Satellite News November 2026

Starlink Testing Dynamic Pricing

PC Magazine recently announced it has evidence that Starlink is experimenting with dynamic pricing. Starlink told customers in some markets that their prices might be increased or decreased based on the number of customers in a region. The reporter obtained a notice from Starlink warning that prices could change quarterly based on regional demand. The article cites one Missouri customer who said on Reddit that the price of the $50 plan had been changed to $60.50. There was a Missouri Starlink customer on Facebook who said that the $130 plan had been increased to $156 per month. In both cases, this is a rate increase of roughly 20%.

This is the kind of pricing that has been used for years by airlines to extract the highest possible revenue out of each flight. This may just be my opinion, but I have to think that customers who are charged more because their ISP is doing too well are going to seek out any other ISP. It doesn’t seem like a formula for creating long-term customer trust.

Amazon LEO Broadband by End of the Year

Amazon says it still plans to introduce its initial broadband service before the end of the year. This should be a limited launch that will only cover a portion of the country. The company says that it recently completed the manufacturing of its 1,000th broadband satellite. Amazon currently has around 400 satellites in orbit and is waiting for launch windows to launch more satellites. The company is also hopeful that it will get back on track with launches of its Blue Origin and its New Glenn rockets. The company already has reserved space on several launches that will still happen this year.

FCC Approved Amazon Leo’s Acquisition of Globalstar

The FCC approved Amazon’s $11.5 billion acquisition of Globalstar. This will give Amazon an immediate entry into the direct-to-device business of providing cellular service to cellphones. Globalstar will become a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon and will retain its corporate name. Globalstar currently has 54 active satellites in orbit and an aggressive plan for launches in 2027.

SpaceX to Attempt to Capture the Starship Upper Stage

SpaceX is going to attempt the next big improvement in space launch economics by trying to capture both the upper and lower stages from each Starship launch. This will allow the company to develop a rapidly reusable platform to be able to support more satellite launches. Today, the company recovers the booster as it falls back to Earth. The plan to capture the upper stage will involve a complicated maneuver where the upper ship will do a belly flop and enter a controlled descent, where the upper ship will then be captured by chopstick-like arms extended from a tower.

FAA To Streamline Launch Rules

The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing to streamline regulations for commercial space launches and re-entries. The agency is creating an online portal that will allow automated launch applications, giving more flexibility to change when launch windows change due to weather or technical issues. The White House has said that it wants the country to have the ability to have 1,000 launches and re-entries per year by 2030. To put that into context, there were 178 launches in 2025. The launch rules are a big deal because commercial airlines have to avoid the flight paths due to the potential for debris when launches go poorly, as we’ve seen a few times in recent years. Airlines must be cringing at the idea of somehow scheduling around 1,000 events per year.

Minimum Digital Living Standard

The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access & Expansion (OBAE) issued a press release that announced the creation of what they are calling the Minimum Digital Living Standard (MDLS). OBAE has opened a proceeding that will accept public comments until December 9, asking for comments on how it should establish an MDLS.

As a reminder, New Mexico is the only state that has funded a broadband subsidy program that largely mimics the expired federal Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP). OBAE is asking how it should set the minimum broadband benchmark for every home in the state.

The question of setting a minimum digital living standard highlights some of the serious digital gaps in the state. New Mexico is a diverse state with diverse populations, challenging topography, and many languages. There are a significant number of Tribal areas in the state. According to OBAE, 23% of New Mexicans lack a desktop or laptop computer. 38.4% of New Mexicans live in rural areas. 26.5% face language barriers. 42% of households struggle to afford basic daily necessities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

OBAE recognizes in its questions that many daily essentials have moved online and that the average family now also needs to worry about issues like cybersecurity, privacy, and consumer protection.

OBAE suggests that the definition of a minimum digital living standard should consider all of the following factors:

Access and Equipment:

  • Affordable, reliable internet
  • Adequate devices

Functional Knowledge and Skills

  • Setting up and configuring devices
  • Doing tasks online
  • Managing devices and connections

Critical Knowledge and Skills

  • Evaluating online content and information
  • Evaluating what to share online
  • Managing safety, security and privacy
  • Maintaining digital balance

OBAE wants to incorporate the MDLS into its current 2026-2028 three-year plan. The state’s goal is to have “a fully connected New Mexico where every community has universal access to affordable, high-quality, future-ready broadband, while honoring the state’s diversity and rich heritage, strengthening opportunity, propelling future technologies, and elevating quality of life for every resident.”

