The Human Touch

Fierce Network recently had an interesting article about Consumer Cellular. This is a cellular MVNO that you might not have heard of. For those not familiar with the term, an MVNO is a cellular company that buys wholesale minutes and data from one of the large cellular carriers and markets the cellular product under its own brand name. Consumer Cellular operates on the AT&T network.

The company was founded over thirty years ago, aligns with AARP, and has always marketed to older cellular customers. Consumer Cellular stresses affordable cell plans, and its average revenue per customer is around $30 per month. The most interesting thing about the company is that it is growing while many other MNVOs are shrinking. The company has grown to over 4.4 million customers and is still seeing continued customer growth.

Consumer Cellular credits its success to the fact that it doesn’t use AI chatbots to answer online customer inquiries, as is being done with most other cellular companies. Consumer Cellular answers all customer calls with a live person.

The company is also rapidly expanding retail stores at a time when some of the bigger companies have been closing retail stores. Consumer Cellular opened its first retail store in Florida in 2022 and now has over 70 locations. The company has plans to expand to between 200 and 300 stores. The company sees big benefits from the retail stores. Customers who enroll at the stores have lower churn. The company says that people who visit a store also tend to buy higher-end phones and subscribe to larger monthly plans after they can see the options in person compared to online.

Most ISPs can’t duplicate Consumer Cellular’s success. The company is unique because of its older demographic. Consumer Cellular has embraced something that many smaller ISPs have known for years. Small ISPs universally tell me that one of the key secrets to success is that they know their customers. Smaller ISPs have thrived on having customer service calls answered live and having knowledgeable technicians. I know ISPs competing against big cable companies who say their live and responsive customer service is one of their primary advantages when competing against a big cable company.

However, this is changing, even for many smaller ISPs. Not all customers want to talk to a person. Consumer Cellular is unique because of its older demographic, but ISPs serve customers of all ages. Many customers would rather communicate using chat, text, social media, or email. I see many of my clients expanding the ways that customers can communicate with them. The ultimate customer service platform would give each customer the choice of how to communicate. But that can be expensive for ISPs that don’t have a lot of customers.

At least one big ISP went to the opposite extreme. For a long time, Starlink had no live customer service reps, and customers were expected to interface through an AI chatbot. The web is full of reviews from Starlink customers who got frustrated because they couldn’t talk to a person and walked away from the company. However, the company now has some live customer service reps based in Latin America that can be reached after customers start with a chatbot. Starlink has an unusual customer service challenge since it operates worldwide across a huge range of languages.

Some of the biggest ISPs are already experimenting with AI bots on customer service websites, meaning customers are chatting with a computer instead of a person. If they are not already being approached, I expect smaller ISPs will be seeing salespeople offering to integrate AI into their processes. I would caution smaller companies about taking this plunge. There is a lot of rumbling from large companies that AI customer service isn’t acting the way they were hoping for. The AI industry is still young, and there is likely going to be a shakeout at some point where a lot of the companies offering services using somebody else’s AI platform could disappear overnight. Small ISPs should think hard before giving up their local advantage and letting computers talk to their customers.

What Happened to Accelerated BEAD?

The BEAD road has been a long one. BEAD was first created by Congress in November 2021, meaning we’re now more than four years into the program. There are now a handful of BEAD projects under construction in a few states, but in most places, the BEAD grant program is still mired in the paperwork process that precedes releasing funds to ISPs.

To contrast BEAD with other large broadband programs, two large federal grant programs were approved by Congress in March 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). I estimate that the Coronavirus State and Local Recovery Fund (SLFRF) funded at least $9 billion in fiber projects. The Capital Project Funds (CPF) funded at least $11.5 billion in fiber projects. These programs were initiated only nine months before BEAD, yet the construction for awards for both programs must be completed by the end of this year.

That is blazingly faster than the BEAD timeline. BEAD proponents will rattle off a list of reasons why BEAD has taken so long, and I’ve even talked to some people who think the long BEAD timeline was intentional. A few States like Louisiana now have BEAD construction underway. But on the whole, there are still a lot of states that haven’t yet pulled the trigger.

