NDIA Sues Over Digital Equity Act

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) is suing the Trump administration for cancelling the funding for the Digital Equity Act. The Digital Equity Act was created by the same IIJA legislation that created the BEAD grants. The Digital Equity Act included programs to help States expand digital literacy and address barriers to accessing the internet.

The lawsuit alleges that President Trump violated the separation of powers by killing a program that had explicitly been approved and funded by Congress. The lawsuit claims that shutting down the federal program “far exceeds the constitutional authority of the Executive Branch.” NDIA is asking the court for a declaratory judgment that would reinstitute the program. NDIA was one of the many organizations that had been awarded funding from the first round of grants from the program in late 2024.

There were huge delays in deploying the funding from the Digital Equity Act, which must be laid at the feet of NTIA. The State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program was established to give money to States to distribute through grants. The stated goal of this grant program was to promote the achievement of digital equity, support digital inclusion activities, and build capacity for efforts by States relating to the adoption of broadband. The Act allocated $1.44 billion to the States for this program, with awards to be made each year from 2022 through 2026. The NTIA was extremely slow in getting this program running and in 2024 announced $840 million in funding to States to cover grants that were intended to cover the funding from 2022 through 2024.

The other major grant program was the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program, which was administered directly by NTIA. The budget for this grant program from IIJA was $1.25 billion, with $250 million per year to be awarded from 2022 until 2026. Congress liked the program so much that they added an additional $250 million in 2024. NTIA was also slow in launching this program and finally announced the first Notice of Funding Opportunity for grants in 2024.

If NTIA had followed the requirements and timeline specified by Congress, over half of the funding would have been spent by 2024. Instead, because of the inexplicable delays, the White House killed all of the grants announced in 2024, and none of this funding has ever been used.

This is not the first lawsuit that asks that the federal government fulfill funding for programs approved by Congress but killed by the current administration. For example, twenty States filed a lawsuit in June asking the courts to reinstate a wide range of grant programs. The NDIA suit is unique in that it’s the first suit that directly names President Trump as one of the defendants.

There was a lot of speculation when the Digital Equity Act was killed that it was part of an effort by DOGE to kill any federal program related to diversity and equity (DEI). While the title of the program includes the word equity, digital equity has never had any goal of addressing issues related to age, sex, or gender. Digital equity has been used in the context that the U.S. economy will be improved if more people know how to take advantage of computers and broadband. The only slight nod to any social goal in the Act was that 5% of the funding was carved out for Tribes.

The future of the funding is now in the hands of the courts. It is also seeming more likely that there will be similar suits if NTIA decides not to award the non-deployment funds from the BEAD program to States. That funding was intended for States to tackle non-infrastructure programs related to broadband.

Broadband Shorts October 2025

These are a few topics I found interesting, but which don’t support a full blog.

NTIA BEAD Work to Continue During the Shutdown. We found out that the BEAD and other programs at NTIA were not subject to the government shutdown. NTIA is continuing work on BEAD, the Middle Mile program, the Tribal Broadband Connectivity program, the Broadband Infrastructure Program, and the Connecting Minority Communities program. Overall, NTIA was able to keep 463 of its 600 employees, largely because their work isn’t tied to annual appropriations.

My irony meter instantly went into full swing because NTIA is able to use the same funds allocated to BEAD to keep the federal side of the BEAD program open while the agency is actively working to claw back as much of that same funding as possible from State broadband grants and non-deployment funds.

Rights-of-way Not Permanent? The Georgia Supreme Court rules that local governments can withdraw contracts that granted rights-of-way, by relying on an argument that no contract can last forever, with no end date. This is bad news for telcos, cable companies, electric companies, wireless companies, and the many businesses that rely on maintaining rights-of-way to support long-term infrastructure. This might not mean much beyond the specific case that drew this ruling, but it opens up the possibility of local governments requiring periodic payments to maintain rights-of-way – something that infrastructure owners will be compelled to pay once infrastructure is using the rights-of-way.

Verizon to Buy Starry. Verizon purchased the fixed wireless company Starry, which is an interesting addition to the company’s expansion of wireless broadband. Starry has developed a unique wireless technology that it uses to bring broadband to large MDUs. Starry currently has over 100,000 customers in Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, and Washington, D.C./Virginia.

