The Broadband Wars, Part 1

There are some interesting things happening in the residential broadband wars.

Powered by government money and mandate, the ILECs are upgrading broadband infrastructure across the nation. AT&T, Windstream, CenturyLink and others (notably NOT Frontier or Verizon) are using a variety of technologies to compete against DOCSIS 3.1, which has been kicking their ass for the last couple of years. G.Fast to the MDU; Fixed wireless using 4G/5G; fixed unlicensed wireless; FTTN (fiber to the neighborhood) then VDSL2 (e.g., the retired brand U-Verse) and FTTH.

These upgrades are proving profitable per WIND's CFO: ARPU is up 5%.

Google Fiber acquired a WISP called Webpass. Following challenges with pole attachment rules and subsequent lawsuits in Nashville and Louisville from the Duopoly (AT&T and cable), Google Fiber is now looking at fixed wireless options to continue deploying Gigabit Broadband. Windstream, too.

"AT&T revealed today that it is trialing a 100 Mbps competitive fixed wireless broadband service to “multiple” apartment complexes in Minneapolis, a CenturyLink market," reports Telecomp. And it is with fixed wireless (probably licensed)! "The AT&T broadband wireless offering initially will support speeds up to 100 Mbps per customer using millimeter wave spectrum in a point-to-point configuration."

Windstream bought a WISP called BOB in 2013. Now they are pushing out fixed wireless in 40 markets. In NYC they use the 28 GHz band with a hub capacity can scale up to 13.2 Gbps.

Suddenlink (now owned by Altice which also owns Cablevision) is rolling out Gigabit, according to DSLR.

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