Tidbits from January 2021

C Spire doing FTHH in Mississippi and now Jasper, AL. [telecomp]

Star Telephone in Louisiana gets its 2nd ReConnect award from USDA. [telecomp]

RDOF winners included many WISPs -- other legacy winners do not believe that these providers will be able to meet the speeds and deployment requirements.

SonicWall falls foul of zero-day vulnerability hack on own VPNs [source]

AudioCodes joins up with Twilio to offer direct routing to MS Teams. That is a crowded market - direct routing to Teams. And basically it is just dial-tone (SIP trunks) without advanced features. Not sticky. The keep is to add Value to that with IVR or voicemail or something. Business SMS - currently being touted by all Cisco powered providers - is something you can get in MS Teams with DR via SIP trunks or CPaaS. Reminder: Microsoft now offers CPaaS!

94 ISPs added wired broadband plans costing $60 per month or less during the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a new broadband price report from BroadbandNow.

Oak Hill Investment invests in CT ISP to accelerate FTTH deployment in Penn, CT and Northeast. [CV source] private capital is all over the FTTX space; UCaaS, cloud contact center and the MSP space. Monthly recurring revenue and some level of stickiness.

Bill Gates on life after the pandemic and Doug points out how this will affect ISPs [Pots and Pans]

Small business help from Intuit. Intuit has updated Intuit Aid Assist (IAA), a free website with two interactive tools to help eligible small business owners and the self-employed assess their eligibility for federal relief and related tax credits from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The second round of PPP loans is upon us.

ISPs still suing California over Net Neutrality {ARS}