Tag Archives: AT&T

Ookla Looks at FWA Broadband

Ookla recently published an article that looked at speed test and coverage characteristics of FWA cellular broadband provided by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. FWA is always an interesting topic since the three companies have collectively attracted over 17 million broadband customers to the new business line. There were some interesting findings from Ookla worth discussing.

Ookla noted that 70% of FWA speed tests come from urban areas. That doesn’t seem surprising to me since that is where most people live. While FWA was originally touted as a rural technology, the fact that it’s marketed at prices below other broadband technologies makes it very attractive in urban areas.

Ookla notes that T-Mobile has the fastest download speeds, with a recent median speed of 222.7 Mbps, which is 38.4% faster than AT&T and 76% higher than Verizon speeds. I think Ookla missed the likely reason for this, which is that AT&T and Verizon both have legacy telco bases and have legacy customers. T-Mobile has no legacy business and likely sells FWA only to customers within a few miles of cell towers. The other two companies are using cellular technology as the alternative that allows them to tear down copper lines. They will offer this technology far away from towers, even if the speeds are exceeding slow, as long as a connection will support a voice signal – which is the regulatory requirement they are supposed to meet to justify discontinuing copper. Both companies also have a significant base of legacy cellular hotspot customers who can be far away from a tower getting much slower speeds. These hotspots are functionally equivalent to FWA, but are marketed differently, with small monthly data caps. When I’ve examined the speed tests for the three carriers for customers within a few miles of a cell site, they all deliver similar speeds.

Ookla also notes that T-Mobile’s Q2 2026 median upload speed of 18.1 Mbps was 80.1% higher than AT&T and 48.5% higher than Verizon – for many of the same reasons. The really interesting finding was that less than 40% of FWS speed tests in 48 states are exceeding the FCC’s definition of broadband at 100/20 Mbps. I assume that most of those that don’t meet that standard are doing so because of upload speed. This goes a long way towards explaining why the current FCC is not willing to consider increasing the definition of broadband above 100/20 Mbps, since that might declare that FWA, satellite service, and some WISPs are not really broadband per the FCC definition. The current FCC seems hellbent on being able to claim that satellite broadband has solved the rural broadband gap.

All three companies saw slower speeds in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the first quarter. Ookla likely correctly pinned this on foliage. It’s easy to forget when we discuss cellular coverage that it is weakened by foliage just like every other wireless technology. It raises the interesting question of whether a service is really broadband if it only meets the FCC definition of broadband in the winter?

Ookla recognized a huge 60% increase in AT&T broadband speeds comparing the second quarter of this year to the third quarter of 2025. AT&T has deployed 50 MHz of additional spectrum during that time that it purchased from EchoStar. The AT&T cellular speeds at my house more than doubled this past spring. This is a good reminder that the carriers are constantly taking steps to increase performance. They are engaged in a fierce marketing war, and none of them wants to look like they have an inferior network.

Finally, Ookla noted that rural FWA broadband speeds and latencies are lower than in urban areas for all three carriers. There are two explanations for this. First, not all rural cell towers are equipped to the same standard as urban towers. But this also comes back to the distance issue. In rural areas, customers are willing to try FWA even when it doesn’t have superfast speeds – because a 25 Mbps download on FWA beats the alternatives available. A household can often add FWA for $35 per month to an existing cellphone plan, which is considerably cheaper than Starlink at $130.

Retiring AT&T Copper in California

Regulatory fights between state and federal regulators sometimes get messy, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything as messy as AT&T’s attempt to retire and walk away from copper facilities in California.

AT&T asked the California Public Service Commission (CPUC) for the ability to start retiring copper telephone networks in March 2023. It wasn’t an unusual request since AT&T is in the process of retiring copper in every other state where it owns last-mile copper networks. The CPUC finally ruled on that petition in June 2024 and unanimously rejected AT&T’s request. The state said that AT&T couldn’t retire copper unless the company had a functional equivalent product available for every customer who loses a copper connection.

