Amazon expects to slightly decrease the number of satellites in its planned V- and Ku-band Kuiper satellite network. In an FCC Satellite Bureau application posted Wednesday, it said its plans now call for 38 fewer satellites in the three systems that will make up the V- and Ku-band Kuiper network. The company also said it wants to add the 17.3-17.8 GHz frequencies to the bands the Kuiper network will use and to expand the use of certain Ka- and V-band frequencies to other parts of the systems. Amazon said its first-generation V- and Ku-band Kuipers would number 3,232, instead of 3,236, its second-gen Kuiper system would number 3,212 instead of 3,236, and its polar orbit Kuipers would number 1,292 instead of 1,302.
Rural Americans' access to fiber is already increasing swiftly and will accelerate due to BEAD spending, said Meg Corriveau, manager-strategy and analytics at Cartesian, which conducted the Fiber Broadband Association's annual fiber deployment study, released Thursday. The fiber industry is "at an encouraging point," with record levels of fiber deployment going on despite economic headwinds, Corriveau said. Deployments "aren't going to slow down anytime soon."
Five hundred ninety-seven submarine cable systems and 1,712 landings are active or under construction, consultancy TeleGeography said Monday as it released its 2025 submarine cable map. That's an increase of 38 cable systems and 76 landings from the 2024 edition.
More broadband providers are notifying the FCC that they won't meet their third-year rural development opportunity fund (RDOF) buildout milestones (see 2501150071). Conexon Connect said Thursday it exceeded the 40% milestone in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri as of the end of 2024 but fell short in Arizona, Illinois and Louisiana (docket 19-126). It said it "intends to fully satisfy its RDOF obligations in each of the ten states in which it receives RDOF support." Texas' AW Broadband told the FCC it won't meet its first interim buildout milestone in Texas. It said while it deployed 36% of its RDOF locations as of year's end, it expects to meet the 40% milestone before the end of Q2, and the 60% milestone before year's end. Kentucky's Foothills Connect said it was short of the milestone in that state, and Alabama's Point Broadband Fiber said the same about work in Alabama and Michigan. West Kentucky Rural Telephone Cooperative said it missed its RDOF milestone in Illinois. Cox said it had positive news, exceeding its third-year buildout obligations in six states where it received RDOF awards; however, it's falling short in Louisiana, where it's at 28%, Nebraska (33%) and Arizona (38%). Cox said it's "working to address these shortfalls before the next milestone." Charter Communications, which has asked to return some RDOF census block groups in North Carolina, citing its inability to get tribal consent to build on or across tribal lands, on Thursday added a broadband serviceable location to that list. Charter said it wasn't defaulting on it and the other North Carolina locations but asking that the FCC waive its RDOF rules to remove the locations from its RDOF buildout requirements.
Successes over the past year in combating piracy included shuttering Fmovies and associated video piracy sites (see 2408290025), the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) said Wednesday in the latest annual Notorious Markets list. Fmovies was on the list since 2017, it said. USTR said the wide use of cyberlockers and "bulletproof" internet service providers that are particularly lenient toward piracy remain areas of concern. The reliance on bulletproof ISPs makes it increasingly difficult for rights holders to remove infringing content, especially when ISPs disguise their ownership and locations and won't respond to rights holders’ takedown requests, USTR said. The 38 online piracy markets highlighted in the 2024 report include video piracy sites 1337X, GenIPTV, MagisTV and Vegamovies.
The GOP seemed poised to sweep state commission elections Tuesday, based on unofficial results Wednesday. All the races were in states that went red for President-elect Donald Trump and mostly for commissions that the GOP already dominated. It appeared that Democrats would lose their lone seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) and miss a chance at flipping the Louisiana Public Service Commission blue.
The FCC narrowed the scope of outage reporting for Hurricane Helene Thursday, deactivating the Disaster Information Reporting System for Florida and Virginia, as well as 16 counties in Georgia and one in Tennessee. However, the system remains active for numerous counties in Georgia, Tennessee and both Carolinas. Thursday’s DIRS update showed 598,411 cable and wireline customers without service in the affected area, and 8.4% of cell sites down. Those numbers are improved from the previous day, when 11.3% of cell sites were down and 654,220 subscribers were reported as without service. The update showed 5 TV stations down, compared to 6 Wednesday, and 22 radio stations down, compared to 38. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr visited the North Carolina Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, to meet officials and telecom providers who are coordinating disaster response efforts, a release from Carr's office said Friday. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also visited North Carolina Friday (see 2410030051). Carr discussed coordinating communications restoration efforts with representatives of federal, state and local government agencies during the visit, including FCC actions to promote roaming across networks, the release said. "Ensuring the quick restoration of communications services remains a top priority for government agencies," Carr said. "I am grateful for the work that these government officials and service providers alike are doing to help restore communications services in the wake of Hurricane Helene."
The number of in-flight connectivity-equipped aircraft topped 38,000 last year and is expected to exceed 60,800 by 2033, Novaspace said Thursday. As aircraft operators shift from legacy geostationary orbit-based systems to non-geostationary orbit-based (NGSO) ones and hybrid services, bandwidth consumption is rising, it said. Total leased capacity, 90 Gbps in 2023, is expected to reach 1.8 Tbps by 2033, it said. NGSO services such as SpaceX's Starlink and Eutelsat's OneWeb "are set to revolutionize in-flight connectivity" through greater bandwidth at lower capacity costs, Novaspace said.
Conservatives were more likely than liberals to be suspended on Twitter during the 2020 election, but they were also more likely to share lower-quality news articles on the platform, researchers said in a study released Wednesday. Scholars from Oxford University, MIT, Yale and Cornell examined accounts sharing hashtags supporting then-Republican nominee Donald Trump and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Accounts sharing #Trump2020 during the election were 4.4 times “more likely to have been subsequently suspended” than those that shared #VoteBidenHarris2020, the study said. About 4.5% of users who shared Biden hashtags “had been suspended as of July 2021” compared to 19.6% of users who shared Trump hashtags, researchers said. Journalists and fact-checkers rated the quality of news websites for the study, ranging from mainstream and hyper-partisan to “fake news.” Conservative social media shares included content from sites like Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, InfoWars, NewsMax and Red State. Statistics for users using a Trump hashtag showed 50,973 shares from Fox News, 47,841 shares from Breitbart, 38,692 shares from New York Post, 10,719 shares from Daily Mail and 9,968 shares from Daily Caller. Breitbart and Daily Caller were identified as hyper-partisan outlets in the study. Statistics for Biden supporters showed 33,604 shares from The New York Times, 28,488 shares from CNN, 20,759 shares from Raw Story, 6,639 shares from CBS News and 5,715 shares from USA Today. Raw Story was labeled as hyper-partisan in the study.
Cellular service in the areas affected by Hurricane Helene improved Wednesday, according to the FCC’s most recent Disaster Information Reporting service update. It showed 11.3% of the cell sites in all the affected counties down, an improvement from the 21.7% reported out of service in Tuesday’s update. The most affected state in the DIRS coverage area is North Carolina, with 38.3% of cell sites without service in its affected counties. There are 654,220 cable and wireline subscribers without service, as compared to 750,761 in the previous update. The DIRS update shows 6 TV stations out of service and 38 radio stations down across the affected areas. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel will visit Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina, Friday "to gain a firsthand account of communications recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene," said a release Thursday. Rosenworcel is scheduled to meet with FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau staff deployed to North Carolina, visit a federal assistance center and an emergency operations center, and go to a local library that serves as a community Wi-Fi hub, the release said.