Starry uses millimeter wave spectrum to reach customers. This fits in well with Verizon’s portfolio of millimeter wave spectrum that it had hoped to use for 5G. That use quickly died when it showed that the spectrum fizzled at street level when connecting to cellphones. Remember all of the Verizon commercials with a cellphone showing gigabit speeds?

FCC to Fast-Track Satellite Expansion. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced a push to fast-track satellite applications for expansions or changes to constellations. The process currently requires years of study by the FCC to consider any request from a satellite company. Carr described his planned changes as moving from a ‘Default to No’ process to a ‘Default to Yes’ framework”. He ways this will make the assumption that satellite technologies are in the public interest and should be treated in the same way that the FCC treats other technologies. This might be viewed as a pro-Starlink change, but there are dozens of companies asking for permission to launch satellites.

SpaceX has Chinese Investors. During a lawsuit, it was discovered that SpaceX has Chinese investors, a fact that has never been made public. This instantly raised a lot of questions since SpaceX is becoming increasingly important as a U.S. military contractor.

The extent of the Chinese investments, and the type of Chinese investor, was not disclosed, but it seems certain that this is going to be investigated. SpaceX has always kept its full ownership private, and that will likely have to change if it to wants to keep the role of defense contractor.

Who Will Still Need Broadband After BEAD?

A question I’ve been asked lately is what comes after BEAD. While BEAD will build good broadband networks in a lot of rural communities, it’s becoming clear that BEAD is not going to solve a lot of the rural broadband gap. I’ve identified categories of locations that will still need better broadband after BEAD.

BEAD Satellite Awards. I start with the premise that rural communities are not going to be happy when somebody officially tells them that the federal government is giving money to Starlink or Kuiper to solve their rural broadband gap. It’s likely that NTIA and the FCC will declare that satellite is good broadband so that they can declare that the rural broadband gap has been solved.

There are also natural limitations on the capabilities of satellite broadband. It can be difficult to deliver a satellite signal through heavy tree canopy. The signal can be blocked for customers living in the shadow of hills or mountains. There are a lot of questions about the maximum number of customers that can be served simultaneously in a given geography. But the real ongoing question will be if people and local politicians will accept satellite broadband when neighboring counties have fiber in rural places. There is also a big question of affordability.

I predict there will be a growing outcry from people from areas that got satellite from BEAD who will not accept satellite as the permanent solution.

Defaults. There will continue to be defaults for existing broadband grant programs. This year saw significant RDOF defaults from Charter and CenturyLink. There will be defaults on networks funded by ARPA grants, where funding ends at the end of 2026.

I expect BEAD defaults. When NTIA took the approach of forcing ISPs to accept less funding, many of those ISPs will realize in the future that they don’t have enough money to build the promised network.

Crappy Mapping. The biggest group of locations missed by BEAD will be due to poor FCC maps. The BEAD map challenge was a total joke. It was fairly easy for ISPs to get BEAD-eligible locations removed from the map, including many that should have stayed on. The map challenge made it practically impossible to add locations to the BEAD map where the FCC maps were in error. There are two major flaws in the FCC maps that will surface as people complain about still not having adequate broadband.

There are still numerous examples of locations that are not identified on the FCC maps. I recently talked to a cooperative in Appalachia that said there were neighboring areas where the FCC fabric missed 30% of the eligible locations. This is understandable because CostQuest relies on two primary sources of data on housing: local records and satellite images. There are many counties that still have poor records. Satellite images don’t do well in areas with total tree cover that hides roads and houses from the satellite imagery.

The bigger mapping issue is ISPs that have claimed speeds of 100/20 Mbps or faster in the FCC maps but can’t deliver that speed. FCC rules allow ISPs to report marketing speeds rather than an approximation of actual speeds, so such ISPs are probably not violating any FCC rules. But while fully knowing that marketing speeds are likely exaggerated, in the grant process, we pretend that the speeds reported in the FCC maps are gospel. When the RDOF subsidy program was announced, which was to provide a subsidy to locations where speeds were less than 25/3 Mbps, the large rural telcos flooded the FCC mapping process with claims that upgraded the claimed speeds of huge numbers of locations to exactly 25/3 Mbps broadband. The FCC rejected a lot of these claims that were made on the eve of the RDOF reverse auction. When BEAD rules dictated that grants could only be made to locations where broadband speeds were less than 100/20 Mbps, many rural ISPs scrambled to claim that they could deliver exactly 100/20 Mbps.