That’s something AT&T can’t promise. The only two possible replacements for copper are fiber or FWA broadband delivered using cellular spectrum. AT&T has an alternative for customers in most urban and suburban markets. The company has built a lot of fiber and announced in May 2026 that it was planning to invest $19 billion more on fiber construction in the state. Most urban customers should also be able to use FWA cellular broadband if they lose copper, with the caveat that too many customers on FWA in a neighborhood could overwhelm the cellular network.

AT&T’s big problem comes in rural areas, where there are large areas where AT&T doesn’t have enough cellular coverage to reach homes with cellular broadband. It’s not unusual in most rural counties for a cellular carrier to serve only half of the area in a county, or less. There have been reports all around the country about customers who have been stranded after losing copper with no affordable voice option. AT&T has argued at the FCC that they can walk away from copper as long as customers can buy voice from somebody else. It feels extreme to have to replace an AT&T telephone line, that range from $25 to $63 per month with Starlink satellite broadband priced at $130 per month.

In May of this year, AT&T tried again. The company sued California and asked the federal courts to allow it to ignore the CPUC ruling. At the same time, AT&T asked the FCC to allow the company to walk away from carrier of last resort obligations (COLR) in California. The COLR request is a slightly different question than asking to be able to tear down copper. COLR are rules that require AT&T to still connect copper to new customers, even if that means building new copper facilities.

AT&T also filed a separate petition with the FCC asking for permission to discontinue 60% of its wire centers in California, or about 360 wire centers. AT&T argued that these wire centers were not compliant with the FCC’s rules requiring AT&T to support Phone-Advanced, which is a digital home phone service that runs on AT&T’s cellular network and broadband internet instead of traditional copper landline wires. Phone-Advanced lets customers keep their home number and connect up to six devices—including standard phones, fax machines, and medical monitors.

This is where it starts to become a messy jurisdictional battle. As was expected, the CPUC and California Attorney General Rob Bonta quickly challenged and asked the courts to dismiss AT&T’s federal lawsuit, while also asking the FCC to override rulings from the CPUC. In June, the FCC approved AT&T’s petition to close 360 wire centers and to cut copper to roughly 184,000 residential and 15,000 business locations across the state, but it seems like that should be ineffective while the State is saying the opposite and the issues are in court.

It’s getting hard to understand who has the final say about retiring copper in California, and it’s starting to feel probable that there might be conflicting rulings between the CPUC and the FCC. This doesn’t seem like something that is going to easily resolve, which could mean that copper will stay alive in California longer than anywhere else.

Broadband Shorts July 2026

These are all interesting topics that didn’t fit an entire blog.

GAO Dings NTIA. The General Accounting Office wrote a memo to Arielle Roth, the Administrator of NTIA, that dinged the agency for not reacting to priority recommendations made by the agency. The memo said that NTIA had implemented 77% of the recommendations made by GAO five years ago, but that there are still twenty-two open recommendations that have not been implemented, including ten priority recommendations. The letter says that implementing the remaining priority recommendations would significantly improve NTIA operations.

The priority recommendations say that NTIA should be collaborating better with the FCC for designing studies to evaluate domestic and international spectrum management. The memo says that NTIA needs to step up cybersecurity measures for wireless infrastructure. GAO says NTIA should be communicating and coordinating better with other federal agencies related to broadband funding.

Right to Not Repair. In a 606-page filing at the FCC, AT&T is asking for emergency authorization to stop repairing copper networks that suffer storm damage or damage caused by vandalism. The report lists hundreds of locations that suffered damage across multiple states, covering just the period between April 30 and June 20 of this year, where the company says it will not restore voice services after outages. The company says it wants to instead deploy its resources to build the next-generation networks that will replace copper.

This certainly creates a shortcut way to retire copper – knock copper routes out of service and then seek FCC permission to not fix them. AT&T’s rationale for not restoring service is that it has alternative technology available to customers. But the concept of having a substitute for copper works in cities and towns, but much of rural America doesn’t have AT&T cell towers capable of reaching disconnected copper customers with cellular or FWA service. Anybody who has spent any time with the FCC cellular maps can see the huge holes in rural coverage, and that assumes the cellular coverage maps are accurate, which is often not the case.

