Monthly Archives: July 2025

The Impact of Broadband Slowdowns

Catchpoint recently issued The Internet Resilience Report 2025, its second report that looks at the impact of Internet outages and slow Internet performance on large corporations. Catchpoint sells software that looks in detail at Internet performance with the goal of identifying network problems early and fixing them before they become big problems.

The conclusions of the report will be familiar to anybody who works from home. Catchpoint highlights that broadband outages are costly and disruptive. But it also concludes that “slow is the new down”, meaning that broadband slowdowns are as damaging as outages. Web outages for specific platforms seem to be occurring with increasing frequency. I was recently working with a client who needed to interpret mapping data, and we found that ArcGIS was down nationwide. We had no alternative except to wait half a day until the application was up and running again.

The Catchpoint survey solicited feedback from 475 IT managers, directors, and executives of major companies. The key finding of the study is that 51% of the respondents said that an Internet performance problem led to a monthly loss of over $1 million in revenues in the last year, up from 43% in 2024. A third of those companies lost more than $10 million.

The most interesting finding is that 42% of respondents equated slow Internet performance to have the same negative impact as an outage. The report uses the phrase ”slow apps are dead apps” to describe the financial impact of applications that are not working as expected. The report also cites a recent study by Forrester that surveyed online retailers and reached the same conclusion that slow Internet might as well be an outage in terms of the bottom-line consequences.

The report concludes that large corporations should concentrate on application performance as much as they concentrate on Internet downtime. Big companies have largely accepted the need for broadband redundancy, and most buy a broadband connection from multiple ISPs. But that doesn’t protect them against regional and national outages of the companies and applications that control the Internet or the major applications used by businesses.

I expect that most readers of this blog are not from the giant corporations surveyed by Catchpoint. But I expect that everybody reading this has at least a few stories of how poor Internet performance impacted them in the last year. It seems like every month that something goes down for a while.

I’m lucky to live in a city, and when my broadband goes down, I am able to change quickly to using my cell phone for broadband. People living in rural areas are not so fortunate. At least around where I live, the cell coverage just a few miles outside the city isn’t good enough to support working from home.

The country is in the process of supposedly getting at least one broadband connection to everybody in rural America. But rural folks may still not feel secure to work from home if they don’t have a second broadband alternative. I hear from folks regularly who tell me about rural broadband outages that last for days, which contrasts with urban outages that rarely last more than a few hours. I’ve never thought about this before, but true rural parity between urban and rural broadband might mean having an alternative when primary broadband fails.

FCC Considers Changing Broadband Goals

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has proposed changes to the way the FCC sets broadband goals and tracks broadband coverage. The proposed changes are included in the Nineteenth Section 706 Notice of Enquiry, which is scheduled to come for a vote at the FCC’s August meeting.

One of the areas being explored in the Notice is how the FCC determines the speed of broadband.

  • The FCC asks if 100/20 Mbps should be the benchmark for defining fixed broadband. This is a question that almost every annual Enquiry has asked, and the FCC will be asking for input. For example, should the FCC consider the speeds consumers buy when given an option of multiple speed tiers (spoiler alert, ISPs report that a significant percentage of consumers buy speeds of 500 Mbps or faster when they have the option).
  • The FCC is also asking the annual question of how to judge adequate cellular speeds. In recent years, the speed goal for 5G outdoor coverage has been 35/3 Mbps. The FCC is asking if that should remain the goal and if it should be extended to include speeds inside moving vehicles.
  • The FCC is recommending keeping the current benchmark for school broadband of 1 Gbps per 1,000 students. They are asking for comments on this benchmark. I’ve talked to numerous school officials who all say the current metric is obsolete and that they need 3-5 simultaneous Mbps per student, which would mean 3 – 5 Gbps are needed for a school with 1,000 students.
  • One proposal in the Enquiry that is going to be controversial is a recommendation to drop the future goal of eventually achieving 1000/500 Mbps broadband speeds. The FCC says that having a future goal is not necessary since it’s not required by statute. The FCC, under Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel, adopted the future goal as a way to show the FCC’s support for building fiber. This preference for fiber was heavily baked into the original rules adopted by Congress for BEAD, but that preference has recently been greatly watered down.

