AOL Drops Dial-up

In news that will evoke nostalgia for a lot of people, AOL announced that it will be discontinuing dial-up Internet access on September 30. AOL was the poster child of the dial-up Internet era when dial-up was the primary way to get online before the advent of DSL and cable modems in the late 1990s. Anybody who used dial-up can still remember the pings and pongs while the phone made a connection to a dial-up server. People probably remember when AOL would mass-mail diskettes that contained AOL software to attract new customers.

AOL was phenomenally successful in the 1990s. AOL ruled the dial-up industry and reached 34 million dial-up customers at its peak. The company had a lot of ISP competitors like Sprint, EarthLink, NetZero, Prodigy, and a ton of small dial-up ISPs operating in local markets.

But AOL was much more than just a dial-up portal to reach the early web. AOL created the first major platform that included email, news, games, shopping, and a host of other services in one place. AOL was attractive to new users since it gave them the ability to do things without having to search the web. Before platforms like AOL, a user had to be fairly tech-savvy to use the Internet. A lot of users went onto the AOL platform and never strayed elsewhere on the web. Its closest early platform competitor was CompuServe, which grew to about 3 million subscribers and eventually concentrated on serving business people. MSN and other websites eventually tried to duplicate and  compete with AOL.

People remember speeds on AOL and other dial-up ISPs of 56 kbps (kilobits per second). But 56 kbps was only introduced in 1997, and before that, most ISP modems offered speeds of 28.8 kbps or 33.6 kbps. The first DSL modems that brought 1 Mbps speeds that were 18 times faster than dial-up.

AOL stunned the business world on January 10, 2000, when it announced that it would buy Time Warner for $182 billion in stock and debt, the largest corporate merger ever. The purchase was at the height of the early Internet craze, and it was unbelievable that AOL could acquire the company that owned Time Magazine, CNN, and the Warner Brothers studios. AOL wanted access to the Time Warner content as a way to stave off looming competition from other web companies. It’s hard to know if the envisioned synergies could have thrived because in the spring of 2001, the dot-com crash killed AOL’s stock valuation along with other Internet and telco stocks.

AOL and other dial-up ISPs were a major issue for telephone companies because users would stay on dial-up connections for hours or days. Voice switches were not designed to have lines tied up for that long, and telephone companies complained of reaching switch saturation at busy times. A number of telcos tried to block or limit dial-up ISPs, but the courts and the FCC ruled that dial-up was a legitimate use of telephone lines.

You might wonder who still uses dial-up. According to the U.S Census, there were still 175,000 households on dial-up in 2020. The attraction of dial-up is that it is cheap – between $10 and $20 per month for the remaining companies in the business. It’s an attractive option for folks who only want to read email, or for rural folks with no other affordable alternative. Folks who still want dial-up will still have a few other options left, like EarthLink and NetZero.

I used AOL email for many years as my personal email. AOL says that its email service will remain after dial-up dies, but you have to wonder how long they’ll keep that going. Hearing the announcement brought back memories of hearing the AOL pings and the “You’ve Got Mail” greeting, and of using other long-dead services like Netscape and Ask Jeeves.

Monopsony in the Wireless Labor Market

NATE, the Communications Contractors Association, recently sponsored a report by the Brattle Group titled Market Failure in the Wireless Communications Infrastructure Service Industry. The report describes how the three national mobile networks (AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon) dominate the labor market for wireless contractors in a way that is undermining the development and retention of the workforce for this critical infrastructure.

The Brattle report calls the situation a monopsony. That is an economic term for a market where a buyer, or a small universe of buyers, has significant market power over vendors who serve the industry. Brattle believes the term applies since the three big cellular carriers collectively control 97% of the cellular market. The contractor market that sells labor to the carriers is comprised of numerous small companies.

The Brattle report describes how the three carriers collectively harm the contractor industry. The three carriers dictate the prices they are willing to pay for service. Contractors complain that the prices offered don’t account for local issues like labor rates, terrain, and weather. 80% of the contractors that responded to a Brattle survey say that prices offered by the carriers don’t cover their costs. The rates don’t cover costs like warehousing of materials, third-party compliance, or training costs for technicians.

