Monthly Archives: December 2024

Government Lien on BEAD Assets

The headline of the blog isn’t entirely accurate because of the use of the word lien. However, the government maintains what it calls a property trust relationship in assets constructed with federal grant dollars, which is similar to, but not the same as a bank lien. In the case of BEAD, the government interest in grant assets would be held and managed by each State Broadband Office, under the auspices of the NTIA.

The trust will last through the useful life of the asset, as determined by the government. The useful lives of assets for BEAD are not the same as the depreciation lives of the assets. NTIA has set the longest life for BEAD at 10 years. Normally, per the federal guidelines the lives are fiber (20 years), buildings and large huts (20 years), power equipment (10 years), towers and poles (20 years), general fiber and wireless electronics (7 years), software systems (10 years), vehicles (5 – 10 years). Other assets like customer modems and computers have short lives of 3 – 7 years.

The rules governing the government’s interest in grant-funded assets are described in 2 C.F.R. § 200.316. There are a number of consequence of the government interest:

  • A BEAD grant recipient would need to get permission to sell or dispose of a grant-funded asset during its useful life.
  • The exception to this rule is that an asset with a remaining useful value under $10,000 can be disposed of without government permission.
  • Disposing or selling a grant-funded asset might require getting a certified appraiser. There aren’t many of those in the broadband world, and this can be expensive.
  • Anybody disposing of or selling a grant-funded asset might have to return a proportional share of the original grant funding to the government to cover the remaining useful life. This is the part of the government interest that feels like a lien.
  • The grant recipient must keep a detailed inventory of the federally-funded assets and must submit the inventory as part of BEAD reporting on an annual basis. A lot of ISPs are sloppy with paperwork concerning assets, and this requirement puts them on notice to create meticulous records.

This is not a new rule and has been applied to other federal grant programs. One of the biggest consequences of these rules is that some lenders are uncomfortable with the government’s interest in the assets, and some lenders will bulk at lending to an ISP when they find out about this. This is old news for companies that have gotten grants for years, and some of the biggest lenders in the industry, like CoBank, are comfortable with the government interest in the assets. It can be a shock to a grant recipient if their lender gets cold feet over the issue.

Another consequence is that these rules add an administrative effort and delay for disposing of a grant-funded asset. I helped an ISP buy a fiber route that was originally funded by BTOP. It took almost a year to get permission from NTIA for the transaction, which included having to get an appraisal of the asset.

This means that there will be at least some BEAD reporting every year for the useful life of the assets.

The issue matters to some ISPs, and I’ve known ISPs who have not pursued federal grants due to this one issue.

FCC to Stress CALEA

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel circulated a draft Declaratory Ruling within the FCC that will enhance and enforce the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (“CALEA”).  This law requires carriers to secure their networks from unlawful access or interception of communications, including cybersecurity attacks. Chairman Rosenworcel also released a notice to carriers to ask ISPs to strengthen their cybersecurity measures as a result of the recent evidence that China has infiltrated ISPs. The proposed Declaratory Ruling would require carriers to submit an annual certification to the FCC showing they have created, updated, and implemented a cybersecurity risk management plan.

CALEA has been in place since 1994 and originally provided a mechanism for law enforcement to conduct lawful wiretapping of ISP networks. The law has often been referred to as a government backdoor into telecommunications networks. On its surface, CALEA requires a subpoena from the FBI to wiretap an ISP end-user customer, although there are those in the government who argue that the law also allows for warrantless searches in some situations and even allows for mass surveillance of a communications network.

CALEA was originally intended to provide a way for the government to surveil digital phone calls – a new technology in the early 1990s. The law has been expanded over time to include VoIP, texting, and all broadband traffic.

This warning puts all ISPs on notice that they must be CALEA compliant. CALEA compliance requires two steps. First an ISP must have a CALEA manual on file at the FBI that describes the specific method that is available for law enforcement to wiretap them.

Carriers can allow wiretapping in one of two ways. First, it can own gear and software that will allow it to respond to a law enforcement wiretap in real-time. Very few ISPs have this capability for reaching all customers. The alternative is to use a mediation device that will be installed in the network that will gather and format the information the government is seeking. There are vendors who will contract with an ISP to have this gear in place within 24 hours.

