The Wireline Bureau has dismissed Sonic Telecom’s 2021 petition for reconsideration of portions of the FCC's unbundling network elements rules, said an order on reconsideration Friday. “We find that Sonic fails to show any material errors or omissions, raise any new or additional facts or arguments it could not have raised during the original proceeding, or provide any reason otherwise warranting reconsideration,” the order said. Sonic had argued that the FCC’s UNE rules were based on unsubstantiated predictions and untrustworthy data (see 2102090077). “Sonic’s Petition merely restates arguments the Commission has already rejected, and to the minimal extent it may raise new evidence or arguments, such evidence or arguments could have been raised earlier,” the bureau said.

Google's GU Holdings has received a green light from the FCC Office of International Affairs to build and operate a non-common carrier submarine cable system linking California and Guam to Taiwan and the Philippines, the agency said Friday. The cable system, TPU, will have a total capacity of about 260 Tbps, it said. GU -- which had previously received special temporary authority to construct and test the portions of the cable system in U.S. territory -- plans to begin offering commercial service on TPU in May.

Permitting difficulties and inaccurate Form 477 data have hampered SCI Broadband's efforts to meet its rural deployment opportunity fund buildout obligations, according to CEO Ron Savage. In a docket 10-90 filing posted Friday recapping a meeting with the FCC, Minnesota's SCI said it was bringing the issues to the agency's attention before potentially seeking a waiver from serving certain census blocks where it received RDOF funding.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told reporters Thursday that he will look “very closely” at the state of play on legacy copper in carrier networks. “We have a regime in place where we are requiring carriers to invest billions and billions of dollars into aging, legacy copper networks,” sometimes in parallel with building a modern network, Carr said. “We need to find a way to create the incentives so that we can transition people to next-generation services and incentivize investment in new infrastructure.”

Plans for Hawaii to be the first fully fiber-enabled state in the U.S. will have to overcome such logistical and operational challenges as its remote location and the difficulty of getting from island to island, Hawaiian Telcom President Su Shin said Wednesday. During a Fiber Broadband Association webinar, Shin said those access issues add to costs. While the timeline is “aggressive,” a lot of the most difficult areas have already been built, and the company is confident it can meet the deadline of the end of 2026, she said. About 60% of Hawaii -- more than 400,000 homes and businesses -- is fiber-enabled, she said, with two of the six main islands complete and the focus turning to the others over the next two years. She said federal support, such as via the rural deployment opportunity fund and NTIA’s middle mile program, will help with the highest-cost areas, but 90% of the $1.7 billion fiber project comes from private capital.

AT&T defended its proposal to stop accepting new customers for parts of its legacy copper network (see 2501310046), responding to opposition from the Communications Workers of America and Bandwidth (see 2502240025). AT&T has four applications pending at the FCC involving legacy services in wire centers in 18 states. “As detailed in each application, demand for each of these services is very low in the Affected Service Area, and new orders are almost nonexistent,” said a filing Tuesday in docket 25-45. “Grandfathering these outdated services will benefit the public and serve as an important step toward meeting both AT&T’s and the Commission’s goals of advancing toward next-generation technologies that customers crave.” AT&T said no actual end users filed comments on the applications. Contrary to CWA's allegations, “all existing customers of the Affected Services will be able to keep their current service,” the carrier said. “AT&T spends over $6 billion annually in direct costs to keep its copper services running -- resources that would be much better spent connecting more Americans to newer networks.”

Surf Internet announced Friday it raised $175 million in new equity funding and secured an upsized $300 million debt facility as it seeks to build out fiber in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. “The equity investment was led by Macquarie Capital, with participation from existing investors Bain Capital and Post Road Group,” the company said. “The debt upsize, led by DigitalBridge Credit, includes a new commitment from global investment group CDPQ, along with participation from Boundary Street Capital and Liberty Mutual Investments,” and builds on “Surf’s existing $200 million debt facility.”

TDS Telecom will target 1.8 million marketable fiber service addresses after ending 2024 with 928,000 total locations, the company announced Friday. The ISP laid out a long-term plan to increase its percentage of locations served by fiber to 80%, provide speeds of at least 1Gb to 95% of its footprint, and decrease its copper footprint to 5%. “We’ve been transforming into a fiber company in a big way for several years,” TDS CFO Kris Bothfeld said. “We’re now also focusing on streamlining our operations to enhance elements of our customer experience and further improve our margins and cost structure.”

Luminys on Monday disputed the FCC’s finding that the company was selling equipment from Dahua, which is on the agency's “covered list” of providers of unsecure gear (see 2502140040). Parts of the filing, in docket 25-85, were redacted. “The Commission should not revoke the equipment authorizations because Luminys made no false statements or representations,” Luminys said. “The equipment for which Luminys sought, and obtained, authorization is not ‘covered’ under the Commission’s rules, nor is any of the equipment described in these authorizations produced by an entity named on the Covered List.” The Public Safety Bureau’s “tentative determinations appear to be based purely on speculation, not evidence, and are wrong.”

The Communications Workers of America and Bandwidth separately opposed AT&T’s moves to close additional parts of its legacy copper network (see 2501310046). AT&T CEO John Stankey said in January that the carrier plans to file applications at the FCC to stop selling legacy products in about 1,300 wire centers, which is roughly a quarter of the AT&T footprint (see 2501270047). AT&T started the push during the last administration and is taking a more aggressive approach at the current FCC.