The report also shows some interesting graphs that show that the carriers are slow to pay, further adding to the cost of working with them. They have charts that contrast the carriers and show that Verizon pays 75% of invoices within 30 days, while T-Mobile only pays 17%, and AT&T pays 15%. AT&T doesn’t pay more than 45% of its invoices for more than 60 days. Slow payments put a lot of pressure on contractors that must meet payrolls.

The behavior of the carriers is having a big impact on the contractor industry. 54% have downsized during the past three years. A lot of contractors have exited the market and are looking for work outside the cellular market. Attrition of knowledgeable technicians is killing institutional knowledge. The contractors fear that they won’t be able to respond to emergencies or support any effort in a few years to deploy 6G networks.

The Brattle report does not accuse the three big carriers of collusion but says that the desire of each to drive down operating costs is having the same impact as if they were colluding. The report warns that the industry is seeing a noticeable decline in institutional capacity. It takes time and on-the-job experience to train tower climbers – this is not a position that can be quickly ramped up. They warn that loss of experienced tower climbers is not only a concern for the industry but is a national security concern.

The report makes an interesting comparison to another monopsony industry, the companies that build airplanes. The airline industry has learned that it is most efficient if it pays enough to keep experienced workers, because that significantly reduces the time needed to build a new airplane.

The report believes that corrective action is needed. Brattle doesn’t know the best way to fix the problem, which could be done through policy, regulation, or the carriers deciding to change their practices.

This situation is a big contrast to the fiber construction industry because there are hundreds of companies building fiber, which creates significant competition to find a contractor for a project. However, there is a danger after the big spending on grants is completed that the number of companies building new fiber networks will shrink to be similar to the wireless industry.

Big Company Culture

AT&T CEO John Stankey wrote a lengthy memo to all company managers as a follow-up to a company-wide employee survey. AT&T is in the midst of an internal transformation. At the beginning of the year, AT&T mandated that all employees report to the office five days per week. The company is also pursuing an aggressive plan to reduce the number of work locations for white-collar workers to a smaller number of key hubs.

The memo included some blunt messages for employees. One of the key messages is the end of the concept of company loyalty. This is extraordinary for a corporation that historically put employees first. AT&T historically took pride from always promoting from within and that a lineman might someday become the CEO. The memo bluntly points out that “Some of you may have started your tour with this company expecting an ’employment deal’ rooted in loyalty . . . We have consciously shifted away from some of these elements.”

Stankey also stressed that the company culture is shifting to put customers and change first. He said it is important for employees to know what they can expect from the company, and that employees deserve the proper tools to succeed – a clear career path, a functional office environment, and good IT systems – and said the company is working hard to provide these.

But the memo warns that employees who aren’t aligned with the company’s focus should look elsewhere. For example, the memo says, “ if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish. . . If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs.”

You can read the entire internal email at the bottom of this article from Business Insider. It’s worth reading because it says a whole lot more than the few things I’ve cited in this blog.

It’s quite an extraordinary memo because it harkens back to a time when most large American corporations were like this, always putting the needs of the company above the needs of employees. But in the 60s and 70s, AT&T was the antithesis of the typical large corporation. AT&T had a compact with employees that they would have a job as long as they worked hard and made sure that customers were happy. When I worked at pre-divestiture AT&T, it was not unusual to be working with employees with twenty or thirty years at the company. But what was most extraordinary at the company was the degree to which most employees were extremely loyal to the company.

What I find most interesting about this shift at AT&T is that the company is running counter to trends in the workforce. Millennial and Gen-Z employees are, as a whole, more interested in work/life balance than in being a cog in a large company. A significant percentage of employees today will take less pay to be able to work from home at least a few days per week. Younger employees feel like they can develop peer relationships through electronic tools rather than by sitting in live meetings.