This is an interesting goal, because it’s a very different approach than the FCC arbitrarily declaring that the only definition of good broadband is a connection that delivers a speed of 100/20 Mbps. While the OBAE definition will likely include a speed target, it is also going to include goals for affordability and for digital inclusion issues like the availability of devices and the knowledge of how to use them.

More Favoritism for Satellite D2D?

T-Mobile recently filed a document with the FCC warning the agency that as much as 60% of its upload cellular traffic using 2.5 GHz spectrum for connections up to six miles from a tower will be disrupted if the FCC allows satellite cellular to share the same or nearby spectrum using unsynchronized traffic. T-Mobile says that satellite transmissions for cellular delivered as close as 15 miles from one of its cell sites could be majorly disruptive to cellular traffic.

T-Mobile is worried about FCC plans to allow 2.5-2.9 GHz for direct-to-device (D2D) satellite cellular, which sits next to T-Mobile’s workhorse 2.5 GHz spectrum it uses for cellular service. The reality is that cellular signals drift outside of the assigned spectrum bands, particularly the signals generated by cellphones, which are outside of the control of a cellular carrier.

T-Mobile is also worried about the volumes of satellite broadband that might come from an FCC approval for SpaceX to launch as many as 15,000 satellites to provide direct-to-device cell service. Even more troubling would be the announced SpaceX plan to acquire space on as many as 80,000 U.S. cell towers to bolster its satellite service with terrestrial towers. It would be devastating to T-Mobile if a carrier uses unsynchronized signals across the country and on the same towers where T-Mobile is located.

To understand T-Mobile’s complaint, it’s worth looking at the technology behind its claim. Modern cellular networks rely on synchronized cellular spectrum to function. That refers to a network management framework where the cell towers and user cellphones in a region are perfectly aligned by the use of an ultra-precise time clock. This timing precision is required to efficiently transmit data over shared or adjacent radio frequencies without causing severe network interference.

If cell towers don’t have perfect, nanosecond-level time synchronization, one tower might attempt to download data at the same time a neighboring tower is uploading data on the same frequency. These kinds of timing problems lead to what is called a destructive overlap, which results in dropped calls, lagging internet speeds, and packet loss inside the cellular network.

T-Mobile is highly concerned that satellite cellular providers are not being held to the same standards as the rest of the industry, and T-Mobile and CTIA, the cellular industry spokesman, have asked the FCC to require the same standards for satellite cellular traffic that are applied to terrestrial cellular providers. At a minimum, T-Mobile and CTIA are asking the FCC to open a docket to explore the technical issues.

When I look back at how the FCC has acted in the recent past, the agency seems to be in a big hurry to approve satellite cellular service without undertaking the detailed technical and market analysis that has always been used in the past. Whether this is being done through favoritism for the new satellite providers or is just the FCC’s way to support the new shiny ball – it is not treating the new satellite companies in the same way it treated the cellular industry or other users of spectrum in the past.

It wouldn’t be surprising if T-Mobile is exaggerating the extent to which its upload traffic from customers would be disrupted. We’ve seen carriers make exaggerated claims in the past to get the FCC’s attention. It would be a disaster if D2D providers are allowed to use unsynchronized signals and disrupted even 5-10% of terrestrial cellular traffic. Hopefully the FCC will take T-Mobile seriously and give the issue the kind of analysis that has always been routine in the wireless industry.

Beware the Bots

You may have noticed the headline earlier this year in May that said that bot traffic had surpassed human traffic on the Internet. The bigger news since then is that, in a matter of months, bot traffic has grown to be nearly two-thirds of the traffic on our networks. Mitch Wagner wrote an opinion piece in Fierce Network that describes the foreseeable future impact of the growth of machine-to-machine traffic on our networks. It’s not a future that is going to be comfortable for the many small ISPs I work with.