In case you haven’t seen it, NTIA has a website that tracks the last major hurdles for each state to final federal approval. This website shows

  • Three states – California, Illinois, and Oklahoma – are still waiting for approval from NTIA for their Final Proposal that describes the BEAD grants they want to award.
  • 15 states and territories have NTIA final approval but are still waiting for NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) to approve the paperwork. NIST’s role is to make sure the grant paperwork is complete and meets the requirements of the original BEAD legislation.
  • 15 more states and territories have made it through NTIA and NIST approval, but still have not signed a contract with NTIA on the use of the BEAD funding. There is no way to know how much of this delay might be the typical delay from state and NTIA lawyers haggling over contracts versus states that are having disputes over contract requirements.
  • 23 states and territories have made it through all of these steps and are free to begin negotiating contracts with grant winners. I’ve heard from ISPs in some states that getting through the contract issue requires a lot of final paperwork and effort, but this seems to differ by state.

You might recall that before the election in 2024, Louisiana had made it through the BEAD process and was ready to start making grant awards. There were three or four other states that were very close behind.

When the new administration came in, one of the first things we heard from Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, was that the BEAD process would be accelerated to put the grant funds to use. He was highly critical of the prior administration that hadn’t yet connected any households to broadband by the end of 2024. Everybody in the industry was hoping that NTIA was going to speed up the process.

However, the BEAD process went into a deep freeze while the NTIA decided what it wanted to do with the program. It took until June 6 last year before NTIA announced new Benefit of the Bargain rules. By then, almost all of the states had conducted BEAD grant application rounds and had identified potential winners. The Benefit of the Bargain required states to start over. It set a cap on the BEAD grant awards in every state, and many original potential winners dropped out of the grant process. We’re now back close to the same place the program would have been a year ago, with a number of states having BEAD winners. It’s pretty easy to argue that NTIA added nearly an additional year to the BEAD process. NTIA will say it was worth it since a lot less funding is being awarded. I’d bet the folks who will wait an extra year to see construction, or those who are now getting satellite instead of fiber, aren’t big fans of the extra delays.

FCC Alert on Cybersecurity Risks

The FCC recently took the unusual step of warning telecom companies about an increased risk of ransomware attacks. The FCC is warning telecom companies to regularly patch their systems, enable multifactor authentication, and segment their networks to avoid falling victim to ransomware attacks. The alert cited data that shows a fourfold increase in attacks on telecom companies from 2022 to 2025.

In the alert, the FCC said it has become aware over the past year of increased ransomware incidents involving small-to-medium-sized communications companies. These attacks have disrupted service, exposed company and customer information, and have locked ISPs and carriers out of critical files.

The FCC alert talks about how ransomware works and offers advice on how to protect against the problem. The FCC also offers advice on how to respond to a ransomware scammer, including advice for contacting the FCC and the FBI.

The most interesting recommendation was to monitor the cybersecurity practices of your critical vendors, which I take to mean vendors who supply network electronics or software systems. The FCC warns that a significant number of telecom intrusions have come from weaknesses in systems supplied by vendors. I’m not really sure how a small ISP is supposed to monitor this, because every major vendor you work with is going to swear that they have safe practices.

The FCC alert includes all of the standard cybersecurity practices related to regularly backing up data and training employees to avoid phishing and other bad practices. They also say that every ISP ought to have an incident response plan of how to deal with cybersecurity problems and to test it regularly.

An appendix to the FCC alert lists some best practices that are being recommended by the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council. This is a group formed that includes the FCC,  large ISPs, and carriers. This list recommends taking additional steps like requiring validation of software patches before using them.

This Council also strongly recommends using the least-privilege principle (PoLP) for network access. This is a process that limits access to critical software systems only to those who need access. It also involves granting minimum access rights so that users can only access the parts of a system they need while blocking access elsewhere. It can mean granting people temporary access only for the duration of a needed task. Finally, this means granting access by job function, and not by user identity.

I’s obviously impossible to fully protect a company from external attacks, as was witnessed when the Salt Typhoon hackers gained access to a number of giant corporations and government agencies that supposedly have world-class cybersecurity. But it’s worth reviewing your practices and systems, because of the downside of being unlucky enough to be a victim of one of these attacks.