Fiber Shortage. Connexon Connect recently told the FCC that it is falling behind on some of its RDOF buildout obligations due to a severely constrained domestic fiber supply. The company said that it has had fiber delivery commitments canceled by vendors that are instead directing fiber to hyperscale data centers. The company said its problems are made worse by the requirements of having to use American-made fiber due to the Build America, Buy America rules required by the BEAD program. The company specifically identified CommScope for canceling commitments for BEAD contracts. CommScope blames Corning on canceling orders to provide glass to CommScope, which it thinks is related to Corning accepting large orders from data centers.

Legislative Mandate for American-made Fiber. A group of bipartisan House members introduced a bill being called the FIREWALL Act that would mandate that fiber used to satisfy all federal grants must be manufactured in the U.S. In the announcement of the bill, Representative Gus Bilirakis of Florida said that the U.S. government shouldn’t be subsidizing technology sourced from countries that pose a threat to our national security. That’s an odd statement since it’s hard to imagine a threat that comes from fiberglass. An odder statement was that he wants to avoid a future rip-and-replace effort related to fiber. Unlike Chinese electronics and software, there is no functional difference in fiberglass strands, regardless of where they are made. I had to laugh when I pictured crews ripping up thousands of miles of fiber.

EchoStar Bankruptcy. EchoStar filed a prepackaged bankruptcy plan for the satellite business and the cellular business.  The company was facing a $2 billion dollar loan payment in July, and didn’t have the cash due to delays in getting paid for spectrum sales to AT&T. The company is counting on over $20 billion in net closing proceeds from the sale of spectrum to AT&T. The company also sold spectrum to SpaceX, which should bring $8.5 billion in cash, $11 billion in SpaceX stock, and $2.2 billion to assist with debt. The company is heavily leveraged and has over $6 billion in current debt and $18 billion in long-term debt.

While the company recently exited the facility-based cellular business, it still owns Boost Mobile, the HughesNet satellite business, the Dish satellite TV business, and online provider Sling TV. None of these businesses are thriving. The company is also facing a slew of lawsuits from vendors and fiber providers who were left stranded when the company suddenly ceased business. It will be interesting to see what the company does with any excess cash after the spectrum sales close.

Comcast to Spin Off Entertainment

Comcast recently announced plans to spin off its entertainment businesses. The newly created NBCUniversal will include the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, Bravo, Peacock, the European media business Sky, along with theme parks and other businesses. The Peacock subsidiary has been actively buying rights to sporting events. Comcast had begun the spinoff of entertainment subsidiaries early this year when it spun off cable networks, including MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, E!, Syfy, Oxygen, the Golf Channels, and digital brands like Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes into the Versant Media Group. A Comcast shareholder will get a share of each new business. Comcast says it will retain a 19.9% share in NBCUniversal for at least a year.

The post-split Comcast will retain the core broadband, cellular, and cable TV business lines. The company will also retain Comcast Spectator, which owns the Xfinity Arena in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Flyers, and the FreeWheel tech ad business. The public announcement said that the company no longer sees any synergies or financial benefits from operating two distinct lines of business. Wall Street instantly applauded the move with an upward bump in the Comcast stock price.

This should allow Comcast to concentrate on the increasingly competitive communications business. The company has been steadily losing broadband customers every quarter since 2023. It’s seeing competition from fiber overbuilding, FWA cellular, and even satellite. The cable TV business has continued its long, downhill slide. Comcast has seen significant growth in the cellular business and is approaching 10 million cellular customers.

The news instantly set off speculation about how both of the new businesses are attractive M&A targets now that they are separate. I saw speculation that Netflix, Amazon, and Disney/Paramount/Fox ought to be interested in NBCUniversal. I saw instant speculation that SpaceX, Charter, or one of the big cellular companies would be interested in a standalone Comcast.

I could never understand the presumed benefits of combining ISPs and media companies. When Comcast purchased the entertainment businesses, the reason given at the time was to take advantage of the content. But I never understood this since an ISP already delivers all kinds of content.