ISPs also often overstate coverage areas in the FCC maps. An ISP is only supposed to claim locations it can connect to within ten days after a request. There are many examples of WISPs in the FCC maps that draw perfect coverage circles around a tower that ignore topography and foliage. There are many other ISPs that claim service areas that are aspirational rather than real.

The bottom line is that we will still be a long way from being able to declare the job done after the BEAD awards. To be fair, BEAD, ReConnect, ARPA, and other grants have made some huge dents in the rural broadband gap. But the day will come when the millions of people who have been left behind will make themselves heard.

Forcing Connectivity

In August, FEMA changed its disaster policy, and everybody who receives federal aid from the agency must now have an email address and must register and deal with disaster-related issues through a FEMA portal. WIRED reported having seen an internal document from FEMA that said the change is “an important step to prepare for the transition to digital payment methods and enhance communication with survivors throughout the application process.” The change is the result of an executive order in March that tasks the entire federal government with going digital and discontinuing the writing of checks for payments.

This is the first time I can recall any government agency that is only willing to correspond with constituents digitally. A huge number of local, state, and federal government systems have gone online, but I can’t recall any government processes that didn’t allow people to do things in person or using a telephone.

FEMA told WIRED that about 80% of people who need aid already do the process online. For folks who are unable to do this online, FEMA has always sent people into disaster areas to meet with and talk to people. In my area after Hurricane Helene, FEMA set up tents at public sites that were advertised on the radio. In the worst hit places, FEMA staff went door-to-door. Apparently, such local efforts are not going to happen in the future.

This is a really big deal because there are plenty of people who are illiterate and can’t deal with an online system. There are more people with no digital literacy skills, particularly a lot of the elderly, who will not be able to figure out an online portal. There are still people in every community who don’t have home broadband, don’t have a computer or laptop, or don’t own a smartphone. These people are going to be unable to interact with the government if all communications are by email and a portal.

The FEMA online process will be a huge barrier for folks with no digital skills or broadband connectivity. The process starts by registering with FEMA through a portal. The portal will then ask people to verify who they are, which means taking and sending pictures of documents. The portal will be the only source of communication for the entire assistance process. My experience with government portals suggests it won’t be as easy to use as advertised, even for people with good digital skills.

This is particularly troublesome for an agency with the mission of helping areas struck by emergencies. My region of Appalachia was decimated by Hurricane Helene. Cities and towns mostly got power and cell coverage within a few weeks, and a few more weeks to get home broadband. But a few towns were so devastated that outages were much longer. A few towns were wiped off the map. There was a handful of rural areas that were without power for months. There are still some remote roads that have still not been opened a year later. Immediately after the hurricane, nobody here was able to connect with FEMA online.

I’m sure that this is only the start, and it’s not hard to envision that all interactions with the federal government will move online. The IRS has already stopped paying refunds by check. The agency encourages people to get a bank account, but will send money on a prepaid debit card or a digital wallet. I shudder thinking of the government helping somebody who lost a home by mailing a debit card.

What is probably the most disturbing about this is that these new requirements come on the heels of NTIA cutting $3.5 billion in digital equity grant funding that was aimed at helping people improve digital skills and learn how to get online.

A New Security Risk

A new security risk has recently been brought to my attention. I was on a Teams call that included an attorney who would not let the call continue while an AI notetaker was present. His comment was that the notetaker is listening to everything that is said, transmitting everything verbatim to a data center somewhere in the cloud. He said he was aghast that people would hold meetings about sensitive topics and then give everything that was said to unknown parties outside of the call. He used the analogy that having an AI notetaker is the equivalent of inviting a reporter into a meeting.