Wagner correctly observes that the growth of bot traffic poses a problem for telcos that have built their networks to provide services to people and companies. I remember, early in my career, conducting traffic studies to understand the busy-hour on clients’ voice networks to help them make sure they had sufficient capacity. That’s still standard practice in sizing backbone connections and in designing fiber network electronics.

However, the growth of bot traffic changes the equation of sizing and managing networks. We are at the earliest stages of the explosion of bot traffic, and already we’re seeing changes in networks since unexpected traffic can show up with no warning. Lumen is already starting to change the way it charges for network usage and is starting to bill bot networks for actual usage instead of the standard model we’ve always used of charging by bandwidth capacity. Unfortunately, most ISPs are not going to know the source of bot traffic.

Bot traffic hasn’t made a big impact on ISP last-mile networks yet, but according to Wagner it will. He cites Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who recently told The Verge that automated traffic could reach 1,000 times human traffic within five years. Today, ISPs are seeing bursts of traffic from hackers or bots scraping web sites. On the upload network, we’re seeing increased traffic volumes from cameras and other devices controlled by AI. Any ISP serving an automated factory is likely already seeing increased volumes and a demand for lower latency.

Wagner warns that the bot traffic we’re seeing today is only the beginning and that the biggest burst in network traffic will come from physical AI – robots, self-driving vehicles, automated factories and warehouses, smart-city applications, and automated logistics. Wager cites an earlier article he wrote in April that said that cellular networks could run out of upload capacity in places by 2029.

Big ISPS are already implementing ways to deal with the issues coming from big traffic growth. There is an explosion in the construction of long-haul fiber networks. Verizon says it is automating the way it reacts to bursts of traffic and how it responds to malicious traffic.

But Wagner’s conclusions aren’t comforting to other ISPs, and maybe not even to the big ones. He says network operators need to keep control of their networks while they can still do so, but that ultimately we need to shift to autonomous networks run by AI to fight back against AI-powered threats. I don’t have the slightest idea of what that means for small last-mile providers, but it sounds expensive, and it sounds like giving up control of your networks. It’s likely that the prediction that bot traffic will be a thousand times greater than people traffic is exaggerated. But if it is exaggerated by a factor of ten, it still means momentous changes in ISP networks.

Cable Company Troubles

There is currently a lot of news circulating about the financial troubles of two of the largest cable companies. Both Optimum (formerly Altice USA) and Cable One are in distress.

Optimum is in financial distress because of its $26 billion in total debt, which includes payments coming due in 2027 of $6 billion. While the company is profitable, it’s not nearly profitable enough to meet the debt payments. Altice’s debt comes from the money the company spent to buy two other cable companies; Altice bought Cablevision in 2016 for $17.7 billion. The company bought Suddenlink in 2022 for $9.1 billion. These transactions were highly leveraged with debt. The company has been hemorrhaging broadband customers and has lost over 580,000 customers since the end of 2022. The company’s stock has  plummeted over time. Five years ago, the stock traded at more than $28 per share. As I’m writing this blog, the share price was $0.65.

The company is being prohibited from restructuring the debt due to a group of current Optimum lenders, including Ares Management, Apollo Global Management, and BlackRock, which banded together and have an agreement that will not allow Optimum to restructure debt without supermajority approval from the lenders. Optimum claims this is illegal price fixing and sued the major investors. Optimum founder Patrick Drahi also tried an end run and created a new subsidiary to try to house key assets (such as Optimum East Cable and a stake in Lightpath) outside of existing lenders’ reach, which led to more lawsuits. It was just reported that the company and the lenders are close to a debt restructuring deal that would essentially hand control of the company to its lenders and would end all litigation.

Cable One is facing severe financial trouble primarily due to a contentious legal battle with CoBank ACB, its primary lender. In 2020, Cable One bought a 45% minority share of Vyve Broadband through the Vyve parent Mega Broadband Investments. The original purchase gave MBI, and its equity investor GTCR, the right to force Cable One to buy the rest of the company, and that right was exercised in January of this year. The forced purchase would have given $480 million to MBI owners and absorbed roughly $845 million of MBI debt.