The other attempts in the industry to combine an ISP with content were big failures. The biggest failure of all was AT&T’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner in 2018. Within a few years, in 2022, AT&T spun off Warner Media to Discovery for $43 billion. This bad deal was bad for AT&T in many ways. CEO Randall Stephenson, a champion of the merger, stepped down in 2020. AT&T’s stock took a huge hit during the time that it owned Time Warner, and AT&T had to slash its dividend in half.

Verizon also took a shot at buying content. The company purchased AOL in 2015 for $4.4 billion, a price that startled the market. The company then purchased Yahoo in 2017 for $4.48 billion. Verizon repackaged the two companies into a new subsidiary called Oath, which was later renamed Verizon Media. Verizon eventually sold Verizon Media to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Before that sale, Verizon had separately sold HuffPost, Tumblr, and MapQuest.

The Comcast sale means there are no ISPs left with big content businesses. Combining the disparate businesses never made sense since Verizon’s purchase of AOL, and hopefully, the Comcast spin-off ends this failed experiment.

The Spectrum Auction Winners

After a four-year hiatus, the FCC recently held a spectrum auction of 200 licenses for AWS-3 spectrum in the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands. The last FCC auction was in 2022 for 2.5 GHz spectrum. The FCC lost the ability to hold spectrum auctions when its Congressional authority lapsed and was not renewed. This spectrum was touted by the FCC as being 5G-grade. The license areas included in the auction covered over 100 million people across 48 states and two US territories, and included major markets like New York, Chicago, Boston, Tampa, and Charlotte. The FCC announced before the auction that much of the proceeds will be used to continue to fund the rip-and-replace of Chinese electronics from Huawei and ZTE.

The winning bidders collectively bid more than $3.57 billion. The winners are as follows, from largest to smallest:

  • Verizon Wireless: $3,162,445,000 for 82 licenses in 82 markets
  • T-Mobile: $277,787,000 for 102 licenses in 102 markets
  • AT&T: $120,774,000 for 10 licenses in 10 markets
  • SpaceX: $8,490,200 for two licenses in two markets
  • Blue Ridge Wireless II LLC: $2,090,000 for one license in one market
  • Conundrum Wireless, LLC: $1,228,000 for two licenses in one market
  • Citizens Band License Company, LLC: $75,000 for one license in one market

Not surprisingly, 99.7% of the spectrum was claimed by the three big cellular carriers, with Verizon snagging 88.5% of the awards. Folks might be surprised to see SpaceX as the fourth-largest winner. The company is looking for spectrum to enhance its direct-to-cell mobile services. Analysts speculated that this auction was a trial run for the company to learn about the auction process since the company has already agreed to buy $2.6 billion in spectrum in the AWS-3, AWS-4, and H-blocks from EchoStar.

Verizon was using the auction to fill holes in its spectrum portfolio and spent almost $2 billion of its winning bids in New York, Chicago, and Boston. AT&T’s biggest focus was for Charlotte. T-Mobile dropped out of all of the expensive markets, but still won the most licenses spread across small metropolitan areas.

ike many actions by the federal government these days, there is also an interesting backstory to this auction. The spectrum that was included in this auction originally came from EchoStar (originally Dish Networks). Two companies, SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless, originally purchased the spectrum in the 2014 AWS-3 auction for $3.3 billion. When the FCC learned that Dish was the secret backer of the two companies, the FCC voided the awards. The FCC ruled that when this spectrum was eventually reauctioned, that Dish would owe the FCC any shortfall if the new auction raises anything less than $2.9 billion.

Roger Entner of Recon Analytics says that EchoStar bid up the current auction to save itself from having to pay for any shortfall in the auction. EchoStar entered the recent auction with almost as many bid credits as Verizon. Entner claims that EchoStar was in the auction for no other purpose than bidding up the price, and in doing so, increased the proceeds of the auction from $2 billion to the final $3.57 billion. He says that EchoStar stayed in the auction until the auction reached the threshold where the company was off the hook for paying for the shortfall. In the next two rounds, the company dropped out of every market except for two licenses it got stuck with in Guam. The company is no longer in the cellular business, and Entner expects it will sell this spectrum at a discount to a local cellular provider or just ride out the build-out shot clock until the FCC is forced to reclaim the spectrum.