Scrapping the gigabit goal for future broadband and sticking with 100/20 Mbps as the definition of broadband is out of synch with the market. OpenVault reported last year that 32% of U.S. homes are subscribed to gigabit broadband from fiber ISPs or cable companies.

The Enquiry also asks about how the FCC should track broadband deployment – who has broadband. The FCC wants to know if it makes sense to note homes in the FCC maps that are covered by a grant program that promises to bring faster speeds in the future.

I’m in favor of counting broadband coverage in two ways. One is a pure tabulation of the FCC mapping data that shows the number of homes not covered by broadband as of the latest FCC reporting date. It also makes sense to report how many of those homes have a coming broadband commitment. But homes with a commitment should not be counted as served until the new broadband is built. There have been plenty of defaults in the RDOF program, and there is no reason to think that ISPs won’t default on grants awarded by the many other state and federal grant programs.

The FCC also asks about the challenge of counting homes served by satellite broadband. It seems likely that a lot of States are going to award BEAD funds to Starlink and Kuiper. Is there any sensible way for the FCC to show areas covered by satellite for BEAD as having broadband if the same designation isn’t extended to neighboring areas not covered by BEAD. Recognizing all the places claimed by satellite probably means that almost the whole country would be counted as served, in which case you  might as well toss out the broadband map. I’m not sure how the FCC can open the door and count some locations as served by satellite but not others.

The Future of ReConnect

I have to wonder if there is any practical future for USDA’s ReConnect grants. I raise this question after noting that the Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved the fiscal year 2026 budget for the Department of Agriculture. Buried within that budget is $100 million dollars for new ReConnect loans or grants. It’s still early in the federal budget process, and the $100 million slated for next year is a preliminary number, but it’s already lower than previous annual allocations to the program.

ReConnect has been a popular program, particularly with cooperatives and small telcos. ReConnect was launched in December 2018 by Congress with an initial budget of $600 million. Additional funds continue to be allocated, including $550 million in 2020 and $1.15 billion in 2021. USDA is still sitting on $980 million of remaining appropriated funds, but is also sitting on $3 billion in funding requests.

ReConnect has always been an interesting program. USDA can use the funding for grants, loans, or a combination of the two. The program is intended to bring broadband to unserved rural locations, and the ReConnect process gives extra consideration to locations that are not close to any towns or cities.

I ask if ReConnect will still be relevant in upcoming years for several reasons. First, if you believe the hype about BEAD grants, every location in the country will soon be slated to get broadband of at least 100/20 Mbps. According to the NTIA, every location that has been excluded from BEAD is already served by at least one ISP claiming 100/20 Mbps. That can be for any technology, including fiber, cable, DSL, fixed wireless, FWA cellular wireless, or satellite.

But ignoring that promise from BEAD, there will still be remaining unserved locations around the country. For example, there have been some recent defaults of RDOF subsidies that were defaulted too late to be included in BEAD, and there will be more. There will likely be defaults on funding commitments from other state and federal grant programs, including some from the BEAD program. It’s also possible ISPs could go out of business and leave rural customers with no option at 100/20 Mbps. This is certainly possible for WISPs if the FCC meddles with the CBRS and 6 GHz spectrum.

I’m also positive that there are a lot of locations where ISPs claim 100/20 Mbps or faster in the FCC maps but are delivering something slower. Perhaps future ReConnect grants will allow ISPs to ask for funding in areas where they can prove the FCC map is wrong.

Another issue with ReConnect is that the grant rules in the past have insisted on contiguous grant areas of unserved locations. Because of the odd rules of many of the existing grant and subsidy programs, particularly RDOF, there will probably be no big contiguous unserved areas after BEAD grants have been awarded. Any future ReConnect grant is going to require cobbling together scattered locations into a single grant request, and that will require changes in the ReConnect rules.