I know there are many small ISPs who never created a CALEA manual. I also suspect that there are companies that act as ISPs, such as large corporate or government networks that do their own connections to the web without an intermediate ISP. For CALEA purposes, I think anybody that directly controls a block of IP addresses and who sends and receives traffic directly from the web should be CALEA compliant.

I also know a lot of ISPs have not updated their CALEA manuals at the FBI. They may have filed the manual decades ago and forgotten they even have a manual. The ISP might have changed technologies and added markets and not identified these changes to the FBI. Anybody with an existing CALEA manual should look at it and update it as needed.

I don’t normally peddle CCG service in these blogs, but the FCC and the government as a whole are about to get extremely serious about the Chinese hack of our telecommunications networks. Please contact me if you need to create or update a CALEA manual to make sure your company is compliant. The Declaratory Ruling is going to be approved soon by the current FCC or the next one, and you should start now to be able to say that you are compliant with the CALEA portion of the annual cybersecurity attestation.

Advancing the Speed of Wireless

Scientists at University College London recently achieved a speed on a wireless link of 938 Gbps. That’s over 4,000 times faster than the current average speed being delivered by T-Mobile, the current fastest cellular provider in the U.S.

The team is researching techniques for multiplexing multiple radio transmissions into a coherent transmission. The scientists achieved the speeds by utilizing a huge span of spectrum between 5GHz and 150 GHz. They also had to combine multiple techniques to create and join the signals.

  • The signals from 5-75 GHz were generated using traditional, but high-quality radios that used digital-to-analog converters.
  • The signals from the higher frequencies, the W-band from 75-110 GHz and the D-band from 110-150 GHz were generated by mixing optically modulated signals that used frequency-locked lasers and high-speed photodiodes. By frequency-locking the lasers, the scientists were able to create a stable carrier frequency that avoided the signal noise that would have been generated by normal free-running lasers.
  • The team then used orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM)and bit loading to goose the signal up to 938 Gbps over the air.

Another team of researchers recently achieved fast wireless speeds on a single channel. The team is a consortium of researchers from the Japanese firms DOCOMO, NIT Corporation, NEC Corporation, and Fujitsu. The team of companies created a wireless device that uses 100 GHz spectrum indoors or 300 GHz spectrum outdoors to create a 100 Gbps link that can transmit for about 100 meters. The companies see this first device as the prototype for developing future wireless radios that can deliver speeds only possible today on fiber.

In the past, several research teams in laboratories have created terabit speeds for a link of several feet. There is a lot of literature speculating that radios in space could reliably achieve terabit speeds between satellites without the interference created by air.

All of the research teams are pushing the cutting edge for wireless technologies with the goal of someday creating much faster wireless technology. The worldwide push to master the use of the terahertz frequencies between 100 GHz and 1 THz has been labeled as 6G, although wireless vendors have already absconded that label to describe radios that use millimeter wave spectrum. The terahertz frequencies lie between traditional radio and infrared light.

The first 6G summit met in 2022 in Levi, Lapland, Finland, sponsored by the University of Oulu, and included major wireless vendors like Nokia, Huawei, Ericsson, Samsung, and NTT, along with researchers from numerous universities as well as groups like Bell Labs. At the summit, researchers talked about creating a set of standards for terahertz frequencies by 2030. They identified the first hurdle as the development of chips that can handle faster speeds. There were also questions about whether governments would try to regulate the higher frequencies.

For now, these fast tests represent scientists pushing the edge of radio technology. These tests are not going to produce any usable technology for many years. The University of College London used a wide swath of spectrum that would never by allowed by any government. But the early success of these various tests show that faster radios will somebody be possible.

The Ability of the FCC to Issue Fines

We are definitely entering into a new era in regulation. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are disputing the FCC’s ability to levy fines on them. The fines in question all stem from an FCC action to penalize the carriers for selling customer location data to aggregators. This data allows marketers to become intimately knowledgeable about where people spend their time every day. In the majority of cases, the carriers did not get permission from customers to share their data.