It’s going to be interesting to see if the three big carriers take any action against EchoStar for driving up the prices. I don’t have the slightest idea if EchoStar did anything illegal, but its bidding actions were certainly shady.

AT&T v. Duke Energy

On June 24, AT&T filed a complaint with the FCC against Duke Energy Carolinas about the rates being charged for pole attachments. AT&T alleges that Duke is charging rates far higher than allowed by law in North and South Carolina. AT&T claims it is entitled to pay “just and reasonable” rates under FCC rules. AT&T is asking that Duke be required to refund overcharges.

It’s an interesting complaint for several reasons. This is more of a partnership complaint than a straight complaint about how pole attachment rates are calculated. AT&T and Duke entered into a Joint Use Agreement (JUA) in 1978 since they share ownership of poles in the region. There are 457,901 poles covered by the JUA, with Duke owning 80% of the poles and the remaining 20% owned by AT&T.

One of the nuances of the case is jurisdiction over pole attachment regulation. North Carolina exercised  reverse-preemption of pole attachments, while South Carolina remains with FCC regulations concerning poles. AT&T claims the FCC has authority over the dispute in both states. I have to wonder why this agreement doesn’t fall partially under North Carolina’s jurisdiction, and if the state has somehow conceded authority to the FCC.

The dispute centers around FCC rules included in 47 U.S.C. § 224 that determine the maximum rate that can be charged for a pole attachment. Those rules calculate two different pole attachment rates, one that applies to cable companies and a telecom rate that applies to everyone else. The maximum rate for telecommunications carriers is designed to ensure that a telecom provider pays a proportional share of both the usable space and unusable space on the pole, divided by the total number of attaching entities. There are specific formulas defined by the FCC for the rate calculation, and calculating the maximum rate is mostly an exercise in gathering the right accounting data to populate the formula.

AT&T alleges that Duke is charging them a rate far in excess of the maximum allowed telecom rate. We can only guess how much higher since the public version of this complaint has redacted the higher rates. I can’t imagine how the public would be harmed by knowing the higher rates. There is a table in the complaint that calculates the average telecom rates from 2023 through 2026 at $10.92.

I characterized this earlier as a partnership dispute. AT&T is complaining that the rates that AT&T and Duke pay under the JUA are disproportionate to the amount of space each uses on the poles, such that AT&T pays far more than Duke on a per-foot basis. AT&T also complains that Duke benefits by being able to offset its costs by fees charged to other attachers, something not available to AT&T. Both of these sound more like complaints related to the old Joint Use Agreement that don’t seem relevant to FCC regulation.

AT&T’s argument is largely based on an FCC Order from 2018 that said that the telecom pole attachment rate applies to all new and newly-renewed joint use agreements, including agreements that are automatically renewed or extended.

You may be asking, if you read this far, why I chose to write about this dispute. There are several reasons. First, it’s always fascinating to get a glimpse behind the curtains of the deals made between big companies that we would otherwise never know about. I’m sure that a fiber builder asking to get on a Duke pole in North Carolina has no idea that the poles in question might actually be owned by AT&T. It’s also interesting to see how a big power company like Duke might decide to overcharge a partner in the pole business. The Joint Use Agreement was reached in 1978, which is ancient history in the corporate world. Somebody at Duke probably got a bonus for increasing pole attachment fees to AT&T in violation of an old agreement they might not even been aware of. Finally, I’m a customer of both Duke and AT&T, and regardless of how it resolves, I’m betting that I won’t see any benefit from the decision. This kind of dispute affects stockholder profits and not rates charged to the public.