Will AT&T and other corporations with company-first policies be able to attract new employees over the coming decades, or will the company have to eventually adapt to the realities of the workforce? It’s not hard to imagine that the word is already getting out on social media that AT&T isn’t a place anybody wants to work. Even when AT&T finds new employees, will they stay? By telling employees that the company is not loyal to them, AT&T can’t expect employees to be loyal to the company, its goals, or its culture.

This new AT&T culture is starkly different than the culture at most smaller ISPs. I work with a lot of ISPs that value employees and keep them onboard through retirement. I’ve always thought this is the reason that small companies do so well when competing against the giant ISPs – customers can see the difference in the way the company values its employees and customers.

Starlink Disputes Virginia BEAD Awards

In an action that surprises nobody, Starlink has taken exception to the BEAD awards being proposed by the state Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) of Virginia, which is administering the BEAD grants in the State.

The Starlink comments were filed in response to the proposed final report from DHCD that informs NTIA of its proposed BEAD awards. Each state must solicit public comments on the proposed awards. These comments are forwarded to NTIA, and the agency has the final say on making the awards.

Starlink objected to the BEAD awards and said that it should have been awarded $60 million. To put Starlink’s complaint into perspective, Virginia is proposing to award BEAD funds to cover 133,500 locations. The proposed award to Starlink was $3.26 million to cover 5,579 locations for an average award of $584 per location. Project Kuiper was also awarded funding for satellite broadband, with a proposed award of $4.46 million to cover 6,967 locations for an average award of $641 per location. The two companies together have proposed awards to cover 9.4% of the BEAD locations in the State.

Virginia proposes to award 1,519 locations for fixed wireless technology, or 1.1% of BEAD locations. Most of the proposed funding went to fiber. It’s not easy to cite the exact percentage going to fiber since Comcast won awards for 24,343 locations, some to be served with fiber and some to be served by traditional cable TV technology. Over 89% of the awards went to either fiber or cable TV technology.

The Virginia public comment period on the proposed BEAD grants is for seven days, and other states will have similar comment periods. All of the states are hurrying to get a final report generated by the September 4 deadline set by NTIA, and most states are expected to meet the deadline. That means there will be a lot of opportunities over the next month for Starlink to make similar comments in other state’s proposed final reports.

To put Starlink’s request for $60 million into perspective, the company says that amount would cover almost all of the eligible locations in the State. We’ll have to wait to see how NTIA reacts to the Starlink comments. The agency has the flexibility to agree with or ignore Starlink. This final decision rests with Arielle Roth, the newly seated head of NTIA.

This issue has to be a hot potato in a purple state like Virginia. The state has a Republican Governor who recently praised the proposed BEAD awards. I’m sure that County and State elected officials have been publicly praising the proposed awards that will bring fiber to a lot or rural Virginia. Nobody knows what happens if NTIA agrees with Starlink. NTIA could decide which fiber grants to undo, but it would more likely pass the issue back to the State.

To complicate matters even further, Starlink’s filed comments in the BEAD process is not necessarily the end of the line, and Starlink or fiber providers who lose proposed grants in this process could file a lawsuit if they disagree with the final decision of NTIA or DHCD. BEAD could still get very messy before it’s done.

Businesses Still Need Landlines

There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that noted that the business world still uses a lot of landline telephones. Landline telephones have been steadily disappearing from homes, but are still not gone. I see ISPs still selling a telephone line to 10% or more of passings, and surveys show that the average residential landline penetration rate is still somewhere between 15% and 20%.

Some homes keep landlines because of poor or no cellular coverage. Even in areas where outdoor cellular coverage is good enough to make calls, indoor coverage might be poor. For most homes, indoor cellular coverage is typically half as good as the coverage just outside the home. While homes with broadband can use WiFi for making phone calls, those with erratic or unreliable broadband might keep a landline to be certain of having a connection to 911. Many older people keep a landline because they are more comfortable talking on a handset.