But I think the fundamental challenge for BEAD is that the FCC is likely to declare soon that the rural broadband gap has been solved and every rural home in the country is able to buy adequate broadband. I’m not sure the USDA will be able to overcome that presumption.

A Peek at the New BEAD

The State of Tennessee released a side-by-side comparison of the new Benefit of the Bargain round of BEAD applications compared to its initial round of BEAD applications conducted before the revised BEAD rules.

The side-by-side comparison (file:///C:/A/Articles/Tennessee-BEAD-Comparison.pdf) is interesting and shows some big differences between the two grant rounds:

  • Tennessee received 541 applications in the new Benefit of the Bargain round compared to 298 applications in the original round of BEAD.
  • The low-orbit satellite companies Starlink and Kuiper bid throughout the state. Starlink didn’t submit any applications in the first round but bid almost everywhere in the new BEAD round. Kuiper bid for most of the state in both BEAD rounds. Satellite is clearly going to win a significant amount of grant funding since there were 68 of 173 serving areas that got proposals from one or both satellite providers and no other technology. The satellite companies surprisingly don’t seem to be fazed by bidding in Appalachia.
  • There were surprisingly few proposals for fixed wireless technology, with proposals only made in 12 of the 173 study areas included in the new round of BEAD. Part of the reason for this might be the mountainous and hilly nature of much of Tennessee, but there are plenty of areas in the central and western parts of the state where wireless will work well.
  • Comcast switched technology from the first to the second round. In the first round, the company proposed to build fiber, and in the new round it mostly changed to traditional hybrid fiber/coaxial networks – apparently to be able to bid at a lower cost. This makes me wonder if it’s really cheaper to build copper coaxial cables than fiber or if Comcast is just willing to take less funding.
  • There has always been a big question of whether big ISPs would show up for BEAD. There are three big companies in the new round of BEAD – AT&T, Comcast, and Windstream. The industry has always wondered if AT&T would join BEAD.
  • There are a number of smaller ISPs asking for funding to build fiber that includes cooperatives and municipalities.
  • There are four service areas that had no proposals. The state will have to talk an ISP into serving these areas before they can close out their BEAD grants.

It’s impossible to make any definitive cost comparisons between applicants because the new BEAD rules allow ISPs to request to serve areas smaller than the serving areas suggested by the state. There are also roughly 7,000 fewer passings on the newest BEAD map than were included in the initial BEAD grants. But in general, the comparison shows:

  • Most companies proposing to build fiber bid less the second time, but some of this could be due to fewer eligible passings and not just to a sharpening of the pencil.
  • Fiber ISPs across the country are wondering how much lower other technologies will bid in BEAD. There is only a single company asking to build wireless in the state, and their proposed grant awards are roughly one-third the cost of those asking for fiber in the same study areas. But without knowing more details, that ratio might not mean anything for other states.
  • However, satellite bids are incredibly low, most at 10% or less than proposals to build fiber. There is a map showing the eligible passings by study area, and I eyeball the satellite bids to be in the range of $400- $600 per passing. Kuiper is generally significantly lower than Starlink. These low bids are going to worry ISPs everywhere.

 

Continuing RDOF Defaults

CenturyLink told the FCC recently that it is defaulting on 41,000 RDOF locations spread across eight states and 153 Census block groups. That’s a big portion of the 77,000 locations that the company won in the RDOF reverse auction. CenturyLink originally was awarded $262.3 million in subsidies, spread over ten years.

There are a number of consequences of this default. First, this has now happened after states made BEAD maps and allocation. That makes it likely that nobody will be bringing improved broadband to the default areas. If the defaults had happened earlier, these areas could have been rolled into the BEAD process.

CenturyLink should expect a significant fine. In 2024, the FCC fined two companies that defaulted on RDOF. Etheric Communications was fined $732,000 for defaulting on 244 locations. GigFire (LTD Broadband) was fined $21.7 million for defaulting on 7,238 locations. Mercury Broadband was fined $14.2 million in a separate FCC decision and is also expected to return all RDOF funding for the defaulted areas.