Broadband Shorts June 2026

Digital Equity Grant Lawsuit Update. In April, a D.C. federal judge declined to pause litigation over the Administration’s cancellation of the $2.75 billion Digital Equity grants aimed at increasing digital literacy and digital skill training. The suit was filed by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. The Court found that the case covered distinct issues from the related Climate United Fund v. Citibank case and should proceed on its own merits. A month ago, the administration asked the Court to dismiss the case. However, a DOJ attorney told the Court last week that the government would withdraw from the case and let the grants proceed if all preferences for race are removed from the grant rules. This entire suit, from the beginning, has been about the title of the grant program and not about the substance of the program. This should hearten digital inclusion advocates since there is now a chance of seeing the promised grant funded after all. But before celebrating, its worth noting that the White House removed this grant from its proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Lower Budget for the FCC. Like is happening with many federal agencies, the House Appropriations Subcommittee is recommending a lower budget than requested by the agency for the fiscal year 2027 that starts in October. The agency had requested a budget of $416 million, and Congress reduced that by 6% to $390.2 million. The Congressional appropriations bill also added some conditions to the appropriations:

  • The FCC will be prohibited from updating minimum service standards for fixed or mobile broadband without first evaluating any impact on affordability and consumer choice.
  • The FCC will be prohibited from enforcing the digital discrimination rules passed by the previous FCC.

Update on FCC Router Ban. The FCC expanded its ban on foreign-made WiFi routers to also include “consumer-grade portable or mobile MiFi Wi-Fi or hotspot devices for residential use” and “LTE/5G CPE devices for residential use”. That’s a gigantic issue for the large cellular carriers who have been selling FWA cellular broadband to roughly 1 million new households per quarter. As a reminder, the FCC router ban only applies to any new routers, and carriers and ISPs can continue to import any existing routers they already use today.

But this is quickly going to become a major issue for carriers. The cable industry asked the FCC in the first week of June to swap some components inside existing routers, which would mean these are not identical to routers that were used before the ban. The cable companies warn that without the ability to modify older models that the cable industry faces a huge router shortage in the near future. The Global Electronics Association (GEA) has continued to argue that the FCC’s policy is flawed because security vulnerabilities are not related to where a router was manufactured and is endemic to the technology. Th good news is that the FCC is reviewing, and has approved several new routers.

New Fiber Factories. Corning is partnering with NVIDIA to build three new fiber factories that will increase the company’s capacity by 50%. The factories will be located in North Carolina and Texas. The cited reason for the expansion was the increased demand for fiber for data centers, but this increases fiber availability for all other purposes. NVIDIA is making a $500 million investment in Corning as part of the deal, and the company has an option to buy an additional 15 million Corning shares. This is another example of companies in the AI space investing in each other.

Supreme Court Upholds FCC Fines. The Supreme Court voted 8 to 1 to uphold the FCC’s authority to issue fines against companies that it regulates. The original suit that asked to eliminate the FCC fine authority was brought by AT&T and Verizon, which were trying to avoid fines levied after the two companies sold customer location data. The two carriers had argued that the FCC was improper to fine them since the companies should have been given the option of requesting a jury trial. The two companies said they are considering not paying the fines as another test of FCC authority.

 Spectrum Auction Results. The FCC held the first spectrum auction in four years and auctioned AWS-3 spectrum that is valuable for cellular traffic. The FCC was worried when the spectrum raised only $95 million in the first few days. The One Big Beautiful Bill had ordered the FCC to resume spectrum auctions as a way to raise money to offset tax cuts in the bill. Congress assumed that all upcoming spectrum auctions would raise $85 billion. At the end, the auction raised just over $3.5 billion, which was a big relief to EchoStar. This spectrum was originally won at auction by EchoStar, which was subsequently accused of claiming bidding discounts it didn’t deserve, and the FCC expected EchoStar to make up any shortfall under $3.4 billion. .

AT&T Offers Daily Rates for iPad Users. In a new pricing plan, AT&T is offering a daily rate of $3 to activate broadband on a SIM-enabled iPad. This can be done using the iPad settings and doesn’t require a special app. No contract, subscription, or credit check is required. This is interesting because this is how broadband is sold in much of Africa, where users buy broadband by the day and use those days to tackle all broadband tasks. The $3 rate is not cheap, at $90 per month, but would be a savings for somebody buying usage as few times per week.