The WSJ article points out that a lot of businesses still have landlines. Some businesses, like hotels, don’t have a choice and are legally required to provide a landline in every room for guests to be able to call 911. Hotel guests also like the feature of using the landline to easily connect to the front desk or room service. It doesn’t seem likely that hotels will stop using landlines in the foreseeable future. Many hospitals keep landlines for similar reasons.

Other businesses keep landlines for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is the ease of using landlines for using abbreviated dialing to reach extension numbers within a business. It’s also a lot easier for employees to use a business landline for functions like putting calls on hold, transferring calls, or bridging multiple employees into a call.

Employees of large businesses favor landlines instead of business cellphones since a landline allows them to walk away from taking work calls after the end of the workday. Many businesses prefer landlines for a similar reason since it can create a clear differentiation between business calls and personal calls. There are also some security concerns. A lost or stolen company cellphone can give access to company systems and records.

The WSJ article points out that some large businesses are slowly weaning themselves from landlines. They quote the CTO of New York Life, who says that every employee still has a landline at their desk today but may not within a year. He notes that the transition to company cellphones won’t be  easy since it means a lot of reeducation of employees on how to perform routine business phone functions on a smartphone – something that isn’t always as easy or intuitive to use as the buttons on business desk phones.

I’ve had many ISP clients consider ditching the telephone business completely, and a few have done so. But many have decided to keep the telephone option because of business customers. It’s a lot harder to sell broadband to a business if it doesn’t also come bundled with telephone service. Many businesses have learned the painful lesson over the years of having different voice and data providers, which can turn into finger-pointing when something goes wrong with the voice connection.

The landline business also still has an attractive margin for companies that buy voice switching on a bulk wholesale basis. ISPs that ditch voice have made the ultimate transition to be a dumb pipe provider – something many of them have been leery of for many years.

Satellites in the News

It seems like there is daily news concerning satellites used for broadband and telecommunications. Following are a sampling of some of the recent announcements.

Starlink Outage. Starlink experienced a worldwide 2.5-hour network outage on July 23 that was blamed on “key internal software services that operate the core network”. This raises questions about using satellite broadband for mission-critical uses, such as for military field operations.

T-Mobile Satellite Texting. T-Mobile has been plastering the airwaves with ads that tout the ability of T-Mobile customers to use its satellites to send text messages from remote locations. The service is available free to T-Mobile cellular and broadband customers and is available to others for $10 per month. T-Mobile enabled the service for free to everybody in the Kerr County, Texas area after the recent flooding, and the company said it would do the same for future disasters. The company says that by the end of the year, 911 texting will be available to all cellphone customers in the U.S., regardless of their subscribed carrier.

Project Kuiper. The company is now in the deployment phase of its satellite constellation that will compete with Starlink. The latest launch of 27 satellites brought the number of deployed satellites to 102. The company has scheduled 80 more launches and believes it can begin offering some commercial services by the end of this year. The first planned constellation will consist of 3,236 satellites.

Echostar. The company announced a deal with MDA Space to launch 200 satellites that will provide cellphone service from satellites by 2029. The satellite constellation would use Echostar’s existing 2 GHz AWS-4 spectrum, which they hope will justify keeping the spectrum.

AST SpaceMobile. The company has asked the FCC to launch 243 additional satellites by 2028 that would provide cellular service in direct competition with T-Mobile (and possibly Echostar). The new satellites have a large antenna array of 223 square meters.

New Regulations. The FCC voted on August 7 to accelerate the licensing process for new proposed satellite launches. This was done to keep pace with the explosive growth of the space economy. This implies even more satellites in low orbits, making the space increasingly crowded. As of July 2024, there were over 11,000 satellites in space, with over 10,000 that are active. There are worldwide plans to have as many as 100,000 satellites in orbit by 2030, the vast majority in low-orbit space.