If CenturyLink is fined at the same level or around $3,000 per location as the recent defaults, the fine will be $123 million. Additionally, roughly half of the RDOF funding has flowed to auction winners, meaning CenturyLink would have to return approximately $65 million of RDOF subsidy to the FCC.

The CenturyLink default defies the usual explanation of RDOF defaults. Many other defaults have been blamed on the FCC’s auction rules that didn’t pre-qualify companies before entering the auction. That resulted in companies winning RDOF that had weak balance sheets or insufficient financial backing.

But any pre-qualifying process would have easily allowed CenturyLink to enter the RDOF auction. CenturyLink is now obviously in financial distress and has decided that fines are less expensive than completing the required construction. The company has also already sold off much of it’s copper networks in twenty states and has been looking for a buyer for the remaining states. The company recently announced the sale of most of its fiber last-mile customers to AT&T, so it’s clear that CenturyLink is exiting the residential ISP business.

This is not likely the end of RDOF defaults. According to a telecompetitor article earlier this year, eight companies reported to the FCC at the end of 2024 that they were behind schedule in meeting their RDOF construction commitments. RDOF winners were required to have covered 40% of their locations in each State where they won an award by the end of 2024.

I said at the time it was first announced that RDOF is a badly flawed program. The reality has turned out to be far worse than any predictions. While RDOF was used successfully by a number of electric cooperatives and a few others to build future-looking networks, a huge amount of original awards fell on the floor through defaults or the FCC tossing out winners it didn’t like. Possibly the worst thing about RDOF was how the RDOF awards resulted in helter-skelter coverage areas that covered rural areas like Swiss cheese, making it hard today to do anything with the mess that RDOF left behind. I keep thinking we’ve heard the last bad news from RDOF, but the announcements keep coming.

The Space Cannon

As if low-orbit space isn’t already getting over-crowded, there is a startup that may send huge numbers of additional satellites into orbit. The California company is Spinlaunch.

Spinlaunch plans to shoot microsatellites into orbit using what they call a centrifugal cannon (pictured to the right). The cannon spins and accelerates a small rocket that will hold multiple satellites. The cannon accelerates the rocket using spinning arms inside a vacuum chamber that achieve a force of 10,000 G and a speed of 5,000 miles per hour – fast enough to achieve a suborbital height. From there, the rocket engines will fire to finish the trip to space. The company has done ten test launches that successfully reached suborbital heights.

The launches will be done from Adak Island, near the western end of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. Spinlaunch’s partner is the Aleut Corporation, an Alaskan Native business. They chose the Aleutians since it provides a clear launch path over the Pacific Ocean with minimal disruption to commercial flights. The area also has steady winds, which allow for the use of cheap renewable wind power. The site also takes advantage of an abandoned U.S. Navy base on the island.

The company plans to start shooting satellites into orbit in 2026. The satellites, shaped like a disk, are 7.5 feet across and weigh about 154 pounds. This is significantly lighter than a Starlink satellite, with the current V2 satellites weighing in at 1,760 pounds. The plan is to place 250 satellites into orbit in a single launch, the most ever. Last year, Starlink launched 143 satellites in a single launch.

The satellite fleet will be owned by a sister company, Meridian Space. Meridian Space currently holds an FCC license to launch 1,190 satellites. Spinlaunch raised $150 million, including a recent infusion of $12 million from Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace, which will manufacture the satellites. Meridian Space plans to compete head-to-head with Starlink and Kuiper in selling broadband.

Spinlaunch thinks it has a number of advantages over other launch technologies. It requires 70% less fuel to put a satellite into orbit, meaning a much lower cost of deployment. The launch cannon should be fully usable for many years of future launches.

