Carl Weinschenk

The final guidelines for the $20 million Missouri Cell Tower Grant Program have been released by the state’s Department of Economic Development (DED). The state will begin accepting applications in the funding program on Friday, May 26, 2023, and eligible entities have until July 25, 2023, to submit their applications. The program is being funded through the US Department of the Treasury Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Fund (SFRF), which is part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Focus Broadband has completed the final stages of a project in Brunswick County (NC). Residents and businesses in the communities of Northwest and Sandy Creek now can access gigabit speed service. Focus Broadband was awarded $1.4 million to provide high-speed Internet to more than 1,000 addresses in Brunswick County in North Carolina’s special supplementary round of the Growing Rural Economies through Access to Technology (GREAT) program.

AT&T says that it spent more than $140 billion between 2018 and 2022, mostly on its domestic wired and wireless network. Much of the spending was in capital investments—including the FirstNet first responder network – and wireless spectrum acquisition. The carrier provided the figure in a wide-ranging update of its following operations:

Two things are clear in an internet satisfaction report commissioned by Amdocs and conducted by researchers at Dynata: Broadband generally is working well and many see it as a necessity. The survey found that 89% of respondents said they have reliable access and that the number of homes with more than nine connected devices has almost doubled since 2021. Only 13% of homes with annual incomes of less than $50,000 per year (low-income) have more than nine connected devices.

Broadband provider Brightspeed has completed a network deployment in Eutawville, South Carolina, that was funded, in part, through the South Carolina 2021 Rural Broadband Grant Program. The network provides service to more than 3,000 addresses in the town and the surrounding Orangeburg County area. The network is capable of 940 Mbps data speeds. Brightspeed invested half of the cost of the build. Brightspeed has bigger plans for South Carolina moving forward.

Regional cable operator Breezeline, formerly Atlantic Broadband, has entered into two public-private partnerships in Maryland. The larger of the two partnerships will extend broadband to 524 homes and businesses in Cecil, St Mary’s and Queen Anne’s (MD) counties. Breezeline is contributing $347,000 to that project. Other contributors are the state, which is providing $3.68 million and the counties, which will contribute $309,000. The total cost of the project is expected to be $4.3 million.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) of Wisconsin awarded $124,967,392 in funding for 71 projects in the state’s Broadband Expansion Grant Program. The projects, which are aimed at areas that are unserved or underserved, will bring broadband to more than 82,912 residences and 4,566 businesses in 45 counties. The projects will be supplemented by $185,780,074 in matching funds from recipients. In November 2021, Gov Tony Evers (D-WS) and PSC Chairperson Rebecca Cameron Valcq announced $100 million in broadband expansion grant funding.

Indiana is positioned to be well connected with the second announcement of a statewide fiber network consortium. The newest entrant, Accord Telecommunications Collaborative, LLC, is owned by 21 electric and telephone cooperative service providers and covers 75% of the state’s land mass. Accord’s owners, which are non-profit organizations, collectively service more than 300,000 homes and businesses in Indiana. They own 20,000 miles of fiber and about 40,000 miles of electric lines. Announcements about partnerships with other providers are expected to be made in the coming weeks.

Brightspeed will pass 130,000 addresses in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the next several years, with the first 60,000 of those passings to be completed by the end of 2023. The first phase of the Virginia rollout will include portions of Charlottesville and parts of Albemarle, Campbell, Henry, Page, Rockbridge and Smyth counties.

Resound Networks, a winning bidder in the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, has successfully achieved gigabit speeds using fixed wireless access (FWA) in the 6 GHz band via an experimental license. The company reached a distance of more than three miles using 160 MHz-wide channels that will become available in the band. Fixed wireless providers have big hopes for the 6 GHz band, which contains a wide swath of spectrum that will be available on an unlicensed basis. The FCC voted in 2020 to free up spectrum in the band.