It didn’t take much research to realize he is right. An AI notetaker records everything that is said in a meeting so that AI servers somewhere in the cloud can make a transcript or summary of the meeting. Every word said in a meeting, from the brilliant to the mundane, is sent to a data center out of the control of the people on the call.

There is no way to know what the folks who control the recording will do. At a minimum, it’s almost certain they are using the data to further train AI models, which are voracious for more data. A record of the meeting could be sold to others. It’s possible, and even likely, that somebody really good at AI prompts can figure out what is discussed at a corporate meeting.

Of course, the AI notetaker companies can all swear that they don’t use the data for purposes other than making a summary of the meeting. But I have to ask, does anybody have the slightest idea of the identity of the people who own and work at these businesses, and do you trust them? Nobody would let an unknown stranger into a work meeting, but that’s exactly what companies are doing with AI notetakers. But suddenly, companies have begun willingly sharing conversations with the cloud that they might not even want to share with everybody else inside their company. It’s hard to see this as anything but a self-inflicted data breach.

Before writing this blog, I asked a few people about this. One friend who is an AI expert said that it would be too tempting for anybody in this kind of business to monetize the data they are gathering by selling it to others to train AI models. He said that most AI companies are struggling to be profitable, and that secondary revenue streams have to be tempting (just as it is tempting for ISPs to sell user data). He thought that it’s too expensive for companies to routinely sift through the data for tidbits of corporate espionage, but that it would be possible for anybody willing to spend the processing time, or who is interested in a specific business or a specific person. He also said he would be worried that AI companies could be using the data to gather a voice print of meeting participants, something that they might otherwise have a hard time finding for most people.

I don’t have any knowledge that the companies in this line of business are doing anything nefarious with the data gathered, and perhaps they are not. But letting key information out of a closed circle of people on a call is practically the definition of a security risk. There is no way to know if this might harm a business.

There are a few companies that sell notetakers that say that they keep all data on a user’s computer and don’t share it in the cloud. The AI engine that summarizes a call is still going to be in the cloud, so unless that can be proven somehow, that still feels like a risk. Tech companies have been lying to the public about how they use the data they gather since AOL and early web companies figured out how to monetize user data.

This is one of the oddest blogs I’ve ever written because it makes me wonder if I’m being paranoid. But that feeling is probably a sign that this is a real concern.

FCC to Review State AI Regulation

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the FCC will pursue the directive from the White House to review and possibly block state regulations related to artificial intelligence (AI). At an industry summit, he was quoted as saying that the FCC has authority under Section 253 of the Communications Act related to the FCC having authority to step in if a state of local law is prohibiting the deployment of modern infrastructure.

It’s been a while since I read 47 U.S. Code § 253, and it turns out that the language in that section is short and succinct:

In general, no State or local statute or regulation, or other State or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service.

 Nothing in this section shall affect the ability of a State to impose, on a competitively neutral basis and consistent with section 254 of this title, requirements necessary to preserve and advance universal service, protect the public safety and welfare, ensure the continued quality of telecommunications service, and safeguard the rights of consumers.

 If, after notice and an opportunity for public comment, the Commission determines that a State or local government has permitted or imposed any statute, regulation, or legal requirement that violates subsection (a) or (b), the Commission shall preempt the enforcement of such statute, regulation, or legal requirement to the extent necessary to correct such violation or inconsistency.

The FCC faces a regulatory conundrum if it tries to use Section 253 to regulate AI. It’s clear that Section  253 only applies to telecommunications services.

There are only two paths I can think of that would enable AI to be considered as a communications service. The obvious one is if Congress passes a law that says it is. However, I imagine the folks in the AI industry would fight hard not to be regulated like a telecommunications service.

The more roundabout way would be for the FCC to deem broadband to be a telecommunications service, and then somehow determine that AI comes along for the ride. That doesn’t seem likely since Chairman Carr had plans to immediately declare that broadband is not a telecommunications service when he became Chairman. He was saved from having to do that when, in early January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the ruling from the previous FCC that put broadband under Title II regulation. That meant that the FCC reverted to the rules made by the Ajit Pai FCC that said that broadband is not a telecommunications service and can’t be regulated as such.