CoBank already holds $1.1 billion of Cable One debt and filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York to secure a temporary restraining order halting Cable One’s $480 million payment to private equity firm GTCR for the remaining 55% of MBI. A federal judge recently agreed with CoBank and blocked the transaction.

CoBank says that Cable One is currently insolvent under standard valuation methods, citing a massive reported annual net loss of around $1.16 billion, and heavy liabilities relative to its asset base. Cable One disputes that claim. A year ago, Cable One’s stock price was over $165 per share, and was trading at less than $6 per share as I write this blog.

It’s always hard to predict the future for companies in financial peril. Both cable companies are performing poorly in the new competitive world and are continuously losing customers. No bigger ISP is going to be willing to absorb the current debt of either company, and at some point the debt will have to be restructured. In the past, we saw a bankrupt fiber provider like Frontier successfully make it through the restructuring process, but it’s a lot harder to see an easy path for these cable companies.

Mission-Critical Connections

I’ve recently been talking to several first responders about communications needs. One of the issues that keeps being raised is that first responders are dismayed that ISPs don’t recognize that public safety sites are mission-critical.  This blog will talk about what that means for providing voice and data service.

A critical mission location is one that can not be allowed to lose communications service. The public is instantly at peril if 911 centers, firehouses, police stations, and other similar mission-critical sites lose the ability to communicate with the public. Where this gets complicated is that mission-critical sites should not only survive during routine network outages from problems like fiber cuts, but should also be able to survive big events like hurricanes, fires, and other catastrophes.

The first element needed to protect mission-critical locations is redundancy. Redundancy can come in multiple forms. First, it means having voice and broadband service from more than one ISP. It doesn’t do any good for a big ISP like Verizon or Comcast to put in diversely routed lines to a mission-critical site, because that site is going to lose service if that single ISP loses service.

Redundancy also means having diverse physical routes leaving a mission-critical site. That’s a lot harder to achieve than you might imagine. It means each redundant broadband provider can’t use the same physical path to leave the local critical mission site – and that means along the entire path between a mission-critical site and the Internet hub. It’s common for ISPs to use fiber along the same main roads into and out of communities. I recall a story from a few years ago where a firehouse had two different ISP connections, but lost service when a fiber was cut outside of the town that carried the connections from both ISPs. It’s easy to forget that ISPs today often rely on third-party middle-mile providers to carry traffic between communities, which makes it even more likely that middle-mile routes are shared.

Redundancy also means having an automatic switchover if a primary voice or data provider drops service. This can quickly become complicated if a mission-critical site loses a large broadband pipe on fiber and has to switch to something less robust, like a satellite connection. Switching means having to restrict the traffic that can be allowed during a time of restricted bandwidth.

Many communities use private fiber and wireless networks devoted to public safety so that they aren’t fully reliant on commercial ISPs. But these alternatives, like FirstNet or public safety radios, can quickly become overwhelmed after an emergency. I’ve heard numerous stories of how both of these kinds of networks get quickly overloaded and nearly worthless after a major emergency like a big fire or a hurricane.

Probably the biggest complaint I hear from first responders is that ISPs don’t provide any better service quality for mission-critical facilities than they do to the public. That’s not the story that ISPs tell public safety officials when they are trying to sell service, but the reality often doesn’t meet the original sales pitch. As an example, I was told of a fiber cut to a firehouse where a large ISP took a week to determine that the outage was due to a fiber cut and fixed the problem. That is sadly also often becoming the normal outage repair timeline for residential neighborhoods, but mission-critical facilities should get priority repairs.

Probably the biggest problem underlying the whole issue is funding. It’s not unusual for even a rural county to have dozens of mission-critical locations, and at a time when state and local budgets are squeezed, it’s hard to find the funding to afford full redundancy for all mission-critical locations.

States Ongoing Role in Broadband

Pew Research recently published an interesting Issue Brief on their website that explores the ideas of states continuing the work to ensure that there is widely available, lasting broadband in their state. It’s easy to forget that most of the giant federal broadband programs were generated as a result of the pandemic and the ensuring poor economy. If you listen to federal broadband policymakers, you’d think that broadband issues have been solved, but every state knows there are still a lot of people in their state who either don’t have access to good broadband or who can’t afford to buy it. Pew is asking states to continue the broadband effort and to not put broadband access on the back burner as an issue that has been solved.