Spectrum. The FCC is in the process of considering four new spectrum bands for satellites. This includes spectrum from 12.7-13.25 GHz, 42-42.5 GHz, 51.4-52.4 GHz, and the “W-band” that includes various ranges including 92.0-94.0 GHz, 94.1-100 GHz, 102.0-109.5 GHz, and 111.8-114.25 GHz. Altogether this is over 200,000 Megahertz of spectrum. The FCC is also considering increasing the power limits on some of the spectrum, which would greatly increase bandwidth utilization. There are some concerns about overuse of some of the proposed bands. For example, meteorologists are warning about overallocation of spectrum in the 52 GHz band.

BEAD Grants. It seems obvious with announcements from some state broadband offices that the amount of the BEAD grants allocated to satellite broadband will increase significantly. There should be some pronouncements coming of grant awards within a month or so, depending on any bottleneck at the NTIA when it tries to process BEAD grants from all states at nearly the same time.

AI and the FCC

In July, the White House released Winning the Race, America’s AI Plan, that described the administration’s view of the role that government will have in the future of AI. Under the section titled Recommended Policy Actions, the White House envisions the following role for the FCC:

Led by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), evaluate whether state AI regulations interfere with the agency’s ability to carry out its obligations and authorities under the Communications Act of 1934.

I’ve been thinking about this directive since the report was released, trying to envision exactly what it means, particularly the reference to the Communications Act of 1934. There are already a handful of ways that the FCC has gotten involved with AI:

  • Addressing AI-generated Robocalls: The FCC has issued rulings clarifying that AI-generated voice calls fall under existing robocall restrictions, requiring prior express consent from the recipient. The agency has also levied fines against companies using AI-generated robocalls.
  • Political Advertising and Transparency: The FCC has proposed rules to mandate disclosures when AI is used to generate content in political advertisements broadcast on radio and television.
  • Spectrum Management and Innovation: The FCC is investigating how AI can be leveraged for better spectrum utilization and management. This includes exploring using AI to analyze spectrum usage data, potentially leading to more efficient allocation and sharing of wireless frequencies.

All of these efforts seem to fall within the FCC’s regulatory authority, which stems back to the Communications Act of 1934. But it’s hard to envision an FCC role beyond issues that it already regulates.

Subsequent to the announced AI plan, the Administration announced that the FCC is also being tasked to review State regulation of AI, and Chairman Brendan Carr announced on July 24 that it’s possible the FCC would preempt state AI regulations. This announcement perplexes me, because I can’t think of any authority that would allow the FCC to preempt State AI regulations.

The only way for the FCC to preempt state regulation of AI is if the FCC asserts federal regulation over AI. That would be contrary to the overall philosophy of the current FCC, which changed the tenor of broadband regulation starting when the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai made it clear that the FCC has no role in regulating broadband and made it clear that broadband is not a telecommunications service. The FCC even went so far as to hand off some remaining broadband regulations to the FTC. Chairman Carr has openly agreed with this interpretation of the FCC’s authority over broadband.

Since the FCC has elected to not regulate broadband, I don’t see how it can regulate AI. The only tie between AI and the FCC is that AI rides fiber connections to get to and from data centers and customers. As such, AI is a service that uses broadband, but is clearly not broadband. The best analogy to AI from a regulatory perspective is that it is essentially the same as cloud services like Amazon AWS that ride fiber paths. I can’t recall any discussion ever of FCC authority to regulate cloud services.

To further confound the issue, the long-standing arrangement between States and the federal government is that States are free to regulate anything that the federal government chooses not to regulate. The recent AI report makes it clear that the Administration doesn’t think AI should be heavily regulated, even though some in Congress have some different ideas on the question.

The Chairman’s announcement makes it clear that the FCC is going to try to preempt state AI regulations that the federal government doesn’t like. But it seems certain that any attempt by the FCC to do so will end up in protracted legal battles. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported recently that all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Washington D.C. have passed or introduced AI legislation – so the FCC will have a tall task, and a lot of states willing to push back on any FCC attempt to preempt state legislatures.

Will FWA Run Out of Gas?