It’s hard to see a logical path to regulate AI as a telecommunications service if broadband is not telecommunications. I can’t think of a logical argument to enable that. It’s also not easy to claim that AI is communications. AI is mostly computer calculations done in a data center. AI prompts initiate from users and are carried to a data center via broadband, and the results are carried back to the customers via broadband. But there is no way in a fiber network that AI bits are different from any other kinds of bits.

I’ve never heard any argument that the other kinds of content that ride broadband networks can be considered to be a communications service. If AI is somehow considered to be communications, then so are responses from Google search, a movie from Netflix, and practically everything else that traverses the Internet. Every company that transmits content will vehemently oppose the idea that what they send over the Internet is a regulated communications service.

The FCC faces an additional challenge in trying to overturn State AI regulations. Several recent Court rulings have weakened the FCC’s authority. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturned the Chevron Doctrine, which brings into question the ability of the FCC to enact laws that were not specifically mandated by Congress. This year, McLaughlin Chiropractic v. McKesson Corp gave District Courts more leeway to disagree with rulings made by federal agencies like the FCC.

It’s clear that the FCC is going to tackle the issue, but it’s going to take some interesting regulatory and legal gymnastics to pull this off. Perhaps the FCC’s goal is to just tamp down State regulations before they are enacted, but a Google search tells me that every State either has passed or is considering regulations related to AI.

Limiting Large Network Outages

Ookla recently published an interesting article that emphasizes what I have been telling folks for a long time. Not that many years ago, telephone and broadband networks were structured in such a way that most outages were local events. A fiber cut might kill service to a neighborhood; an electronics failure might kill service to a larger area, but for the most part, outages were contained within a discrete and local area.

There were exceptions. Rural areas have been susceptible to fiber cuts in the fiber that provides Internet backbone. Years ago, I worked with Cook County, Minnesota, which would lose voice and broadband every time there was a cut in the single fiber between Minneapolis and northern Minnesota that supported the area. A public-private partnership was created to build the THOR network to solve backhaul failures in a large chunk of southeastern Colorado.

https://www.ookla.com/articles/building-digital-resilience-strategies-2025

As the article points out, this has all changed because network operators have consolidated and interconnected networks across large geographic areas. Ookla says that the new phenomenon of large scale outages is a direct result of digital transformation. As carriers, companies, and governments have grown increasingly reliant on cloud services, managed providers, and interconnected networks, they now have to live with outages where what used to be a local problem can cascade across a region, or even across the country.

The article looks at the recent power outage in Spain and Portugal that quickly grew from a local outage to a power outage across much of the Iberian Peninsula. Ookla points out that in today’s world, there is not that much difference between outages of a power grid, a cellular network, or a fiber network.

The article points out that outages can cascade much faster than anybody expects. The difference between a temporary disruption and a system-wide crisis depends on how quickly the network operators can recognize and analyze the causes of a problem. Ookla says there are five key steps needed to keep disruptions from escalating. Every major network outage is likely due to network operators failing at one of the early steps of this process.

  • Detection: Spot the first signs of trouble across multiple data sources, from outage reports to operator dashboards.
  • Attribution: Identify the root cause of the problem, whether it’s an internal software bug, a fiber cut, or a regional power failure.
  • Communication: Share timely, accurate information with stakeholders and the public to reduce confusion.
  • Remediation: Act quickly to contain damage, restore critical services, and prevent cascading failures.
  • Learning: Capture lessons from each event and feed them back into playbooks, exercises, and long-term resilience planning.

Ookla believes that the local reaction within the first hour can make a huge difference in the extent and length of an outage. There was one power company in Iberia that was able to isolate itself from the cascading shutdown because it was prepared to react quickly. I wonder how many local ISPs are ready to quickly react to problems caused outside their local network. The Ookla article suggests that local operators can do a lot more to protect themselves and their customers against major outages.

NTIA’s BEAD Role

At the SCTE Tech Expo in Washington, DC, Arielle Roth, the newly seated head of NTIA, was quoted by several sources as saying, “Our role is to be good stewards of the money . . . We wouldn’t be doing our due diligence if we didn’t look under the hood and make sure that Americans aren’t on the hook for costs that would be unreasonable.”

