

The following are topics I found interesting, but which don’t warrant a full blog – although the first item might still be expanded.

NTIA Announces a New Round of BEAD Funding. In a surprise announcement, NTIA told state broadband offices it is going to allow them to hold a new round of infrastructure grant awards using some of the money from the leftover non-deployment funds. I remember at one point that the agency said that BEAD has effectively solved the rural broadband problem. But this announcement acknowledges that there are still locations that won’t have good broadband after BEAD has been fully implemented. Many of the locations that will likely be part of new awards are those that current grant awardees are walking away from. ISPs have been loudly complaining that the level of funding from the Benefit of the Bargain round of BEAD pushed the awards too low to make economic sense, particularly considering the current high rate of inflation related to telecom construction. States are still eagerly awaiting news of the disposition of the rest of the non-deployment funds, which at this point represent more than half of the funding for BEAD established by Congress.

AT&T Stops Reporting Copper Customers. In its latest quarterly report, AT&T stopped reporting on the number of copper customers still using DSL. The company is still reporting on legacy revenues, and the company said that the legacy segment revenues dropped by $570 million for the quarter compared to a year earlier. I think there are likely several reasons why the company made this change. First, they are in the midst of a major effort to walk away from copper technology across the country, and it’s likely that they don’t want to highlight the number of people who are being booted from DSL. I’ve seen estimates that they will have walked away from hundreds of copper wire centers by the end of this year. Also, by only reporting on gains in fiber and FWA customers, they are painting a more positive picture of growth, without acknowledging that a lot of the customers for those two technologies are changing technology due to discontinued copper. One annoyance of not reporting copper customers is that we no longer know how many total broadband customers the company is serving.

SpaceX Continues to Lobby Against the High-Cost Fund. On several occasions over the last few months, SpaceX has told the FCC that the $4.5 billion High-Cost program that is part of the Universal Service Fund has outlived its purpose and should be phased out. In two different filings at the FCC in August, the satellite company says that the High-Cost program should be discontinued and that the federal government is now subsidizing rural companies to compete with Starlink. That’s an interesting argument that says the federal government shouldn’t be using money to overbuild satellite. Rural telcos and cooperatives counter this argument, pointing out that Starlink has major capacity issues and can’t serve everybody in rural areas, while small ISPs are still willing to serve everybody. The FCC is reconsidering every aspect of the Universal Service Fund, and we should start hearing their intentions over the next quarter.

Texas Pause of BEAD Funding is Still in Effect. Under pressure from the legislature, the Texas Broadband Development Office put the BEAD grant process on hold. The newly seated Texas Comptroller Dan Huffines, who oversees the broadband office, ordered a comprehensive review and audit of the BEAD process. This effort was the result of several elected officials claiming that too many locations were awarded to satellite broadband, and that satellite companies are also getting significant payment upfront when they sign a BEAD contract. It’s possible that the freeze won’t be lifted until the legislature returns in January.

Broadband Adoption to Drop? Several national witnesses told a Pennsylvania House committee in an August hearing that the State’s next big challenge with broadband will be keeping households connected. They warned that the changes in 2027 coming from the One Big Beautiful Bill, like another big increase in healthcare costs, are going to make it a lot harder for homes to afford a broadband connection. One witness estimated that 233,000 Pennsylvanians in the lowest income quintile are in danger of not being able to afford broadband.

Stock Buybacks Instead of Expansion. Elliott Investment Management has been pressuring Deutsche Telekom to pursue stock buybacks rather than pursue the major merger with T-Mobile. Elliott is a large hedge fund that is known for activism and putting pressure on companies it has an ownership share in to stress short-term returns over long-term strategies. The company is known for pushing through cost-cutting and similar actions at companies like Crown Castle, Southwest Airlines, and Salesforce. Customers of the big companies would rather see companies roll profits back into infrastructure, technology, and customer service rather than using profits to buy back stock to benefit stockholders.