Pew suggests what an ongoing state effort might look like if states want to develop long-term policies that ensure that citizens have access to good broadband today and into the future. Pew offers a framework of four policies for states to consider.

Broadband Deployment. Now that we are likely at the end of seeing any meaningful broadband infrastructure funding for many years to come, it’s going to be up to states to find funding to fill any remaining infrastructure gaps. Every state has them. There are still numerous low-income housing complexes and apartments that commercial ISPs are not willing to serve. There are still low-income neighborhoods that fiber ISPs are bypassing when they bring fiber to a community. There are still rural households who live at the end of long driveways that ISPs won’t serve, even when grants supposedly require them to do so. We’ve not seen the end of defaults by ISPs that have won broadband grants. And while NTIA won’t admit it, there are still a lot of places that were incorrectly excluded from broadband grants, either because of poor FCC broadband maps, or because of the drastically failed BEAD map challenge process. Pew is reminding states that if they don’t help to solve these gaps, nobody else will do so. While some of these problems will require some kind of infrastructure grant program, there are other ways that states can help to bring solutions to finally finish the infrastructure gap.

Broadband Affordability. This is a broadband issue that is being ignored at the federal level. Broadband affordability is only getting worse as inflation in housing, utilities, food, and health care keeps squeezing household budgets, making it harder to prioritize a broadband subscription over rent and food. We now know what a workable solution for affordability looks like. Congress created the Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP) that provided a $30 discount on broadband prices for low-income homes. Many of the largest ISPs used this plan to create broadband products that ended up being free or very inexpensive for households. We’ve now seen New Mexico create a program similar to ACP, while a few other states offer smaller broadband discounts. Pew is reminding states that if it’s really important to them for homes to be connected, then affordability programs have to be high on the list of solutions.

Higher Speed Minimums. The FCC established 100/20 Mbps as the definition of broadband and broadband grant programs latched onto that speed in defining technologies that could be grant-funded. To compound the speed issue, the FCC broadband maps allow ISPs to claim the speeds they can deliver, and there are numerous ISPs that claim they can deliver the FCC minimum speed while delivering something slower. Pew is reminding states that anything they do related to broadband should not focus on the bare minimum required speed today but should be forward-looking for what is coming in the foreseeable future. Everybody understands that an ISP that can only deliver 100/20 Mbps today is going to feel completely obsolete in a decade. Pew says states should have priorities that require much faster speeds than the FCC bare minimum requirement for any broadband efforts they support.

Network Scalability. Pew is using scalability to remind states that they should only support companies and technologies that can be scaled in size or scaled in speed without a major future reinvestment in the existing network. Pew says that if states don’t consider scalability, they will end up supporting ISPs or networks that will grow obsolete.

Pew says that 34 states have already adopted at least two of these four cornerstones as broadband goals. Pew warns states not to assume that the remaining construction in BEAD and RDOF are going to solve the infrastructure gaps, and that many of the other grant-funded networks will be unable to meet future speed and scalability goals. There has been talk in some states about shutting down their broadband offices now that broadband availability has been solved, and Pew is trying to remind them that is not the case.

What Happened to the Smart Home?

I’ve seen articles lately that say that the smart home is dead. Before diving into that topic, I want to revisit the history of the smart home. More than a decade ago, the industry was abuzz with promises that everybody was going to install integrated smart home technology to make their lives easier. The smart home movement can probably be traced back to the 2011 introduction of the Nest Learning Thermostat, which gave people an easy way to monitor and control energy consumption.

Within a few years after that, there was an explosion of smart home technologies hitting the market. 2014 saw the release of the Amazon Alexa and the Apple HomeKit. In that same time period, companies like Vivint, ADT, and Control4 were pushing full-house systems that integrated smart lighting, smart thermostats, smart locks, smart window shades, and automated music and video control throughout a home. Comcast entered the new industry in a big way, and by 2015 offered Xfinity Home, which integrated the best devices from multiple vendors for a basic monthly fee. Over time, indoor and outdoor smart cameras, smart appliances, and smart everything joined the technology mix.