The FCC’s Spectrum Challenge

The FCC has been tasked by Congress to find and auction 800 megahertz of mid-range spectrum. This was a key element of the One Big Beautiful Bill that planned to use the proceeds from spectrum auctions to offset other costs created by the bill. The bill specifically requires the FCC to auction 100 megahertz of spectrum in the upper C-Band, located at 3.98 – 4.2 GHz.

The new requirement to auction that spectrum has resulted in a strong response from the aviation industry and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This new controversy is a perfect example of the challenges the FCC is going to face as it tries to free up 800 megahertz of spectrum. Proposing to change any mid-range spectrum is going to rile up controversy and opposition from those who care about a given spectrum band.

In this case, the FAA’s concern is about interference. Apparently, they don’t want to take any chance of interference from cellular companies that would negatively affect airline altimeters. I think anybody who flies is on the FAA’s side – if they are concerned, I am concerned.

The FAA released new altimeter standards in 2023 that required changes to altimeters to be able to ignore any interference from the lower C-Band spectrum located at 3.7-3.98 GHz. Even though there is a gap between the lower C-band and the 4.2-4.4 GHz band that is used for altimeters, the FCC was worried about interference.

The FAA immediately reacted when Congress directed the FCC to auction off the 3.98 – 4.2 GHz band that sits directly adjacent to the altimeter spectrum. The FAA recognizes the reality that there are radios that don’t do a great job of fitting precisely in the spectrum band they are supposed to use.

The FAA warns that existing altimeters, including those that were retrofitted to meet the 2023 changes, are not going to be able to filter out interference from the upper C-Band spectrum. The FAA tracks reports of interference, and by the summer of 2025, it had received 659 reports of potential C-band interference. After analyzing the reports, the FAA identified 118 events that were directly attributable to lower C-band interference, and this was for spectrum that is not directly adjacent to the altimeter spectrum bands.

The FCC has a major dilemma since Congress specifically ordered the upper C-band spectrum to be auctioned. I’m not sure how the agency can resolve this other than by getting Congress to change the directive. The FCC could spend a lot of money to move altimeters to a different spectrum band, but there aren’t any convenient bands that meet the criteria. This would likely require the FCC to fund new altimeters.

Other wireless users are already starting to lobby to leave certain bands of spectrum alone as the FCC searches for 800 MHz of mid-range spectrum. Rural WISPs and others are already heavily lobbying for the FCC to leave CBRS spectrum alone, which is currently being used for rural broadband. The really big fight is going to come if the FCC wants to take any portion of the unlicensed 6 GHz spectrum that is being used for WiFi 7. The military had originally said it would go along with some changes in the mid-range spectrum bands, but already seems to be retracting from that commitment.

I don’t envy the FCC’s job of auctioning the spectrum as directed by Congress. I predict big lobbying battles and probably big lawsuits before much spectrum actually makes it to an auction.

The AI Boom and Broadband

I’ve written several blogs recently about the impact of AI on broadband. For example, it’s becoming clear that a lot of AI applications will require better upload broadband speeds. ISPs that haven’t yet upgraded upload speeds will likely find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, similar to what happened to cable companies during the pandemic, when it became clear that upload speeds were inadequate to support multiple folks working and schooling from home. I also wrote a blog that discussed the big increase in web traffic that has sprung up from AI web crawlers that constantly search the web for new content.

There are other, more subtle, impacts from the AI boom. One of the unexpected issues is the sudden shortage of electricians in regions where AI data centers are being constructed. Electricians are needed during the massive effort to wire a new data center used for AI. What was unexpected is that data centers permanently employ multiple electricians to maintain the cooling systems and other ongoing needs at an AI data center. Data centers are offering attractive salaries and benefits and luring electricians who would otherwise have been busy building new houses or maintaining existing ones.

I’ve been reading stories about parts of the country where there is a sudden shortage of electricians. This can impact any ISP or other business that wants to build or upgrade a building. Folks might be surprised to know that ISPs use electricians regularly when they add new equipment or build new outdoor huts, cabinets, and repeater sites.

A more subtle impact of an electrician shortage is that it makes it harder to train new electricians. Most new electricians begin their career by being an apprentice to a licensed electrician, and if those electricians are taking full-time jobs at data centers, they are no longer working with new apprentices. Admittedly, a shortage of electricians is mostly a local issue, but it can be a real concern to ISPs who are trying to quickly expand networks.