You probably haven’t noticed, but the press is no longer full of articles claiming that FWA cellular broadband is a poor broadband choice for customers. For several years, there was a constant stream of quotes by executives of big cable companies and telcos saying that FWA was a flash in the pan that was only selling quickly because of low prices. They said that FWA performance was erratic and cellular carriers didn’t have enough excess capacity to provide a reliable broadband connection. There were many predictions made that FWA would plateau as word of mouth spread that FWA performance was substandard.

But that plateau hasn’t happened. As you can see in the table below, the recent quarterly growth of FWA has held steady for each of the three major FWA providers. Below the FWA numbers are the overall net new customers of the publicly traded cable companies and telcos. The big telcos have finally turned the corner and are installing more fiber customers than they are disconnecting DSL. All of the big cable companies are losing customers each quarter. Not reflected in these numbers are customers being added by fiber overbuilders, and the growth of fixed wireless and satellite broadband. Even considering the growth of the industry not shown on the table, it’s clear that FWA cellular is still dominating the broadband industry in terms of customer acquisition. FWA cellular will eventually plateau, but it doesn’t look like we are close to that day yet. The FWA carriers got a recent burst when Congress gave the FCC authority to renew spectrum auctions and to consider allocating as much as 800 megahertz of spectrum for 5G usage over the next five years. Leading up to that legislation, cellular carriers had started to beat the “we’re out of spectrum’ drum and claiming that the U.S. was losing the 5G battle to China. That argument worked in the past and seemingly has worked again.

I have to think that a big part of the hope for new spectrum is to support FWA. There is a huge usage difference between a normal cellphone customer and an FWA customer. Various industry statistics show that the average cellphone customer uses a little over 20 gigabytes of data per month, while OpenVault says that the average home broadband customer used 663 gigabytes per month at the end of the first quarter of 2025. Not only do FWA customers use thirty times more data than a cellphone customer, they use it in a very different way, with home and work computers connected to broadband for hours on end, while cellphone data usage tends to happen in shorter bursts.

The cable companies and telcos were not wrong when they said that cell towers weren’t originally designed to do home broadband, but with over 13.4 million FWA customers, it’s clear that the cell carriers have figured out a way to make it work. The one glaring weakness of FWA is that carriers will still cut FWA speeds to near zero any time that a cell site gets too busy – carriers are going to continue to prioritize cell customers over FWA customers. But the carriers are considering dedicating spectrum just for FWA, which would eliminate this issue. That will be a lot easier to do after more spectrum comes onto the market.

I’ve always followed predictions of where the broadband industry is headed. A decade ago, there were zero predictions that cellular carriers would capture a significant portion of the home broadband market. Cell carriers have offered cellular hot spots for many years, but the products weren’t popular because of slow speeds and high prices, with most hotspot plans with monthly data caps nearly identical to cellphones.

Verizon recently said it has a goal of reaching 8-9 million FWA customers by 2030. T-Mobile has a more aggressive plan to reach 12 million customers by the end of 2028. The industry segment is far from running out of gas.

What’s Next for USF?

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the FCC has the authority to operate and fund the Universal Service Fund, overturning rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which agreed with Consumers’ Research and said that the USF is unconstitutional.

This puts the issue back on the table of somehow fixing the USF, which universally is regarded as broken. The current funding mechanism of taxing interstate telephone services is becoming untenable, with the current USF fee set at 36% of the applicable revenue source.

It seems likely that only Congress can fix USF, and a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives has created the Universal Service Working Group to take a fresh look at both the funding and the uses of the USF.

Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE), one of the members of the working group, has created a comment portal on her website to get feedback from the public on Universal Service Fund reform. This is similar to the public comments that are routinely solicited by the FCC for issues it is considering. The portal says that comments will be sent to all members of the USF working group. Comments made to the FCC are more formal and are made available to the public – these comments may remain within the working group.

The portal includes nine questions, and respondents can respond to any or all of the questions. Comments can be typed into a text box associated with each question or emailed to the working group. Comments are due by midnight, September 15. Following are the specific questions being asked by the Universal Service Working Group:

Effectiveness of the Program

  • How should Congress evaluate the effectiveness of each USF program in achieving their respective missions to uphold universal service?
  • How well has each USF program fulfilled Section 254 of the Communications Act of 1996?
  • Has the FCC adequately assessed each USF program against consistent metrics for performance and advancement of universal service?