Promises Made, Promises Broken

I noticed that the Charter/Cox merger has been approved by the FCC, the DOJ, and the Public Service Commission of New York. The final hurdle is the California Public Service Commission, where Charter is hoping to get a decision by August from the CPUC. In exchange for an agreement for the merger, Charter has promised to spend at least $275 million on network upgrades to achieve symmetrical gigabit speeds across its California footprint within three years. Charter also promises to offer a statewide low-income price plan for five years that includes a $20 plan for 100/20 Mbps speeds, and that would be free for Lifeline Pilot participants. Finally, Charter promises to provide $23 million in support to the nonprofit CETF (California Emerging Technology Fund) for digital literacy and device subsidies, plus $7 million to regional broadband groups.

I had a chuckle when I saw the promises being made by Charter. It reminded me of many times that carriers didn’t follow through on big promises made to regulators. One of the most memorable broken promises came from Verizon in Pennsylvania – a story that has been well documented in a book by Bruce Kushnick, The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net. In 1993, the State agreed to deregulate Verizon and provide big tax breaks as long as Verizon would deliver 45 Mbps broadband service to the entire state by 2015. By the early 2000s, Verizon reneged on the offer and reduced the promised speeds to 1.5 Mbps. Verizon eventually built FiOS fiber in selected urban and suburban markets and ignored the rest of the state. There were some rural Verizon customers who never even got the slow DSL.

In 1999, the two Baby Bell companies SBC and Ameritech, asked to merge. SBC promised regulators that the merger would spark a new, nationally competitive telecommunications carrier and committed to expand beyond its thirteen-state home region. Within a year of the deal closing, the FCC opened an investigation against SBC for failing to meet its competitive entry timelines and because of growing volumes of consumer complaints about declining residential service quality.

When AT&T asked in 2015 to acquire DirecTV for $48.5 billion, the company promised federal regulators to build out more than 12 million high-speed fiber connections. The company quickly fell short of that promise, and many believed that the company was faking fiber passings by counting apartment complexes that were near to its existing fiber network. AT&T eventually decided that building fiber was its best business plan, but it had totally blown off the 2015 promise.

When Charter asked to merge with Time Warner Cable in 2016, the company promised regulators that it would expand its network to unserved rural areas, that it would hold down prices, and would not implement price caps. By 2020, Charter petitioned the FCC to get off the hook for these promises and called them “unduly burdensome”

In 2020, when T-Mobile wanted to buy Sprint for $26 billion, the company promised it would rapidly expand rural 5G coverage. The company also promised to freeze post-paid rate plans for three years. Soon after the merger, the company said the agreement was no longer feasible.

I could fill a few pages with similar stories. Big carriers make whatever promises are needed to get approval for mergers or deregulation, and then typically proceed almost immediately to find ways to get out of what they promised. It’s hard to predict if California will approve the Charter/Cox merger. But I think California fully understands that promises made related to mergers are rarely promises fully kept.

AT&T v. California

AT&T filed several petitions at the FCC asking the Commission to override regulations from the State of California. The State is forcing AT&T to maintain copper networks until such time that AT&T can offer the same services to customers using some alternate technology.

The FCC reacted by issuing two requests for public comments related to the AT&T petitions. In the first, the FCC asks for comments related to its ability to preempt California’s regulations related to copper networks. The second asks for public comments related to AT&T being able to walk away from carrier-of-last-resort responsibilities in California as it tears down copper networks.

These proceedings ask some interesting questions, although my hunch is that the FCC already plans to preempt California on these issues and is only going through the formalities first.

One interesting issue raised is whether the FCC can grab regulatory authority from a State. The historic framework for telecom regulation has always been that States are free to regulate anything that the FCC elects not to directly regulate. Back when AT&T was the primary telephone company, every state had numerous regulations related to telephone companies. The FCC established the big nationwide rules, often dictated by Congress, but the States were free to regulate anything the FCC didn’t directly regulate. This usually meant issues like consumer rates and customer service practices. As competition was introduced into the telecom market, AT&T and the various Bell companies were successful in convincing most states to relax regulations, and in some case telcos became almost totally unregulated. California eased some regulations, but still maintains a lot of regulation of telcos. It will be interesting to see how hard California will fight back if the FCC overrides the state’s regulatory authority.