Of more consequence is the impact that rapid data center expansion is having on the global market for memory chips. The memory market is under huge stress. While this market has historically seen boom-and-bust cycles, this time is different.

AI servers require far more memory per system than consumer devices, so the AI build-out is snagging a disproportionate share of global chip capacity and creating shortages, as suppliers prioritize orders for hyperscalers and vendors specializing in AI servers. This sudden market shift means fewer memory chips for consumer devices. For now, that is triggering higher prices for smartphones, computers, automobiles, and other consumer electronics.

But industry experts say this is not a cyclical shortage caused by a temporary mismatch in supply and demand. This is instead a permanent reallocation of the world’s silicon wafer capacity. For decades, the companies that made DRAM and NAND Flash for smartphones and PCs were the primary drivers for chip production. Today, the huge demand from hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon has flipped the market. In the last year, we’ve seen companies like Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology leave the consumer chip market. These manufacturers, and others, have pivoted to making higher-margin enterprise-grade components. Every wafer allocated to Nvidia is no longer available for a smartphone or consumer laptop.

Manufacturers of consumer electronics live on thin margins. This includes vendors like TCL, Transsion, Realme, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, and Huawei. There are already rumors of these companies discontinuing lines of electronics that they don’t think are marketable at higher prices. Anything they continue to make will be sold at a much higher price since memory is 15% to 20% of the bill of materials for most electronics. Worst are the stories leaking out from these vendors that they are being asked to pre-pay for multiple years of chips to even be included in the supply chain.

Telecom companies need a lot of memory devices. The electronics used in networks are packed with chips. A more subtle impact over time will be the many broadband customers who find themselves unable to afford a new computer or tablet. This is also going to puta huge crimp on firms who have been refurbishing computers to support low-income homes. We’re just starting to see the impact of this change today, and chip experts say the full impact won’t be felt by the end of this year.

Onshoring Customer Service

In one of the oddest actions I ever remember seeing at the FCC, the agency plans to vote on rules later this month that will curtail the use of overseas customer service by companies regulated by the FCC. I describe this as odd because it’s not clear to me that the FCC has the authority to tell ISPs, cellular carriers, and cable companies how to operate their day-to-day business. The FCC press release refers to  customer service, but I assume this also applies to overseas technical support.

The FCC is considering the following changes:

  • Onshoring Incentives. The FCC will encourage carriers to return call-center jobs to the U.S.
  • English Proficiency Standards. They are considering a requirement that foreign-based customer service agents must be proficient in American Standard English.
  • Location Disclosure. Companies must disclose to customers if an agent is located overseas.
  • Right to Transfer. Customers must be given an option to transfer to a U.S.-based agent.
  • Call Volume Caps. The FCC wants to limit the percentage of calls that can be handled by foreign agents.

The FCC says its proposed action is for security purposes since foreign call centers present a higher risk of not protecting customers’ personal data. The FCC insinuates that overseas call centers have been linked to the rise of robocalls and fraud, which may be true, but I’ve never heard of this before. The FCC says the changes are also intended to create U.S. job growth.

A quick review of the biggest carriers shows that Charter already uses 100% U.S.-based customer service agents. The FCC made the company agree to onshore customer service for its merger with Cox, but that was something the company had already promised when it first announced the Cox merger. Verizon mostly uses U.S. agents but has some limited overseas customer service. The big companies that will impacted the most are Comcast, AT&T, and T-Mobile, each of which uses a lot of overseas customer service agents. I’ll be curious to find out how smaller ISPs send this work overseas.

There is little doubt that this will be popular with many in the public. It’s not hard to find complaints on the web of customers who don’t like talking to somebody overseas. However, there are also a lot of online complaints about big companies like Charter, which uses U.S.-based customer service. I’ve always wondered how much people dislike overseas agents compared to the degree that they don’t like talking to any agents who use prepared scripts to answer questions.

One of the first things that came to mind when I read this is that it might provide an incentive for the big carriers that use overseas agents to transition to AI customer service. That would eliminate overseas workers, but it might also eliminate U.S. jobs. My gut feeling is that we are still not close to a day when a company can safely hand customer service completely to AI, but that doesn’t mean that some companies won’t try it. I suspect the public will hate talking to AI even more than talking to a live person, here or overseas.