On the flip side, placing even more satellites into space increases the problems that have been identified with proliferation of low-orbit satellites. That includes an increased risk of space collisions and the resulting debris that could make low-orbit space into a dead zone. It means more interference with light pollution and interference with astronomy. It also means more satellites falling back to earth, which can cause degradation of the ozone layer.

But like it or not, the satellite age is upon us, and is going to accelerate as companies find clever ways to launch more satellites into low-orbit space.

The Growth of Backhaul Data

Zayo recently released a report that talks about the boom in backbone data usage in the country. For any readers who don’t know Zayo, it provides fiber connections for large data users and is one of the major companies that carry data between cities and across the country.

One component of backbone data is the accumulated usage of residential and small business broadband customers. We learned recently from OpenVault that residential and small business data usage grew 18% from 2023 to 2024. The average total usage per customer per month grew from 606 gigabytes at the end of the first quarter of 2023 to 663 gigabytes at the end of the first quarter of 2024. Zayo reports that data usage on fiber backbones grew far faster than the 18% that came from individual broadband users.

Zayo cited the following statistics:

  • Long-haul dark fiber sales were up 52% from 2023 to 2024. Carriers buy dark fiber when they want to send a large amount of data.
  • Wavelength capacity grew by 280% from 2020 to 2024. A wavelength represents the full bandwidth available from a band of light on a fiber. Zayo says that sales of 400 GB wavelengths accounted for more bandwidth than all sales from 10 GB and 100 GB connections in 2024.
  • Large buyers are buying the majority of new bandwidth. Zayo says that hyperscalers and carriers purchased 91% of dark fiber sales and 67% of all wavelength sales since 2020. Hyperscalers are large cloud users like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Zayo says that AI traffic accounts for a lot of the new backbone data usage. The report discusses how AI data center usage in new markets is. For example, data sales in Memphis increased by 4,300% in 2024 and data sales in Salt Lake City grow 348%, both due to new AI data centers.

Zayo describes an interesting history of backhaul bandwidth. The report says that backbone bandwidth started growing faster than the bandwidth used by homes around 2007 due to the migration of data to the cloud. Large companies began storing data in data centers instead of locally as a way to protect data. Over time, a lot of the functions used by homes and businesses also migrated to the cloud as the common applications we all use moved to data centers instead of being stored only on people’s computers.

Zayo uses the term “distributed era” to describe the period that began in 2020 when the pandemic suddenly forced companies to expand networks to include people working from home. The decentralized workforce forced employers to find solutions to safely distribute access to their network to myriad locations.

Zayo coined the term “the intelligence era” for the period starting in 2024 and is characterized by modifying networks to handle the massive increases in data created by AI data centers. The changes are not just from larger bandwidth and include lowering latency and increasing real-time responsiveness to end-users.

The report digs a lot deeper than this blog and includes a  lot of interesting graphs of the detail of bandwidth growth since 2020.

Supreme Court to Hear ISP Copyright Case

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that will determine if ISPs are required to terminate broadband service for customers who are accused of copyright violations. The suit is a result of a longstanding dispute between Cox Communications and music labels, including Sony Music Entertainment.

The Supreme Court case stems from a series of court cases that ended with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Cox. The case was accepted by the Supreme Court since the ruling conflicts with some aspects of similar cases in the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts.

The case originated with a 2019 decision by a Virginia Court that found Cox liable for both contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and awarded the record companies an astounding $1 billion in damages. Cox appealed, and the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the charges for vicarious infringement and vacated the $1 billion of damages.

This was still a troublesome ruling for ISPs because even after getting rid of the damage penalty, Cox still stands in violation of contributory damages over actions taken by its customers. The record labels insist that Cox should permanently disconnect any customer who engages in repeated copyright infringement. This ruling would turn ISPs into Internet policemen who must monitor and punish customers who engage in copyright infringement. That doesn’t just mean people who download copies of music, but also movies, games, books, and pirated sports events.