Another interesting request is for AT&T to get out of carrier-of-last resort (COLR) obligations. The petition describes this as AT&T being relieved of ETC status (Eligible Communications Carrier), which is the formal process where states certified companies with COLR status. COLR is an obligation originally created by the Communications Act of 1934, and expanded by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which said that regulated telcos are required to serve customers located inside their regulated service areas, with only a few exceptions related to customers in remote locations. Telcos have been obligated to connect new customers to the existing networks and to build new networks to meet new homes and businesses. This feels like a quaint concept today, and it’s one of the first things that disappeared as states deregulated telephone companies. I find it interesting that many telcos still have ETC designations and use that status to receive various kinds of universal service funding while only playing lip service, at best, to carrier-of-last-resort obligations. The real question being asked in the FCC proceeding is whether the agency has the authority to override any COLR obligation required by California.

I have to think that AT&T has already been ignoring this obligation for years in California. I recall news stories of AT&T discontinuing rural copper services in rural California with little or no notification to customers. I have to think that it’s been a long time since AT&T has built any new copper infrastructure to reach newly constructed homes and neighborhoods. But there are other obligations related to COLR and ETC status that AT&T would like to have preempted.

It’s going to be interesting to see who, other than regulators in California, responds to these dockets. These particular issues are largely already dead in most of the rest of the country, although some states still maintain greater levels of regulation over telcos than others.

These dockets don’t address the even bigger question, which is whether the state or federal government should be regulating telephone service at all. I think everybody is in favor of the FCC’s efforts to tamp down on robocalls and texts, but how much other regulation of traditional telephone companies is still needed?

Remembering Our Microwave Past

Somebody sent me a link to an interesting article posted on 99% Invisible, a website associated with a podcast that looks at “the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world” The article covers a book called The Long Lines that documents the abandoned infrastructure of the national microwave network built by AT&T that predated the eventual long-haul fiber networks that now connects us.

The AT&T microwave network was built in the 1950s. The first long-haul microwave route put into service was between New York and Chicago, and went live on September 1, 1950. Over the next few years, microwave routes were established across the country.

The networks were enabled by the high-powered klystrons developed during World War II, plus new microwave technologies that allowed for the simultaneous transmission of multiple channels of data. A klyston is a vacuum tube that amplifies a signal from a low-power level to a higher one. The klystron system enabled the creation of microwave links with enough power to carry not only voice calls, but television signals. The technology was developed at Bell Labs, and the microwave radios were manufactured by Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.

The AT&T microwave network enabled the first nationwide broadcasts of television shows and news events. The first television event sent was a speech by President Harry Truman from the San Francisco Peace Conference in September 1951, which was then broadcast by the early television stations in major cities across the country. The first regular TV show that used the microwave network was Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now, broadcast in November 1951.

The AT&T microwave network led to some of the early success of television networks since it allowed for content that people had never seen before, like live Saturday football games from across the country. From the 1950s through the 1970s, practically all national programming was transmitted through the microwave network.

The microwave network wasn’t the only transmission network used by AT&T. The company had built coast-to-coast copper networks, and Alexander Bell made the first transcontinental phone call from New York City to San Francisco on January 25, 1915. This network was eventually enhanced with long-line coaxial networks, but those networks didn’t have the capacity to support television signals.

The microwave network consisted of towers built between thirty and forty miles apart, which accommodated the need for a line-of-sight connection. Interestingly, the core network electronics nodes of the network were built to supposedly withstand a nuclear explosion, since the microwave network also carried military traffic. These core locations included underground bunkers for electronics, staff, and backup power generators.

Anyone of a certain age remembers these towers, which either disappeared or were repurposed for cellular. Each tower had multiple giant horn antennas used to transmit and receive data. I remember in the 1970s that it was always easy to spot the AT&T building as you drove into a city because of the giant antennas on top, like the picture at the top of the blog of the antennas of the AT&T building in Minneapolis.

AT&T isn’t the only company that used a microwave network. MCI got its start as a competitor to AT&T by carrying telephone calls using its own microwave network that was often built along railroad rights-of-way. That network supported the early competition that eventually resulted in a competitive telecom industry.

The microwave towers were eventually replaced by the now-familiar fiber routes that were built starting in the late 1970s, and the greater capacity of fiber quickly made the microwave network obsolete.