The biggest question that will have to be answered is whether the FCC has the authority to order this. I can’t think of any section of the FCC code that would give the agency the authority to mandate the manner in which ISPs and carriers conduct day-to-day business. It will be interesting to see if anybody challenges them on this.

I also find it curious that this doesn’t feel like the light-touch regulation that was promised by the current FCC Chairman. This seems like new regulations that will add a lot to the cost of regulatory compliance. As I said at the beginning of the blog, it’s an odd idea on many fronts.

A New Voice Feature

T-Mobile is currently beta testing a real-time translation service for T-Mobile cellular customers. The service will offer translations between fifty languages. The company is touting this as the first real-time agentic AI platform used on a wireless network.

There are already a lot of translator services available today like Google Translate, JotMe, Wordly.ai, Maestro AI, and others. The advantage of the T-Mobile offering is that it would a built-in feature that comes embedded with cellular service – a device that billions of people carry around all day.

It will be interesting to see how the beta test goes, because the biggest challenge of any translation service is to be able to translate quickly enough not to introduce big pauses into a conversation. Failure to do that makes a conversation feel robotic. Meeting that kind of real-time requirement will require low latency on the network as well as software that can translate quickly somewhere in the backend.

This is the first significant new voice feature I can remember that has been introduced since talk-to-text was introduced by Apple Siri in 2011. This is an amazing use of AI. For Star Trek nerds like me, this is the first baby step towards a universal translator. This feature, if it works as promised, will make it lot easier for people around the world to communicate.

One of the best parts of this feature is that it’s not tied to having a T-Mobile smartphone that requires specific software. The translations are done in the cloud, and T-Mobile says this can be made to work on any phone used by a T-Mobile customer, including flip-phones.

I keep hearing that the telecom companies are integrating AI into their businesses. It’s easy to see the AI agents that are popping up on customer service screens. Most of the articles and reviews I read say that a lot of people are unwilling to interact with AI agents, and it’s going to be interesting to see how big companies react if their customers won’t use the AI tools the companies prefer.

Much of the AI being introduced by telecom companies is being done out of sight. Industry technical news keeps describing initiatives for network owners to use AI to better manage networks. I’ve written a few blogs about this topic, and I suspect that reliance on AI instead of experienced technicians is a contributing factor to the big national network and service outages and contributes to it taking longer than suspected to diagnose and clear problems.

If AI is going to win over a lot of people if it can be used for features that people want to use. In today’s world, a lot of people know people who aren’t conversant in English. An easy real-time translator service would quickly broaden the horizon for a lot of us.

It’s certainly a marketing coup for T-Mobile if this works and if it takes others a while to offer a competitive alternative.The most interesting question for me is what’s next – what other AI features are on the way?

The Rapid Evolution of Transport Lasers

The Internet in the U.S. relies on long-haul and middle-mile fiber routes that are used to connect every part of the country to the core internet hubs located in Virginia, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles. New York, and Denver. In more recent times, the growth of data centers has created additional major Internet hubs in places like Phoenix, Silicon Valley, Portland, and Seattle.

Like every other part of the industry, there has been a constant evolution in the lasers that were used to power the long-haul fiber routes. When I first got involved in working with companies providing transport in the early 2000s, the transport electronics delivered 1 GB (gigabit) speeds – something that everybody at the time thought was blazingly fast. Today, millions of homes are buying 1 GB broadband.

The Internet was exploding during the 2000s as millions of people started to buy broadband provided by DSL and cable modems. Gigabit transport routes became full, and carriers knew they had to upgrade. The IEEE standard for 10 GB transport was adopted in 2002, and over the next decade, it became the standard for transport fiber routes.

Of course, 10-gigabit transport routes grew full as growth continued, and carriers were looking for more speed. The IEEE standard for 40 GB transport was adopted in 2010, although a few vendors, like Nortel, had started to market 40 GB products as early as 2008. The biggest technical breakthrough for 40 GB lasers was the introduction of Digital Signal Processing, which better handled light dispersion across long-haul fiber routes. The higher speed became the industry standard for transport by 2012.

Next in the evolution were 100 GB lasers. This standard was also adopted by IEEE in 2010. This faster technology was slower to be adopted because of the relatively high cost of the lasers. By 2014, there were only about 600 deployments of this technology worldwide. But over time, 100 GB lasers became standard for anybody building transport fiber routes.