Like with every new tech market, analysts went nuts with predictions. In 2014, smart home was a featured technology at the annual CES tech show. Market analysts predicted that a huge number of homes would adopt an integrated suite of smart home technologies, and that the industry would grow to half a trillion annual dollars by 2020 (in 2025 it was a $100 million industry). I still remember the ads describing how your home would greet you when you came home from work. The thermostat would already have increased the temperature. Lighting and your favorite music would follow you as you walked from room to room. Every room would have a screen to view video or to connect online. Outdoor water system would keep your lawn and plants perfect, and robot mowers would keep the grass trimmed, all without any effort from you. Window shades would be automatically raised and lowered to capture or block sunlight as needed during the day. All of this would be controlled by talking to your smart house. By 2017 and 2018, practically every electronic device made for the home included a WiFi connection, with many also having the ability to be controlled by a voice command from Siri or Alexa.

Over time, the shine came off the technology. The devices to automate the home were expensive, and not that many people tackled whole-home automation. It also quickly became apparent that users were at the mercy of the manufacturers. For example, Google’s Nest bought the smart-home hub vendor Revolv in 2016, and two years later intentionally shut down the service, causing the $300 units to become bricks. In 2017, Jawbone went bankrupt and stranded large numbers of  smart speakers and fitness trackers. People started to understand what it means to have devices controlled by the cloud instead of locally. People also grew increasingly uncomfortable having devices like the Amazon Echo listening to everything being said in the home. Many people also grew wary of trusting the giant companies behind the smart technology. Finally, smart appliances were expensive to maintain. I had the electronics in a dryer die during the supply chain shortages after the pandemic, and I was faced with an expensive repair for a new electronics card, even if the parts had been available. I was lucky enough to be able to replace it with an American-made dryer with old-fashioned analog dials.

Starting in 2025, magazines for the real estate industry started to carry articles talking about how buyers weren’t interested in buying homes with smart technology. It seems like home buyers are moving away from smart home technology. This seems to be driven by the high cost of maintaining smart systems, privacy concerns, and overall digital fatigue. Real estate agents report that buyers are seeking homes with “unplugged” spaces, and homes with manual switches and dials instead of automation. This is probably part of a larger trend against intrusive electronics. The Washington Post reported that there is a small resurgence of landlines in homes where kids aren’t allowed to have smartphones. A lot of young people have started to buy flip phones as a way to get away from smartphone addiction. A lot of homes have taken down doorbell and indoor cameras from fear of being hacked.

Of course, nothing is universal, and there are still plenty of homes with a profusion of connected devices they actually use, and home automation is here to stay for folks who want it. But I’m still wondering what the heck I will ever do with the smart features on my refrigerator and stove.

Pew 2026 Broadband Survey

Pew Research has been doing annual national surveys of broadband usage since 2000 and recently released the results of the 2026 survey. Pew surveyed 5,511 adults across the country, with a survey that achieved an overall margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

The most interesting thing about the survey report is that it contrasts people who use the Internet from any source with those who have home broadband. The report is full of graphs, and the data by year is available with a click under each graph.

The overall percentage of adults who use the Internet continues to creep upward and is at 96%. The bottom line story is that most people use the Internet, but there are differences when looking at demographic factors:

  • There is still an age gap, and 99% of people under 49 years old use the Internet, compared to 89% for those over 65.
  • There is a difference by ethnicity, with 98% of asians using the Internet and 93% of blacks.
  • There is very little difference by gender, with women holding a slight edge at 97% compared to 96% for men.
  • There is a definite income gap, with 99% of households with incomes between $70,000 and $100,000 using the Internet, while 91% of households with incomes under $30,000 use the Internet.
  • There is also an education gap, with 99% of college graduates using the Internet, while 93% of those with a high school education or less use the Internet.
  • There is only a slight difference in community type, with 97% of urban and suburban respondents using the Internet compared to 95% for rural residents.

There are larger differences when looking only at those with a home broadband subscription. 78% of respondents to the survey have home broadband, the same as in 2024. But there are bigger differences when considering demographic factors.

