The FCC yesterday offered the nation’s largest price cap carriers the opportunity to share up to $485 million in Connect America Funding to help bring broadband to households that cannot get broadband today. The program differs in several ways from a similar program last year...Learn More

A report issued by the Federal Communications Commission last week recommends a substantial reduction in the rate of return that the nation’s smallest telephone companies earn through the inter-carrier compensation (ICC) system. Since 1990 that rate has been 11.25% but if the recommendations made by...Learn More

Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt hopes this week’s acquisition of tier 2 cable company NewWave Communications by investment firm GTCR will be “the first of many.” Telecompetitor spoke this week with Hundt, who headed up the FCC during the Clinton administration and is now an...Learn More

There has been some tension in the marketplace regarding broadband and voice service, particularly in rural markets. It stems from growing consumer demand for standalone broadband – that is subscribing to broadband without the requirement for an accompanying voice line (sometimes referred to as naked...Learn More

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., May 16, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Each year, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) makes available $400 million in funding through the Rural Health Care (RHC) program, to be used for telecommunications and Internet services for health care providers located in rural...Learn More

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has done a highly detailed analysis of broadband deployment in the U.S. -– looking at broadband availability by speed, by technology, by state, by county, and by various combinations of these factors. The upshot, the NTIA said, is that...Learn More

Several changes in the Rural Utilities Service’s Community Connect broadband grant program announced Friday aim to facilitate the process of bringing broadband to rural communities that cannot get broadband service today. The Community Connect program pays some of the costs of deploying broadband in areas...Learn More

The man who was charged with crafting a plan to bring broadband to all Americans isn’t happy about the way that plan is being implemented. Currently with the Aspen Institute, Blair Levin headed up the team at the FCC that three years ago created the...Learn More

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service this week announced it has awarded loans totaling $26 million to two rural telecom companies. In the announcement, the USDA also took the opportunity to note that it “remains focused on carrying out its mission, despite a...Learn More

Iowa Network Services, owned by 122 small Iowa telcos, may be best known as the operator of a statewide fiber network. But in recent years the company has been diversifying – and the latest example of that strategy came this week with the announcement that...Learn More

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NeoNova® Network Services, today announced 19 Internet Service Provider customers chose NeoNova last year and already eight additional ISPs signed on as of March 31. An industry leader in cloud-based services for regional broadband providers and...Learn More

CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream made another attempt Friday to persuade the FCC to release Phase 1 Connect America Funds for broadband construction projects in rural areas that currently do not have broadband service. The carriers are now offering to match whatever funding the commission releases...Learn More