By the looks of what NTIA has been doing, they seem to have taken cost-cutting as the primary goal of the BEAD program. First, they forced States to shave millions of locations from the BEAD-eligible list, and I believe we’re going to find out later that many millions of those locations should have gotten grants for better broadband. NTIA is now in the process of setting a cost cap for each state based on the CostQuest cost models and forcing ISPs to accept 65% or less of the state-specific cost cap.

I would agree that NTIA has a responsibility to make sure that money isn’t wasted, but that is not supposed to be its primary concern. Let me take you back to the beginning of BEAD to talk about how this was supposed to work.

Congress clearly intended for the full $45.5 billion allocated to BEAD to be spent. States were instructed to bring good broadband to every BEAD-eligible location, and the legislation included an emphasis on building fiber. Whatever wasn’t spent on infrastructure was to be used for non-deployment projects that were broadband-related. This could have encompassed a wide variety of different uses to be determined by each state. The legislation suggested uses for non-deployment funds for things like wiring urban MDUs for broadband and getting computers and other devices into the hands of those who need them. States have suggested a wide range of uses for non-deployment funds. For example, West Virginia wanted to use the funds to do a statewide pole inventory to make it easier to build fiber. South Carolina envisioned creating a statewide middle-mile network that made sure that ISPs in every rural county could buy backbone Internet for the same price as in the populous counties.

Unfortunately, NTIA got off to a bad start early when it realized how bad the FCC maps were. The whole BEAD process was delayed waiting for better maps. When they got slightly better maps, NTIA pulled the trigger and used those maps to allocate BEAD funds to states. Almost immediately, some states yelled that they didn’t get enough money, while other states realized they got more than they needed. There were policy discussions about shifting money between states after awards were made, but that never happened.

The States then went through a map challenge process. Unfortunately, the rules required by NTIA made it far easier to remove BEAD-eligible locations from the map than to add locations that should have been eligible. I know multiple counties that worked hard to show that some of the ISPs in their County were not delivering 100/20 Mbps. However, the process for proving that was nearly impossible to follow – it required convincing multiple customers of a given ISP to take speed tests multiple times per day over multiple days, and in a specific manner. The end result of the disastrous map challenge process was that millions of locations were removed from BEAD, with relatively few added.

More recently, NTIA acted to remove even more locations from BEAD. They correctly removed locations where some other grant was supposed to build better broadband. But they also made it easier for WISPs, using both licensed and unlicensed spectrum, to ask to remove locations from the BEAD map.

States were originally given a lot of latitude in how to use the funding allocated to them. But States were to act under the overarching intentions of the legislation that said they should consider fiber first. States understood that by funding relatively expensive fiber builds, they were reducing the funds that would be left for non-deployment. States had serious policy discussions of how to balance between building fiber and other needs.

But this latitude is exactly what Congress intended. They wanted BEAD to avoid the problems of RDOF, where the FCC called the shots and ended up awarding money to ISPs that should not have been funded. That draws attention to a second quote from Roth. She said that BEAD funding should go to “serious providers who are going to deliver on their promises and that we’re not going to see defaults.” I hate to be the bearer of bad news to NTIA, but by pressuring ISPs to take less grant funding to stay in BEAD, NTIA is greatly increasing the chance of future defaults. This is going to be a repeat of RDOF. ISPs will start building networks and will suffer inflation and supply chain issues, and some of them will decide that it’s better to pull the plug than to finish building a project they can’t afford, and that can’t make money. That’s the reason for the RDOF defaults in recent years – RDOF winners looked at the low amounts of award they accepted in the reverse auction and threw in the towel.

One thing is now clear with BEAD – NTIA now fully owns the program. States lost all of their latitude with BEAD, and the NTIA changed the rules after the BEAD process made it to the five-yard line. Whatever happens from here will be laid 100% at the doorstep of NTIA, and my prediction is that BEAD is not going to be talked about fondly in many parts of the country.

Broadband in a Hurry

There is an interesting new twist on wireless backhaul. The Swedish company TERASi has developed a wireless backhaul technology that enables networks to be configured on the fly. The company has developed a small, lightweight, portable microwave radio that can quickly be mounted anywhere on a tripod, a pole, or any object with line-of-sight to a neighboring radio.