This is an incredibly uncomfortable role for ISPs. ISPs don’t monitor customer usage because that would mean looking closely at everything that customers do. Instead, the music companies want Cox and other ISPs to react to complaints made by copyright holders. That might make sense in a perfect world, but the real world isn’t perfect. Complaints are rarely made to ISPs by copyright holders, and there is an entire industry of companies that make a living by issuing takedown requests for infringements of copyrighted materials.

The music companies expect ISPs to cut off subscribers after only a few violations of copyright. ISPs are in the business of selling broadband connections, and the last thing they want to do is to permanently disconnect paying customers. This would also be devastating for broadband customers. Most homes in the U.S. don’t feel that they have broadband choice, and most have access to only one fast ISP. If they lose that connection, they could find themselves cut off from functional broadband. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where a teenager or visitors to a home violate copyrights and get the household disconnected from broadband. Losing broadband is a severe penalty for an infraction that would incur only a small fine if taken to court. The right penalty is to force people who infringe copyrights to pay a fine. Copyright holders are asking to bypass the law enforcement and court system, and want to turn ISPs into the judge, jury, and executioner for copyright violations.

ISPs need to keep an eye on this case and should have associations file comments in the court proceeding. A ruling against Cox is a ruling against every ISP. I assume consumer advocates will also weigh in with briefs since the penalty of permanently losing broadband doesn’t fit the crime.

The Spectrum Policy Mess

There was a recent article in LightReading that asked a great question – BEAD bet big on CBRS and 6 GHz bands, so why is Congress gutting them? Answering that question needs some context.

NTIA leaned into supporting fixed wireless throughout the BEAD process. During the original BEAD map challenge process, NTIA made it clear that locations covered by WISPs using licensed spectrum (CBRS) were to be considered as served as long as the WISP claimed the ability to deliver 100/20 Mbps broadband. There were vigorous challenges by governments and ISPs during that map challenge, so some areas served by licensed spectrum were kept as BEAD-eligible if speeds were below that threshold.

More recently, NTIA came out with a surprise decision that State Broadband Offices (SBOs) had to remove BEAD locations served by WISPs using only unlicensed spectrum. We’ll have to wait for the final count, but folks are speculating that this removed about 15% of the remaining BEAD-eligible locations nationwide.

It’s likely that the majority of rural WISPs will be incorporating 6 GHz spectrum into rural fixed wireless networks. If they haven’t done so yet, it will be a big component of future electronics upgrades. 6 GHz spectrum has wide channels that allow WISPs to deliver much faster speeds to customers within a reasonable distance from a tower.

When NTIA made the announcement that locations served by unlicensed WISPs are considered to be served, NTIA also changed the BEAD grant rules drastically and is allowing fixed wireless, cellular FWA, and satellite on the same playing field as fiber when choosing grant winners. NTIA is allowing SBOs to give some priority to fiber, but since NTIA also reserves the right to review every grant award, I think the priority for fiber is somewhat of a smokescreen. It seems clear that wireless carriers and satellite carriers are going to win a lot more BEAD locations than anybody ever anticipated. WISPs that win BEAD are going to be heavily reliant on CBRS and 6 GHz spectrum.

At the same time that BEAD was changing, Congress took a different path that poses a big threat to the availability of CBRS and 6 GHz spectrum. Congress has accepted the hype from cellular carriers that they will be running out of spectrum in a few years. The carriers even rolled out the old saw that the U.S. is losing the 5G race to China. My cynical take is that the carriers want more spectrum to expand FWA home wireless.

In the One Big Beautiful Bill, Congress renewed the FCC’s ability to hold spectrum auctions and instructed the FCC and NTIA to identify at least 800 megahertz of spectrum between 1.3 GHz and 10.5 GHz to be auctioned. The FCC must auction at least 300 megahertz of spectrum within two years, which must include at least 100 megahertz of the C-Band spectrum between 3.98-4.2 GHz. The bill carves out two bands of spectrum that cannot be considered for auction or relocation. The 3.1-3.25 GHz spectrum has been used by the military for many years. Also excluded is spectrum between 7.4-8.4 GHz, which is part of the X-Band spectrum that is used for military satellites.