The carriers have all appealed the FCC action, and as is becoming a normal practice, each carrier filed an appeal in a different court. Verizon was fined $46.9 million and filed a brief in the appeal suit in the U.S. Second Court of Appeals. AT&T was fined $57.3 million and filed a brief in the Fifth Circuit. T-Mobile (including a fine against Sprint) was fined $80.1 million and is appealing in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FCC started the process of assessing the fines under Chairman Ajit Pai, who proposed the fines and said the carriers’ actions are a violation of customer privacy. The FCC under Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel finalized the fines. Sharing customer data came to light when a sheriff in Missouri was openly using a location-finding service to track the people’s location. The sheriff obtained the data from Securus, a telecom provider that specializes in telecom services for jails and prisons. The FCC said that even after the carriers were made aware of the violation of customer privacy, they continued to sell the location information. The facts in the cases are a bit messy due to Securus’s role in the transactions and statute of limitations.

The three carriers are making roughly the same basic arguments. Verizon claims that the FCC overstepped its authority to enforce issues related to consumer data privacy. Of more interest is that AT&T and Verizon are both arguing that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy means that the FCC has no ability to levy fines and that the companies are entitled to a jury trial. It’s going to take lawsuits like this to define the limit on administrative agencies like the FCC to impose fines on anybody.

There is also a chance that the FCC could stop fighting for the fines. Proposed FCC Chairman Brendon Carr originally dissented against issuing the fines. It’s possible that the FCC could drop its opposition to the suits, which could stop the legal process.

The carriers must be hoping the suits get dropped. This does not seem an issue that the carriers would ever want to take to a jury. It’s not hard to picture a jury – on which every member likely has a cellphone – imposing much larger penalties on the carriers. I suspect most people are uncomfortable with the idea of their cellular carrier selling details of their daily movements to companies they never heard of. It’s not hard to imagine numerous ways that companies could misuse location data to harm people.

If these cases don’t make it to fruition, the courts are going to have to further test the idea in other suits that administrative agencies can’t impose fines. For now, the ability for the FCC to impose fines is in hanging in limbo.

Starlink in the News

There is a lot of speculation that Starlink is positioned to get a lot more federal subsidy from the BEAD grant program. There are a few things that have to happen for that to come to pass, but that is not the only news about Starlink these days.

Starlink announced in September that it reached four million customers worldwide. What is most impressive about that announcement is the rate of growth, with the company just hitting the three million customer mark in May of 2024. The company served two million customers at the end of 2022, so the rate of growth is on a steep upward curve. The company currently has over 6,700 working satellites, up from 5,400 at the end of 2023. The company still plans to grow the first-generation constellation to 12,000 satellites. This growth puts the company on track to hit $6.6 billion in revenue for the year, which means the company will be able to internally fund its continued efforts to improve its reusable rockets.

At the end of November, the FCC’s Space Bureau granted the SpaceX application to construct, deploy, and operate a constellation of the next generation of satellites, which the company is calling its Gen2 Starlink constellation. The FCC authorized SpaceX to operate the Gen2 satellites at altitudes of 340, 345, 350, and 360 kilometers. The FCC also gave permission to connect to the new satellites using Ku-, Ka-, E-, and V-band frequencies. Starlink says it still hopes to eventually reach 29,988 Gen2 satellites, up from the 7,500 approved by the FCC so far.

In the application that requested the changes, Starlink said that “small-but-meaningful updates” can boost broadband speeds to 1 Gbps. Starlink’s website says that current actual speeds vary between 25 Mbps and 220 Mbps, with a majority of users experiencing speeds over 100 Mbps. Current upload speeds are typically between 5 and 20 Mbps. Current latency ranges between 25 and 60 milliseconds, with 100+ milliseconds in a few remote locations.

The company says the faster speeds would come from several changes. The company plans to use larger Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them. SpaceX has also requested to lower the altitudes of existing satellites, requesting to lower satellites at 525, 530, 535 kilometers to 475, 480, and 485 kilometers, respectively.” Another request to the FCC would change the elevation angles for satellites operating between 400 and 500 kilometers from 25 degrees to 20. This would increase the connection times to earth stations.

Finally, the FCC approved the request by SpaceX and T-Mobile to offer supplemental mobile coverage from space. The FCC ruling said this “will put an end to mobile dead zones.” For now, the approval extends to basic connection for texts or emergency communications using slices of T-Mobile’s spectrum in areas the mobile carrier’s terrestrial network can’t reach.

There is no guarantee that the FCC will approve everything Starlink is asking for. Companies like AT&T and Verizon have said that some of Starlink’s requests for frequency would interfere with and degrade service from terrestrial mobile networks.

