Low earth orbit satellite has a "slim but strategically meaningful portion" of BEAD awards, Quilty Space analyst Kimberly Siversen Burke wrote Friday. SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon Leo combined account for slightly less than 5% of all awarded dollars, or roughly $1 billion, but they cover about 20% of total BEAD locations, she said. It's a mistake to tally BEAD awards by technology "as if they were interchangeable solutions."
The cost of gigabit broadband service is anywhere from $15 to $40 a month more expensive when there's only a single gigabit provider, according to a study last week by the California Public Utilities Commission's Public Advocates Office. The study looked at the prices of stand-alone residential internet access charged by California’s four largest fixed providers in San Mateo, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego. The benchmark price for competitive broadband service in those markets averages about $51 a month, it said. When comparing locations with limited competition to those with overlapping gigabit networks, "Californians could save more than $1 billion annually if competitive pricing prevailed statewide."
NextNav is challenging the findings of a technical study that Neology filed last month (see 2512160017) on the risks posed to band incumbents if the FCC approves NextNav's proposal to use the 900 MHz band for a “terrestrial complement” to GPS. In a filing posted Friday in docket 25-110, NextNav said it stands by its earlier analysis that found minimal interference risks.
The administration’s pro-5G, pro-business agenda may be about to clash with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda of some of President Donald Trump's loyalists. As the FCC wraps up an NPRM on proposed changes to wireless infrastructure rules to make 5G deployments faster (see 2601160045), reports are emerging that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ramping up a study of the risks from cellphone radiation. The Food and Drug Administration has also taken down webpages saying that cellphones aren’t dangerous. The FCC didn't remove similar declarations on its website.
Spending worldwide on video content will hit $255 billion this year, up 2% over 2025, Ampere Analysis said Monday. Spending by global streaming platforms is continuing to drive the growth, it said. Streamers overtook commercial broadcasters in 2025 in share of content spending, and 2026 will see streamers building on that lead, Ampere predicted.
States have good ideas about AI regulation that the federal government shouldn’t try to block, said two state officials and a U.S. Senate Democratic staffer during a Federal Communications Bar Association panel Tuesday. In a separate session, however, telecom industry officials suggested that a “patchwork” of state AI requirements could be more difficult for businesses than dealing with today’s array of state privacy laws.
Spectrum access is the key regulatory and operational hurdle for direct-to-device satellite services, with SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile, Globalstar and Omnispace/Lynk controlling the mobile satellite service rights "that matter most for D2D," Xona Partners said this week. Their spectrum holdings give them less reliance on mobile network operators, greater pricing power and long-term strategic options, the firm said. D2D is also driving satellite system consolidation, with more mergers and acquisitions expected in 2026, Xona predicted. The Omnispace/Lynk Global merger and SES’ strategic positioning, as well as geostationary orbit operators’ push into low earth orbit fixed wireless and D2D in response to mounting revenue pressure, point to the likelihood of more consolidation across the sector, it added.
If the U.S. Supreme Court rejects President Donald Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and defies conventional wisdom (see 2512080047), it would go a long way to counter the prevailing view that the court is doing Trump’s bidding regardless of the law, argued Peter Shane, chair in law emeritus at Ohio State University, in Friday's Washington Monthly. If SCOTUS upholds the firing, Trump could also fire members of the FCC with whom he disagrees, including Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez.
AST SpaceMobile said its supplemental coverage from space interference analysis shows that its operations won't cause harmful interference to terrestrial services. In a filing posted Monday in docket 25-201, AST said the FCC should stick with its established practice of license conditions that require operations within applicable interference protection limits. Requiring the company to provide incontrovertible proof of non-harmful interference, including successful coordination with all non-partner terrestrial licensees, before any approval would create "an impossible barrier to entry."
Strand Consult said in its year-end predictions that pressure is likely to continue on big tech companies to pay into the USF. “The largest internet companies Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok derived an estimated $200 billion in revenue in 2024 from the 135 million users connecting to the internet through the USF,” Strand said last week. The companies earned on average $2,600 in 2024 through every household connected, it added. An “explosion of data centers is poised to exacerbate this free ride if left unaddressed.”