New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors that some details don’t add up in a Bloomberg report saying AT&T is in talks to buy Lumen's consumer fiber business. The $5.5 billion price tag "looks too low," Chaplin said in a late Tuesday note to investors. That could mean Lumen wants to sell assets "from the central office to the home … but not the central office itself and not the fiber into the central office,” he said. Discussion of the deal comes as AT&T seeks to expand its fiber network, while it closes down some of its legacy copper lines (see 2502250066). Rival T-Mobile announced joint ventures last year to buy fiber providers Metronet (see 2407240020) and Lumos (see 2404250047).

The Phoenix Center on Monday disputed findings in a Brattle Group study from last year that found fiber deployment through BEAD and other programs could generate about $3.24 trillion "in terms of net present value (NPV) in incremental economic impact.” The study was the “first to show that fiber deployment has significant incremental economic benefits even in the presence of other high-speed broadband technologies,” Brattle said at the time (see 2411200025).

Viya filed at the FCC a revised version of its annual report on its Connect USVI Fund Stage 2 fixed phase-down support for 2024. “In gathering information in response to a request by Commission staff for clarification of certain information in the Original 2024 Report, Viya discovered it had misstated the amount spent on and the percentage completion of one of the approved projects in its spending plan,” the company said in a filing last week in docket 18-143. The error came in information on a subsea cable project, but the revised details were redacted from the report.

Comments on a permanent freeze of jurisdictional separation rules are due April 23, replies May 8, according to a notice for Monday's Federal Register. The FCC requested the comments on behalf of the Federal-State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations in February (see 2502140059).

T-Mobile opposed an Everstream Solutions petition filed last month seeking to discontinue operations and exit the market in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania by June 30. Everstream offers wavelength, managed services, hosted private branch exchange services, ethernet direct internet access, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint Ethernet, and interconnected VoIP. “If Everstream were to discontinue services on such short notice, service -- including E911 services -- will be disrupted for millions of T-Mobile customers, as Everstream provides integral ethernet backhaul services that support T-Mobile’s ability to deliver its subscribers a superior network experience and reliable access to critical wireless services,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 25-100. Everstream’s intention to discontinue its services by June 30 “leaves T-Mobile with insufficient time to identify, contract for, and transition to a provider to ensure continuity of service for T-Mobile customers,” the carrier said: “Everstream’s actions are in flagrant violation of its contractual obligations to T-Mobile.” T-Mobile asked for confidential treatment for some of the data it filed in support of its arguments.

By the end of 2029, fiber operators will own about 33% of the North American broadband market, with cable's share slipping from roughly 62% today to about 53%, according to Jeff Heynen, Dell’Oro Group vice president-broadband access and home networking. In a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday, Heynen said fixed wireless access's market share will likely peak at around 13%. He said fixed wireless subscriber growth will probably top off in 2026 and then start to moderate. Low earth orbit broadband will ultimately capture 2%-4% of subscribers, Heynen said, and cable DOCSIS 4.0 upgrades have slowed somewhat, in part because of component availability issues. Last year was tough for network equipment vendors, as operators were still working off overly large inventories from 2022 and 2023, perhaps due to too-aggressive purchasing. Heynen said broadband providers were largely working off excess inventory in 2024, and purchasing is returning to normal. Purchases of passive optical networks' optical line termination ports were down 40% in 2024, while cable providers' buys of DOCSIS customer premises equipment were down 23%.

Gigabit Fiber, a Dallas-based ISP, appeared to call on the FCC to scrap the USF in response to the commission’s “Delete Delete Delete” notice (see 2503140049). “The current USF system is outdated, economically burdensome, and unconstitutional,” the company said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 25-133. “It has a storied history of waste, fraud and abuse and is a tax and spend fix to a problem that no longer exists. Some of this legal framework dates to the era of the Pony Express, telegraph lines and subsidized railroads.” Gigabit Fiber said it imposes USF fees on some of its services and then doesn’t know what happens to the money. “We assume the money finds its way to the US Treasury and then in turn some is used to fund dubious programs with the balance lost to waste, fraud and abuse.”

DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi called Zayo’s acquisition of Crown Castle's fiber business “a milestone acquisition” for the company. Ganzi confirmed on LinkedIn last week that the sale price was $4.25 billion. Combining the fiber sale with that of its small-cell business to EQT, Crown Castle announced a total price of $8.5 billion (see 2503140021). “This incredible network adds 90,000 route miles in key metro areas,” Ganzi said, including New York City, Los Angeles and Miami, “the places where high speed, low latency routes are needed and growing.” DigitalBridge is a part owner of Zayo.

Totah Communications asked the FCC for a waiver after the Oklahoma-based company missed a Connect America Fund filing deadline because of “technical difficulties.” Those “difficulties prevented the proper certification of performance testing, in which the data had been uploaded and was in full compliance with the testing requirements,” said a filing Friday in docket 10-90. “The subsequent missed certification, which is procedural rather than substantive, has no impact on the Commission’s or [the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s] ability to assess Totah’s compliance with broadband deployment requirement,” it said. “Totah’s penalty was assessed as a pro-rata amount of its universal support allocation for each day beyond the compliance deadline,” which amounts to an estimated $186,278, “an extremely severe penalty given that Totah fulfilled all other testing requirements and one that will impose a financial hardship on the company as it seeks to provide voice and broadband to its Southeastern Kansas and Northeastern Oklahoma customers.”

The FCC Wireline Bureau granted in part Broadband VI’s (BBVI) petition for waiver of its 40% deployment milestone deadline under the Connect USVI Fund, but only until June 30. The original deadline was Dec. 31, 2024. The company sought a waiver through the end of this year. “We find that the public interest is served by granting an additional brief waiver to allow BBVI to come into compliance as quickly as possible with commitments it made as a recipient” of USF support “for the benefit of all residents in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” said an order in Monday’s Daily Digest.