One bit of negative news is that Starlink has reintroduced a wait list in some markets. Is this something that will be relieved as more satellites are launched, or will the rapid customer growth outstrip network capacity. This is the same kind of issue that every ISP that grows quickly faces.

Elon Musk’s close ties to the administration bodes well for the company to get much of its wish list. The company had a very good 2024, and the future looks even brighter.

Autonomous Networks

FierceNetwork published a recent op-ed that describes the world’s first autonomous network. Tsinghua University in Bejjing began running its internal network in Level 4 autonomous mode in September. That is an impressive feat. An autonomous network operates without human intervention – it does away with network techs and human oversight. The university network provides service to 16,000 students and staff, making it a network with complexity and varying needs.

This is something that network designers have talked about for decades. Modern networks all have some degree of autonomy and largely run themselves. Any network engineer will tell you that things happen that requires human intervention. The modern network engineer’s job is basically to fix problems that arise and to protect a network from outside interference.

The really big news is that China Mobile recently completed a trial of an autonomous network in Guangdong province, with a population of 122 million. The company has a goal to roll this out nationwide to its billion customers by the end of 2025.

Both Tsinghua University and China Mobile are using Huawei’s Xinghe Intelligent Solution as the software that is operating the autonomous networks. The software uses artificial intelligence to identify risks, resolve problems, and verify changes.

If you think this sounds too much like Skynet in the Terminator movies, the announcement should say that these are really semi-autonomous networks, since the software takes care of about 80% of the problems that arise in the network. That is still an impressive innovation since people are needed to fix most problems in a traditional network. The Huawei solution is trying to tackle every issue that doesn’t require a human to replace hardware or troubleshoot cables.

This announcement will reverberate through carriers in the world, because this level of network automation is huge cost saver by eliminating a lot of the techs and engineers currently needed to support a large network. Obviously, nobody in the West is going to consider the Huawei solution since the U.S. and Europe are boycotting Chinese telecom firms. It’s hard to imagine that labs and vendors here aren’t working towards a similar solution.

There are obvious major risks to  let a large network run itself. There are bound to be software flaws that will inevitably result in a network crash when just the right list of bad things happen. How will a company that has ditched most of its network experts fix an out-of-control network? Network engineers will tell you that they are mostly hired because they learn the nuances of the shortcomings of a network. Is this something that can be duplicated by artificial intelligence – I guess we’ll find out.

FCC Promoting Bulk Cellular Speed Tests

The FCC announced a public workshop for December 10 at 3:00 EST to describe the process for challenging the FCC cellular data maps. Here is a link for registering for the session, although I have to think a recording of it will be made available afterwards. The primary purpose is to discuss how local governments can submit bulk challenges to the FCC cellular data map.

In September, the FCC announced a new $9 billion 5G Fund for Rural America that will be used to bring cell towers to rural areas with poor coverage. To qualify for new towers, an area must have no 5G coverage today or have 5G speeds below 7/1 Mbps.

The FCC announced it would launch the 5G Fund in 2025 using the current FCC cellular maps. The data for these maps is collected twice per year in the same process used to create the FCC broadband maps. The FCC cellular maps seem to be far worse than the broadband maps have ever been. In the few dozen counties I have looked at, the existing FCC maps badly overstate 5G coverage. My observations are supported by comments from the Rural Wireless Association (RWA), which represents smaller cellular companies, which told the FCC that the cellular maps are highly inaccurate.

I’m not entirely sure why the FCC is holding this online meeting. If the FCC launches the 5G Fund using the current maps, then many counties with poor coverage will not be considered for expanded new cell sites. It’s pure speculation on my part that perhaps the FCC wants feedback from the public for cellular coverage. Many parties, including me, filed comments at the FCC asking to give local governments a chance to provide inputs to the maps.

While the FCC hasn’t officially said they are pausing the 5G Fund, that is something that might naturally happen with a change in leadership at the FCC. Perhaps this FCC meeting about map challenges is a sign the FCC is pausing the 5G Fund effort.

The FCC has a bulk speed test process that local governments, tribes, or consumer groups can conduct. The rules are complicated. The speed tests can’t be taken from an iOS phone (Apple). The speed tests must spread across each hexagonal area in the FCC map (about one square kilometer each). Speed tests have to be taken at different times of the day. The speed tests must conform to the same parameters used for individual speed tests. Probably the hardest compliance issue is that there must be separate tests for each cellular carrier, since each claims a different coverage footprint. That means having testers subscribed to each carrier, each willing to take many tests in the areas where coverage is suspected to be poor. The last kicker is that, as everybody knows, it’s impossible to take a speed test in an area that has no coverage – something the FCC rules seem to ignore.

