It’s been a while since I took a look at the worldwide Internet. The statistics cited below come from Datareportal. The world population in January 2024 was 8.08 billion, up 74 million from a year earlier, a growth rate of 0.9%. There were 5.61 billion unique mobile subscribers in January, up 138 million (2.5%) over a year earlier. 5.35 billion people used the Internet at the end of 2023, up 97 million (1.8%) from a year earlier. This means almost two-thirds of people on the planet are connecting to the web. Some interesting statistics about worldwide Internet connectivity: 5% of females are ..read more

The Washington Post recently published an article with a series of graphs that shows the impact of the pandemic on a number of economic indicators that range from unemployment, wages, air travel, grocery prices, home prices, and consumer sentiment. The article got me thinking about the impact of the pandemic on the broadband industry – and there are several important changes that came out of our collective pandemic experience. Upload Speeds. Probably the biggest change for the industry was that many millions of people suddenly cared about upload speeds as people tried to work from home and stu ..read more

We are preparing to award over $44 billion to construct rural broadband networks. Almost by definition, these networks will be built in rural areas where it’s hard to justify a business plan where revenues generated from the grant areas are sufficient to fund the ongoing operation and eventual upgrades to any broadband networks. The FCC has addressed this issue in the past, and numerous FCC programs have provided ongoing subsidies for rural broadband networks. The FCC has been very careful over the past decades to create separate subsidies for small telephones and cooperatives versus the large ..read more

Scientists continue finding ways to make computers faster and better. Today’s blog talks about three interesting developments in computing technology. Universal Computer Memory. The holy grail of computing memory has been universal computer memory that can replace the current need for both short-term and long-term memory in the computing process. An article published in Nature Communications describes a new material that looks like it will enable universal computer memory. Computers currently use RAM for short-term memory. RAM chips are superfast but need a lot of physical space and use a lot ..read more

An interesting battle is underway to capture the market for monitoring devices. The latest entry into the market is 5G RedCap. This is a technology that is currently under development in chipsets and ought to hit the market in 2025 and 2026. RedCap is the latest attempt by cellular carriers to monetize 5G. RedCap was defined in the 5G specification 3GPP Release 17. The technology allows for 5G devices that are less complex, less costly, and more power efficient than conventional 5G devices like smartphones. RedCap will compete for monitoring devices like sensors that send small packets of info ..read more

One of the trends that is a concern for ISPs is plans by State Broadband Offices to force BEAD winners to charge low rates for broadband. I understand some of the rationale behind these attempts. One argument for lowering rates is that the government is paying a big portion of the cost of building the broadband networks, and it ought to be able to extract concessions from the ISPs for taking the grant funding. That sounds like a reasonable argument until you take a harder look at the places where BEAD funding is going to be used. In most places, BEAD will be used for the most sparsely populate ..read more

The NTIA recently announced $811 million in funding for digital equity that is available for States and Territories. This round of funding is part of the $1.44 billion Digital Equity Capacity Grant program of money that will go to States to administer digital equity grant programs. $60 million of this fund was allocated to States in 2022 for planning purposes. The NTIA has taken so long to deploy these funds that these disbursements represent the grant funding allocated for the law for years 2022 through 2024. There will be a few more future years of grant funding. The total funding for digita ..read more

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel made it clear recently that the FCC is not willing to tackle funding for the ACP plan that is expiring in May. She estimated that the FCC would have to add something like $9 to every broadband bill in the country to fund the ACP plan. But there is another alternative. States could pick up the ACP funding just for their state. States will have the authority to do this after the FCC approves the reinstitution of Title II authority this month. That authority would give the FCC the authority to create the fee needed to fund the ACP through the FCC Universal Servi ..read more

Leichtman Research Group recently released the cable customer counts for the largest providers of traditional cable service at the end of 2023. LRG compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders, except for Cox and Mediacom – they now combine an estimate for both companies. Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all traditional U.S. cable customers. I suspect there are regular blog readers who wonder why I post these statistics every quarter. There are several reasons. I find it fascinating to watch the slow train wreck of the implosion of the ca ..read more

A lot of folks have been pleading with the FCC to pick up the tab to continue the the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). Folks are assuming that the FCC has the ability to take on the ACP program inside the Universal Service Fund. To make that work, the FCC would have to apply a monthly assessment against all broadband users – something the FCC should have the authority to do if it votes to reinstate Title II authority over broadband at its April meeting. What might it look like for the FCC to absorb the dying ACP program? FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Congress that rolling the A ..read more