Fixed wireless/5G home internet services from T-Mobile and Verizon added about 920,000 subscribers in Q3, led by T-Mobile with 578,000, vs. 190,000 in the prior year, said a Tuesday Leichtman Research Group report. Over the past year, fixed wireless services had nearly 80% of the 3.3 million net broadband additions, said principal Bruce Leichtman. The largest cable companies, wireline phone providers and fixed wireless services acquired about 825,000 net additional broadband subscribers vs. 820,000 in the year-ago quarter, said the research firm. Cable companies added about 40,000 broadband subscribers in Q3 vs. 590,000 net adds in the year-ago quarter, while top wireline phone companies lost about 135,000 compared to 40,000 net adds in Q3 '21. Wireline telcos had 550,000 net adds and 685,000 non-fiber net losses, it said. Among wireline phone companies, AT&T lost 57,000 subscribers, Lumen lost 121,000 and Windstream lost 3,500, it said. Top cable companies have about 75.6 million broadband subscribers; wireline phone companies have over 32 million, and top fixed wireless services have 3.2 million, said LRG. Altice lost 53,000 subscribers in the quarter.

T-Mobile said Thursday it expanded the footprint of its 5G Home Internet service across parts of Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. More than 6 million homes throughout those states, and more than 40 million nationwide, are now eligible for the service, T-Mobile said.

About 93% of U.S. households will have a broadband subscription by the end of 2025, either fixed or mobile, as the market enters a “time of renewed competition and innovation,” Parks Associates said Tuesday. Adoption of the original broadband bundle, with pay-TV and voice services, is declining, but “new value-added services are providing new opportunities for increasing customer satisfaction and growing revenue,” said analyst Kristen Hanich. Optimized Wi-Fi and gateway-based cybersecurity are becoming increasingly popular in the residential market, and bulk internet and managed Wi-Fi deployments in the multi-dwelling unit space are making broadband a “competitive, but potentially lucrative, market,” Hanich said. Parks plans the virtual Connections connected home conference Thursday at noon EST.

Price is the top reason residential customers choose an internet service, but performance and reliability are the most influential factors in predicting overall customer satisfaction, said a J.D. Power report Thursday. Some 58% of a customer’s satisfaction with broadband service is based on quality and consistency of the internet connection, said Ian Greenblatt, managing director. “With customers being least satisfied with cost of service, a consistent experience at a reasonable price is table stakes for providers -- each outage or other problem causes a customer to review that price-driven choice for real value,” Greenblatt said. Among providers, Verizon ranked highest in the East region with a score of 758; Midco ranked highest in the North Central region (734), nudging out AT&T (724) and CenturyLink (717); AT&T had the highest customer satisfaction in the South (761) and West (729) over Xfinity at 736 and 709, respectively. The study is based on responses from 22,945 customers November-August.

California plans to deploy the first fiber in the state’s middle-mile network Thursday, said Mark Monroe, deputy director-California Technology Department (CDT) Broadband Middle-Mile Initiative, Wednesday at a virtual California Broadband Council meeting. The state transportation department will install fiber along California State Route 67, which was one of the 18 pilot projects announced in November (see 2111170072). Thursday’s event “marks our flag in the ground that we are moving forward with this big project,” said state Chief Information Officer Liana Bailey-Crimmins, the council’s chair. Monroe applauded the state for putting fiber in the ground about a year after California enacted its $6 billion broadband law. It “bodes well” for the state meeting federal deadlines, said the CDT official. California’s application to NTIA for broadband equity, access and deployment funding, submitted Aug. 12, moved to formal review Sept. 1 after “several rounds of updates based on NTIA feedback,” CPUC Communications Division Director Rob Osborn told the council. The CPUC started drafting a scope of work for the required five-year action plan and is analyzing the FCC’s broadband fabric for serviceable locations, said Osborn: The CPUC plans to provide feedback on the fabric through the bulk challenge process.

Colorado posted a plan to connect 99% of households to broadband in five years using federal funding. The Colorado Broadband Office sought feedback on the road map by Nov. 22. Under the plan, Colorado would prioritize fiber and “target funding in areas where a negative business case for investment for the unserved and underserved exist[s].” The state road map recommended setting “a high-cost per location threshold, which balances funding the use of fiber and alternative technologies to expand coverage for harder to serve areas.” The plan also seeks to increase adoption by 25% by 2027.

New Street’s Blair Levin fired back at former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly for his criticism of the 2010 national broadband plan (see 2209260048). Levin managed creation of the plan. “I’m not surprised that the former Commissioner did not read the Plan, but fortunately others did,” Levin said: “These include Congress (which used the analysis and ideas regarding the incentive auction and FirstNet as the basis for the only communications legislation it has passed since the 1996 Act), the Administration (which used it as the basis for its 2010 and 2013 Spectrum Executive Orders), PCAST [the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology] (which brilliantly built on ideas in the Plan for detailing a new sharing regime), the FCC itself (which not only executed on the Congressional and Administration directives but also built on the Plan’s recommendations for various needed reforms for universal service), as well as industry (with Comcast’s Internet Essentials and Google Fiber being two initiatives that emerged from the planning process),” Levin emailed Tuesday: “I would be the first to acknowledge that 12 years after its publication, some of the analysis of the Plan, like the analysis of some former Commissioners, has become irrelevant.” O'Rielly declined comment.

Louisiana will spend another $8 million to expand broadband to another 600 households in four parishes, Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said Thursday. The governor announced the support at a groundbreaking for a $1.5 million project by Cajun Broadband in St. Martin Parish. The projects are funded by the state’s Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities (GUMBO) program. “Companies like Cajun Broadband are paving the way for our state to close the digital divide by 2029,” said Edwards.

The California Public Utilities Commission should reject a Wireless ISP Association motion to clarify that wireless is eligible for broadband funding from the CPUC’s federal funding account (FFA), consumer and community groups urged Friday. WISPA is “belatedly, and inappropriately, requesting substantive changes to a decision that was well reasoned and based on a comprehensive record,” said Center for Accessible Technology, The Utility Reform Network and others in docket R.20-09-001. The CPUC decided FFA rules more than four months ago, and WISPA didn’t participate in that proceeding, they said. “It is unclear why WISPA has just now intervened, and it is even more unclear why WISPA is demanding that the Commission act on an ‘expedited’ basis notwithstanding its own deferred involvement in the proceeding.” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) must decide by Sept. 30 whether to sign a legislature-passed bill (AB-2749), supported by WISPA and other industry groups, to require wireless eligibility (see 2209160037). “There is no appropriate way that WISPA can know the Governor’s intent, and his actions will speak for themselves in a matter of weeks,” the consumer and community advocates said. “If the Commission grants the motion, providers will continue to invest in high-quality, future-proof fiber infrastructure in wealthy, predominantly white communities and invest, if at all, in inferior wireless infrastructure in low-income communities and communities of color.”

Comcast will start offering multi-gigabit symmetrical broadband speeds to subscribers before the end of 2023, following successful testing of technical components, it announced Tuesday. Comcast said it will start live trials of the service later this year. It said the testing demonstrated delivery of Full Duplex DOCSIS 4.0 service over specially designed amplifiers. Teleste said Tuesday it successfully tested a 1.8 GHz end-to-end network using its and other cable equipment vendors' equipment.