I think it’s worthwhile for local governments to consider organizing a bulk speed test. Plans are routinely put on hold at the FCC every time there is a new Chairman. It’s possible that the 5G fund won’t launch for a while and that bulk speed tests might influence where that funding goes.

Technology Shorts – November 2024

Today’s blog looks at some interesting new technologies and discoveries that might someday impact the communications industry.

Forever Memory. Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have developed a device that they believe can store data for billions of years. The new storage device uses a crystal made of nanostructured glass. The scientists jokingly call this the “superman Crystal’, in reference to the memory crystal that accompanied Superman as a baby in the journey to earth and which carried a message from Jor-El, Superman’s father.

Ultrafast femtosecond lasers are used to precisely inscribe data into nanostructured voids in the silica. Unlike normal writing on a flat surface, the encoding method takes advantage of the multiple surfaces in a crystal and inscribes data in what is described as five dimension – but which means writing on surfaces that point in five different directions. One small crystal can hold up to 360 terabytes of data. The crystals are stable under freezing conditions and in heat up to 1,000 C.

This is a permanent storage device and can’t be altered once written. This is perfect for the kinds of data that we want to store for a long time. Our current challenge is that storage devices degrade over time, meaning we’re already losing data that’s only a few decades old.

Brain-like Computer Chips. An international team of scientists have developed a neuromorphic device called a memristor that mimics the actions of brain synapses. The memristor device is composed of molecules that can change electrical properties based on the amount of electric charge that passes through them.

As the memristor molecules pivot and change, they create a multitude of memory states, much like the human brain. Memristors are analog and have been around for a while. However, earlier devices were only capable of performing low-accuracy calculations.

The new device includes a 14-bit neuromorphic accelerator, which means the device can perform high-resolution accurate calculations with an extraordinary energy efficiency of 4.1 tera-operations per second. The new devices seem to be perfect for powering AI data centers. The devices hold promise for a wide range of interesting uses. For example, a memristor could be built into smart clothing like a tee-shirt that could change the picture on demand.

Solar Power Breakthrough. Scientists at Oxford University have developed a new light-absorbing material made of perovskite that is ultra-thin and flexible enough to be applied to almost any common surface. The scientists have found that they can vastly improve the electrical output by stacking multiple layers of the material, with each layer set to maximize a specific light frequency.

Through experimentation, they have been able to deliver a 27% energy efficiency (meaning they convert 27% of light into electricity), which is better than the 22% efficiency of most existing silicon photovoltaic materials. The scientists hope to increase efficiency to as much as 45%.

The new material can be applied in a coating of only 1 micron thick, which is 150 times thinner than a normal silicon wafer. The potential for this new material is that it can be added to buildings and other surfaces and could replace the need for constructing large solar farms.

My Wish List for the New FCC

A change of administration brings a change to the FCC as the majority swings from Democratic to Republican. I’ve always maintained a regulatory wish list, and the following are my hopes for what we’ll see out of the new FCC. These aren’t predictions – just my own list of hopes. I note that the current FCC didn’t grant me very many of the items on my wish list four years ago.

Keep Going with the 5G Fund – But Get the Maps Right First. We’ve spent a lot of energy in the last five years talking about the rural broadband gap. However, from my experience in working in rural America, there is a much bigger cellular coverage gap. Millions of folks live in places where they can’t make or receive cell calls at home. What’s probably worse is that cell coverage is dreadful for the many more people who drive through rural areas as part of their job. The FCC’s proposed 5G Fund for Rural America could address a lot of this problem, but the FCC cellular coverage maps are far worse than any older version of broadband maps. I fervently hope the FCC doesn’t repeat the blunders it made in the past by relying on bad maps – like RDOF. I hope the FCC takes some time and gets the maps right before it hands out billion to fund new cell towers. If they do this right, this FCC will go on record as one that made folks’ lives better.