The FCC and NTIA must identify 500 megahertz of other spectrum that will support full-power commercial licensed use cases. The new law does not protect CBRS spectrum, which sits at 3-55 – 3.7 GHz. This spectrum is used today by over 1,000 entities today such as WISPs, private networks, ports, schools, sports venues, hospitals, airports, and the DOD. The OBBB also doesn’t protect 6 GHz spectrum that is fully used today for WiFi. The FCC approved 6 GHz spectrum for WiFi in April 2020, and the spectrum is key to the ongoing deployment of WiFi 6 and WiFi 7, along with rural broadband.

There is no guarantee that the FCC will touch these two blocks of spectrum, but it’s going to be exceedingly hard to find 800 MHz of spectrum to auction without grabbing some or all of these two spectrum bands. There will obviously be a big battle from WISPs and the WiFi industry to protect CBRS and 6 GHz, but the FCC has the cover from Congress to allow them to raid the two spectrum bands.

As the LightReading article points out, NTIA and Congress are working at odds with each other. It’s not hard to envision BEAD grants going to WISPs and then watching WISPs lose the spectrum they need.

This whole mess comes from Congress meddling in spectrum policy – something they haven’t done before. The historical process was for the FCC to weigh the pros and cons of available spectrum and to pick the most beneficial use for each spectrum band. But Congress wanted to claim $85 billion in potential revenue from spectrum auctions to offset tax cuts.

I’ve talked to WISPs who say that losing CBRS and 6 GHz spectrum puts them out of business. That would leave them with the historic WiFi spectrum that has too few and overused channels.

The economy will suffer greatly in the long run if the cellular carriers are able to pull off this unprecedented raid on spectrum. Rural broadband will suffer a big hit. But the biggest hit to the economy would come from loss of WiFi spectrum, which fuels trillions of dollars of value across the economy.

FCC Begins to Streamline Regulations

In the June 2025 Open Meeting, the FCC adopted several changes to FCC rules, which are the first results of its larger Delete, Delete, Delete docket that aims to eliminate unneeded regulations and reporting. The FCC took the following three actions:

Streamline Cable TV Rules. The most sweeping change was to eliminate 27 pages of regulations, which covered 77 regulations and 8 forms related to providing cable TV service. Deleting these regulations recognizes the reality of the cable TV industry where traditional cable companies have lost half of their cable customers and continue to lose millions of customers each quarter. The rule changes were streamlined by:

  • Eliminating unnecessary forms and rules,
  • Deregulating cable equipment not used exclusively to receive the basic service tier,
  • Exempting rate regulations for small businesses,
  • Declining to extend rate regulation to commercial establishments, and
  • Modernizing numerous rules to account for the sunset of cable programming service tier rate regulation in determining basic service tier rates and to simplify and streamline the remaining regulations.

These changes have been badly needed and provide an opportunity for traditional cable providers to stay competitive with online programming options. It seems likely that there will be more changes coming to cable television as Delete, Delete, Delete continues.

Eliminate the Need for Professional Engineer to Certify Mapping. I’ve written several times over the years about the FCC’s requirement (which came from Congress) that requires ISPs that send mapping information twice each year to have their mapping data blessed by a professional engineer. Instead, ISPs must have filings approved by one of the following:

  • A corporate officer possessing a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in engineering and who has direct knowledge of and responsibility for the carrier’s network design and construction.
  • An engineer possessing a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree in electrical engineering, electronic engineering, or another similar technical discipline, and at least seven years of relevant experience in broadband network design and/or performance.
  • An employee or agent with specialized training relevant to broadband network engineering and design, deployment, and/or performance, and at least 10 years of relevant experience in broadband network engineering, design, and/or performance.

This will still require some small ISPs to hire outside assistance, but it should be less costly than finding and hiring a professional engineer.

Proposal to Address Rules for TTY.  Finally, the FCC adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to update regulations related to older technologies used to provide telecommunications services for those with hearing and speech disabilities.