  • There is a bigger age gap than with overall broadband usage. 83% of adults between the ages of 30 and 65 have home broadband, while only 71% of those over 65 have home broadband.
  • There is a difference by ethnicity, with 82% of Whites having home broadband compared to 70% for Hispanics and 72% for blacks.
  • There is very little difference by gender, with men holding a slight edge at 79% compared to 78% for women.
  • The biggest gap in having home broadband is related to income. 86% of households with incomes between $70,000 and $100,000 have home broadband, while only 57% of households with incomes under $30,000 have home broadband.
  • There is also a sizeable education gap, with 89% of college graduates with home broadband compared to 65% of those with a high school education or less.
  • There is a sizable gap by geography for home broadband subscriptions. 85% of suburban households have home broadband compared to 75% of urban households and 72% of rural households.

The survey report also looks at those who only use a cellphone for broadband access. The overall percentage held at 16%, the same as 2024.

Technology Shorts October 2026

Today’s blog looks at some technology breakthroughs that may have long-term impact on the broadband industry.

First Sub-1 Nanometer Chip. IBM announced a new chip in June that packs almost 100 billion transistors in a chip the size of a fingernail. IBM’s new chip is a landmark moment in computing and pushes transistor technology beyond the nanometer era to the scale of atoms. The new chip features a transistor architecture of 0.7 nanometers (or 7 angstroms). The company says the new chip, with dimensions of 10 millimeters by 15 millimeters is 70% more energy efficient, and has a 50% improvement in performance over the industry’s best current chips. The company predicts the new chip technology will become standard in commercial devices within a decade.

To create the new chip, IBM researchers developed an entirely new transistor architecture they call the nanostack. The nanostack design vertically stacks and staggers transistors, taking advantage of 3D sequential integration to pack more transistors onto a chip. The design also unlocks the use of different material combinations within each stacked layer, optimizing performance and power efficiency of each transistor independent of the other.

New Record Fiber Speed. Researchers at University College London (UCL) set a new fiber optics record by transmitting a signal at 450 terabits per second. The work was carried out in partnership with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Japan. The team sent a data transmission from the UCL Roberts Building in Bloomsbury, London, to the Telehouse North data center near Canary Wharf in London, and back for a round-trip distance of 24 miles.

The fast speed was accomplished by expanding the light frequencies being used. Fiber optics technology uses the C-Band of infrared light between 1530 and 1565 nanometers, and the L-Band between 1565 and 1625 nanometers. These two bands contain 134 and 163 potential separate channels, respectively.

The researchers used additional frequency bands of data transmission to include O-Band (1260 to 1360 nm), the E-Band (1360 to 1460 nm), and the S-Band (1460 to 1530 nm). This added over 1,000 additional light channels.

Light-Powered Chip. Scientists at Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy, in Melbourne, Australia, have created a tiny new circuit for use in quantum computing that can generate, direct, and read information carried by light, all within a single chip. The teams findings, led by Dr. Chi Li, were published in Nature Photonics. The new device relies on ultra-thin materials that are only a few atoms thick. The materials are paired with specially engineered nanostructures designed to precisely control light at extremely small scales. One of the most important aspects of the technology is that it operates at room temperature, while most quantum systems require extremely cold environments.

This new chip is a milestone in the growing area of research known as “valleytronics”. The new chip produces specialized light signals and steers the light along specific paths before converting to electrical signals. The light signals store information using a quantum property called the “valley degree of freedom.” Scientists believe the unique characteristic of the system could provide entirely new ways to encode, transmit, and process data. It could be the basis for breakthroughs in faster computing and lower energy consumption.

WiFi Identification. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Institute of Information Security and Dependability have been able to use the signals from a standard WiFi router to identify people and map their surroundings without relying on cameras or requiring the person being observed to carry a connected device. They’ve found a way to observe the propagation of radio waves to create an image of objects in the environment, basically using radio waves in the same way that a camera uses light waves.

Earlier approaches to sensing people through wireless signals relied on specialized equipment and complex measurements involving reflected signals. The new technique does not require any specialized hardware and works with off-the-shelf WiFi. The researchers were instantly alarmed at the potential misuse of the technology by unscrupulous corporations or authoritarian governments. They are calling for protective measures and privacy safeguards to be incorporated into the forthcoming IEEE 802.11bf WiFi standard.