Enforce RDOF Buildout Requirements. Speaking of RDOF, we’ve reached the point where a substantial portion of networks funded by RDOF should have already been constructed. I know numerous counties that haven’t seen any construction yet from RDOF. The FCC should take a hard look at actual RDOF completion at the end of this year and should yank the funding from any ISP that isn’t meeting its commitments. The FCC should make an effort to verify claims of network completion – unlike with CAF II when large telcos fully fabricated many of the updates they had supposedly made. It’s not hard to pick up the phone and talk to local officials who can verify if they’ve seen new RDOF broadband networks being constructed.

Push Congress to Get Spectrum Auction Authority. I know this is already on the FCC’s wish list. While they are at it, ask Congress to give the proceeds of any auctions to the FCC to further universal service goals. It would be nice to see the 5G Fund improvements be required to be completed over a few years instead of spreading the requirement over much of the decade as was done with RDOF.

Say No to Big ISPs Once in a While. The FCC has a mandate, like any regulatory agency, to balance the needs of the industry and the needs of the public. Republican-majority FCC’s have always leaned towards the benefits of the big ISPs. Surprise everybody and make a few rulings that curb the worst excesses of the big companies – you’ll be praised for it.

Put Some Teeth Back Into the Consumer Complaint Process. The FCC complaint process has always been the last resort for customers who are treated poorly by ISPs. The FCC historically stepped in and demanded that ISPs take care of the worst individual abuses. This was always handled quietly behind the scenes and didn’t create precedents or new rules for ISPs. However, the complaint process curbed some of the biggest excesses when the ISPs knew the FCC was watching.

Do Not Declare Job Done and that Rural Broadband has Been Fixed. Making those kinds of announcements never goes well.

My Predictions for 2025

Disruption of Federal Grants. It seems almost inevitable that Congress is going to pull back some or all future funding for the Digital Equity Grants that are part of the BEAD program. Some in Congress are already warning the NTIA not to award the current grants that are under review.

The BEAD grant program will change. Congress is likely to reverse some of the BEAD provisions that Senators have been complaining about, like the BEAD requirement that requires a low-rate option. However, BEAD is ultimately designed to be a state grant program, and a lot of States are going to fight hard against trying to direct funds away from fiber. With that said, it’s likely that a lot more BEAD funding will go to satellite than earlier estimates. I predict that the change of administration and a swap out of folks at NTIA is going to result in at least a six month delay in the grant process.

The FCC Will Stay the Course. The new FCC will not change the agency as much as you might expect from a change in administration. New Chairman Carr will act quickly to reverse the current FCC rulings on net neutrality and discrimination. But otherwise, there won’t be a lot of revisiting of other recent decisions. Assuming that Chairman Carr will tackle what he addressed in Project 2025, the FCC will spend a lot of energy trying to free up new 5G spectrum and investigating issues associated with Section 230 and content moderation.

Job Well Done? I predict at some point that the FCC and/or the NTIA will declare at some point this year that the rural broadband problem has largely been solved, relieving the federal government of any obligation to fund any more broadband infrastructure.

FWA Will have Another Strong Year. Some industry analysts have written off FWA cellular broadband as a temporary flash in the pan. I predict that T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will continue to collectively add 900,000+ customers per quarter again this year. Any increased inflation in the economy will drive the FWA numbers even higher.

Universal Service Fund Will Change. I predict that the Supreme Court is going to rule that Congress erred when it gave the FCC the authority to operate the USF and to establish fees to fund it. That’s going to force Congress to scramble to revamp the popular program. Congress will be forced to fix the funding issues. I predict Congress will create a tax that will be charged against a larger base that includes large users of the Internet like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others. All of the changes to USF will probably mean that the launch of the $9 billion 5G Fund for Rural America will be delayed or shelved for the year.

The Mad Scramble to Buy Fiber Businesses Will Continue. There is still a glut of investment capital looking for a place to land, and a lot of that money is going to be aimed at buying existing fiber-based ISPs.

RDOF Troubles. I don’t think we’re done with RDOF defaults. This might be further exacerbated by any movement by the administration to claw back RDOF funding that hasn’t resulted in infrastructure.

Cable Companies Will Tame Their Losses. While large cable companies will continue to collectively lose customers, the rate of losses will slow as the companies focus on holding their market share. The large cable companies collectively lost 265,000 customers in the third quarter of this year. However, Comcast and Charter both said they would have had small gains except for the one-time losses due to the end of ACP.