The next step in progressively faster lasers was 400 GB, with the IEEE standard adopted in 2017. Network owners started to introduce these faster lasers into networks in 2020, and by 2022, 400 GB lasers became the new standard for long-haul transport.

The general continuous growth of Internet traffic, and the new demand from AI, is pushing transport fiber owners to seek even faster lasers. A few vendors introduced 800 GB lasers as early as 2019. Ciena announced the 800 GB WaveLogic 5 laser in 2019, and Infinera and Windstream successfully tested a 800 GB long-haul route in 2020. While 400 GB lasers are still the most affordable option, Nokia and Ribbon say that they are now seeing a lot of demand for 800 GB lasers.

Ciena says it is seeing demand for even faster lasers and has installed a few fiber routes with 1.6 TB lasers for Lumen in the U.S., e& in the USA, and Cirion in Latin America.

The faster speeds are also moving down market into last-mile uses. Nokia is selling a lot of 800 GB pluggable fiber electronics for inside data centers.

This has been an amazingly fast evolution. As recently as 2019, almost everybody in the industry was still buying 100 GB lasers for transport, and in the few years since then, we’ve seen increases to 400 GB, then 800 GB, and now the beginnings of 1.6 TB. I remember seeing a PowerPoint at a trade show twenty or so years ago where a vendor claimed that within twenty years we’d be seeing terabit lasers. It was a bold prediction at a time when 10 GB lasers were cutting-edge technology, but it turned out to be a good prediction. I’m not even going to try to predict the speeds we’ll be seeing twenty years from now.

Technology Shorts March 2026

Today’s blogs looks at some of the recent breakthroughs coming out of labs and research facilities that could have practical applications that could eventually benefit the broadband industry.

Rainbow Chip. Researchers at the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science have created a chip that turns a single laser beam into a “frequency comb” that produces dozens of light channels at once. As often happens in science, the breakthrough was discovered by accident when the team was working on a project related to Lidar.

Normal laser beams used in telecom are not precise and transmit a closely bunched group of similar light frequencies that scientists refer to as a messy light signal. This new chip creates multiple laser beams in a range of colors, with each beam precisely at a single light frequency. The chip output is called a comb because there is a clear gap between each different beam, so there is no interference between separate light beams. This chip could revolutionize fiber optic technology by simultaneously sending dozens of even-spaced light channels at precise frequencies through a single fiber, with no interference between colors. Scientists have created precise laser beams in the lab for research, but this chip could bring the technology into practical use.

Energy Efficient Wireless Chips. Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a new device that could revolutionize wireless technology. The breakthrough is the creation of a surface acoustic wave (SAW) phonon laser that can create ultra-high frequency vibrations on a single chip. The new device layers silicon, piezoelectric lithium niobate, and indium gallium arsenide to amplify radio vibrations much like a diode laser amplifies light. SAW technology is already embedded in smartphones, GPS, and radar systems and is used to filter signals and reduce noise. However, today’s SAW technology  requires multiple chips and external power. The new phonon technology simplifies this to a single chip that can be powered by a battery. The new chip can also reach far higher frequencies and currently operates at about 1 gigahertz, but has a clear development path to boost this ability to tens or even hundreds of gigahertz.

Efficient Power Module. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory unveiled a breakthrough that could squeeze more power from existing electricity supplies. They’ve created a silicon-carbide-based power module they call ULIS (Ultra-Low Inductance Smart). The ULIS device dramatically improves the way electricity is converted and delivered inside devices. Most electronic devices contain a power module, which houses the power electronics that regulate the flow of electricity inside the device. The ULIS device is smaller and lighter while bringing up to a five times improvement in power efficiency. The device would make sense in data centers, electric grids, and any devices using next-generation electronics, like in ships and aircraft. The secret to the success of the new device is that it slows parasitic inductance by seven to nine times, which is the resistance to the process of changing or converting an electric current inside a device.

Some of the benefits come from its new design. Traditional power modules stack components inside a box-like package, while ULIS has found a way to arrange components in a two-dimensional octagon. This creates a smaller light-weight device that also minimizes magnetic interference. One of the most interesting features is that the device can be controlled wirelessly, without needing to be connected to communications cables.