The radios use frequencies in the 70 GHz range. They can provide 2 Gbps in bandwidth for up to 5 miles or 10 Gbps for a few miles. Latency is a super-low 5 milliseconds.

The selling point for these portable radios is that they can be installed and configured in minutes. This is due to the small size of 3x3x1 inches. The company says a radio can be mounted on a photography tripod or even on a drone to create a quick wireless link. The small radios are being touted as a solution for quick links in the field for the military or for a quick link any time an ISP needs a quick connection.

The radios are now in beta testing mode, and the company would like to hear from ISPs or local governments that might have a unique use case for radios that can create a quick link.

It’s not hard to imagine numerous uses for a microwave network that can be installed quickly.

  • The company is marketing this to the military as an alternative to using Starlink on the battlefield. There have been several times in Ukraine where the Starlink network went down – at least once intentionally, and once recently when Starlink had a worldwide outage. Microwave radios are safe from interference since it’s nearly impossible to intercept the tiny beam between two devices. These radios also have the upside of delivering higher bandwidth than satellite.
  • The technology could be a boon for disaster recovery. ISPs and utilities could string together a backhaul network that would allow them to reestablish a quick bandwidth link to substations, cell towers, or powered electronics hubs. The devices could be in place quickly to establish connections for critical first responders. Local governments could use the radios to power public hotspots to give quick connectivity to the public.
  • These radios could be an instant patch for damaged networks, particularly in situations where repairs will be slow. These radios could be a quick fix for fiber cuts in places that are hard to fix, like bridges and railroad crossings. The radios could leapfrog landslides, fire, or flooded areas to keep a network functioning.
  • Temporary wireless networks make sense for places like construction sites that need bandwidth today, but not permanently.
  • Commercial firms might consider this as a quick fix between nearby buildings for emergency redundancy.

The downside is the expense of buying units that might never be used. But the huge upside is having the ability to create a quick broadband connection for emergencies and critical needs.

Easing Tower Placement

Communities need to be on the alert because the FCC has opened a new proceeding that will make it easier for carriers to deploy towers and other wireless infrastructure. On September 9, the FCC approved the Notice for Proposed Rulemaking in Docket WT 25-276 titled Build America: Eliminating Barriers t Wireless Deployments.

The NPRM builds on the FCC’s 2018 Small Cell Order that made it easier for carriers to deploy small cell sites. To cite the introduction to the NPRM, the FCC is looking to “ensure investment and network buildout is free from unlawful regulatory burdens imposed at the state and local level. . . we continue to see regulations that inhibit the deployment, densification, and upgrading of wireless networks, resulting in an effective prohibition of 5G wireless services.”

The current FCC seems to have a penchant for referring to any practice it doesn’t like as unlawful. This seems way over the top. If local communities were being unlawful, then carriers would be prevailing against them in lawsuits and with FCC complaints, which are not happening.

The main thrust of the NPRM is to seek comments on whether the FCC should take steps to ensure that state and local permitting doesn’t effectively prohibit the deployment of wireless infrastructure. The FCC is looking for comments about local regulations that:

  • Inhibit the deployment of macro cell towers and other wireless facilities
  • Impose unreasonable delays in permitting approvals
  • Assess disproportionate or otherwise unreasonable fees
  • Condition approval on aesthetic or similar criteria
  • Impose other regulatory impediments

To be fair to the FCC and carriers, there are communities that want better cell service while also fighting hard against the construction of new large cell towers. There is a definite NIMBY movement against placing cell towers near the residential communities they serve.

The NPRM also asks if the FCC should implement alternative dispute resolution procedures or an accelerated docket process that has been commonly referred to as a “rocket docket” to facilitate disputes on permitting or tower placement.

The docket also seeks comments to better clarify the meaning of “concealment elements.” which are used by tower builders to minimize the visual impact of towers and other wireless infrastructure. It’s an amusement for my family to point out cell towers poorly disguised as pine trees that stick up far higher than any other trees.

Finally, the NPRM asks if there are any other regulatory changes related to wireless infrastructure that should be considered.