Considerations of Reform

  • What reforms within the four existing USF programs would most improve their: Transparency, Accountability, Cost-effectiveness, Administration, and Role supporting universal service?
  • What reforms would ensure that the USF contribution factor is sufficient to preserve universal service?
  • What reforms would reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in each of the four USF programs?
  • What actions would improve coordination and efficiency among USF programs and other FCC programs, as well as broadband programs housed at other federal agencies?
  • For any recommendations on reforms, does the Commission currently have the feasibility and authority to make such changes?
  • Is the USF administrator, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), sufficiently accountable and transparent? Is USAC’s role in need of reform?

Respondents are not required to answer every question, only those for which they have feedback. As can be seen, these are serious policy questions. Undoubtedly, the big industry lobbying groups will weigh in. But this is also a chance for ISPs, local governments, and school systems  to weigh in. I’m going to respond to a few of the questions. I’m available to help anybody who wants to be heard on these important questions.

Multi-core Fiber

There is a relatively new fiber technology that most readers will not have heard about. Multi-core fiber (MCF) is a technology that packs multiple strands of fiber inside a bundle that is about the same size as a single strand of fiber today. The benefit of packing more fibers into a tiny strand is obvious – it means a lot more bandwidth can be sent through a single physical strand of fiber.

It may surprise you to understand that only a small fraction of a strand of fiber is used to transmit light. In today’s fiber, the light path in the center of a fiber is tiny and represents only 0.5% of area of a cross-section of a fiber. The rest of the fiber strand is made up of materials surrounding the glass that help to keep the light on a straight path and cladding that protects the fiber. Fiber could be made a lot thinner, but the industry has standardized on a fiber strand of 125 microns because going any smaller makes it hard for technicians to handle a single fiber strand. This means there is a lot of unused real estate inside a 125-micron sheath for additional light paths.

Early prototypes of multi-core fiber have created fibers with 7, 12, and 19 fibers, with the possibility of getting even more cores into a single strand. Each core is equivalent to a single-strand of fiber today. A 24-strand cable that uses 12-core multi-core fiber would contain 288 separate fiber paths. Future networks using multi-core fibers will be lighter and easier to handle than the fibers they would replace using current technologies.

There are some obvious issues with using multi-core fibers. One is cost, and MCF fiber is a lot more expensive today than traditional fiber. But that difference might be eliminated if MCF fiber becomes common and is produced in volume. The extra cost of the fiber might be easily offset by the increased ease of working with smaller fiber bundles. There are major challenges of splicing an MCF fiber into an existing network comprised of single-strand fiber. MCF fiber also interfaces in a whole new way with fiber electronics. There is also a size issue, because MCF fibers with a lot of cores will be larger than 125 microns, meaning that all new tools are needed to work with the fiber.

There are already a few trials of MCF fiber in use. This is a natural improvement for undersea fibers, where getting the most bandwidth possible in a fiber bundle is desired. There is also MCF fiber installed in some data centers to facilitate moving huge amounts of data from device to device.

Multiple vendors are manufacturing or testing multi-core fiber and it will become more available over time. This seems like a natural upgrade to long-haul fiber routes between major cities. There has been a lot of industry concern that the explosion of data centers means these long-haul routes are filling up soon after being constructed. MCF fiber multiplies the bandwidth that can be delivered through existing conduits.

One of the concerns of having many tightly packed cores side-by-side is crosstalk and interference between cores. However, scientists seem to have solved this problem with good shielding materials around each core.

It may be a long time before this makes sense in last-mile networks. We can already deliver far more bandwidth than almost any customer needs with current fiber technology. However, MCF answers the question of whether fiber technology will ever be obsolete. No wireless technology will ever be able to outcompete a small MCF fiber strand with multiple cores in each small fiber strand.