ULIS is expected to impact multiple sectors. Probably the most beneficial is in the electric grid. Today, the devices in the grid require electricity to be converted into a usable form before entering every smart device in the grid. The ULIS device could make this conversion more efficiently and with less power loss in the grid.

Cooling Data Centers with Hot Water. One of the biggest challenges of large data centers is having a large supply of cool water for cooling. At CES this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced the company is using water at 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) to cool supercomputers. This is a big breakthrough because hot water doesn’t require water chillers and the accompanying power-hungry compressors. Those devices account for about 6% of the power used at a data center. This breakthrough could be a boon for two-phase liquid cooling systems. Most liquid cooling systems today circulate water, which then must be cooled before reuse. A two-phase system extracts more heat from computers by using the heat to convert the liquid to a gas and then converting back to a liquid. This is not a new technology and has been used on a limited basis for a few years, but the NVIDIA announcement will prompt data center owners to consider hot water as the primary way to cool data centers. The announcement instantly tanked the stock prices of companies that make cool-water chillers for data centers.

Rising Costs of Broadband Construction

The Fiber Broadband Association, along with its consultant, Cartesian, published its annual report on the cost of fiber deployment. The report was compiled from online surveys and phone interviews conducted in September and October 2025.

The report includes a lot of interesting statistics and trends for anybody getting ready to build fiber.

  • FBA believes that 60% of the homes in the country are now passed with fiber. There were 11.8 million fiber passings built in 2025, including 8.1 million to new locations.
  • The median price of fiber construction that was garnered from the survey was $18.00 per foot for buried construction and $8.00 per foot for aerial construction. That was a 3% increase in cost for buried construction and a 14% increase for aerial construction.
  • Labor is still the largest component of cost. Labor represented 72% of the cost of buried construction and 64% of the cost of buried construction.
  • The method of underground construction matters. It cost 40% less to directly bury fiber compared to the cost of putting fiber into new conduit. Trenching had the highest cost, at 60% more than plowing and 6% more than directional boring.
  • 92% of survey respondents saw higher costs for fiber construction in 2025 compared to 2024.

The most relevant news from the report is that 88% of the respondents expect a cost increase for construction in 2026. 62% of respondents expect a ‘slight’ cost increase of less than 10%. 26% expect a cost increase of more than 10%. 9% expect costs to stay the same, and 3% expect costs to decrease by less than 10%.

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents said they expect fiber deployment costs to rise “slightly” (less than 10%) compared to 26% who expect a “significant” increase of 10% or more. About 9% expect costs to stay the same, and 3% expect costs to decrease by 10% or less. Considering all responses, 88% of respondents expect costs to increase again in 2026.

Note that the cost increases experienced in 2025 and the expected increases expected for 2026 are national averages. Responses to the survey came from 38 different states, and there was a fairly even split between urban, suburban, and rural fiber builders. National averages blur the significant differences in the cost of labor in different parts of the country. National averages also even out the differences between the big fiber builders who build huge numbers of miles of fibers, and smaller ISPs building smaller projects. The labor costs in a national survey also include projects built with prevailing wages, projects built at union wages, and projects built at market non-union wages. The averages also blend the costs from ISPs that build with employees versus those using contractors.

I have to wonder if all of the folks who plan to build fiber with BEAD grants have built in a possible cost increase for fiber construction of 10% per year. That would mean that fiber built in the fourth year might be 33% more expensive than what was built in the first year.

The report is well worth reading for anybody planning to build fiber because it’s full of interesting statistics. For example, an interesting statistic is that a buried construction crew of 3 can build around 1,000 feet per day, while a crew of 7 can build 1,585 feet per day. A crew of 3 can build 1,800 feet of aerial fiber per day, while a crew of 6 can build 4,000 feet per day. These statistics show there isn’t a big benefit from using large crews compared to using multiple smaller crews.

Another interesting statistic was drop costs. The average cost for a buried drop under 100 feet was $556, while the cost for a 500+ foot drop was $675. The average cost for an aerial drop under 100 feet was $338, while the cost for a 500+ foot drop was $400. These numbers also blend the cost of ISPs that build drops using in-house staff versus those using all contract labor.