El Al Israel Airlines will use ViaSat's in-flight internet system for its in-flight connectivity services aboard its 16 new Boeing 787 Dreamliners, ViaSat said Wednesday. It said the El Al jets will connect to ViaSat-2 and the Ka-Sat satellite jointly owned with Eutelsat.

Comcast will make a multiyear, $11 million investment in the 50-square-block The District Detroit sports and entertainment complex for an all-fiber network that will give patrons multi-gigabit speeds, said Little Caesars Arena owner Olympia Entertainment in a news release Wednesday. It said there will be more than 1,000 Wi-Fi access points, and multi-gigabit speed offerings to businesses and residential units in the development.

USTelecom painted a positive picture of U.S. wireline broadband availability. "As of mid-2016, 96 percent of Americans had at least one wired broadband network platform available to them, and 84 percent had at least two wired options," said a report Friday analyzing FCC data. It said 65 percent of households had access to at least two wired 10/1 Mbps service options, and 49 percent had access to at least two 25/3 Mbps service options -- those data speeds are FCC broadband definitions, in effect, for rural areas and urban/suburban areas, respectively. "The increasingly competitive state of broadband availability is the result of substantial capital investments by broadband providers in a dynamic, evolving market," said a release.

Google parent Alphabet Access said the FCC should approve the Broadband Access Coalition’s (BAC) proposal for the 3.7 GHz band (see 1708100037). But satellite commenters continue to raise concerns. “A range of commenters demonstrate that these changes would improve broadband service across the country, especially in underserved areas and locations where purchasers lack a competitive provider,” Alphabet said in replies in RM-11791. “Because the 3700-4200 MHz band represents 500 megahertz of prime but underutilized mid-band spectrum, the Commission should take action to improve utilization.” Alphabet's comments are important because Google also supports a rival plan for the band by an Intel-led group (see 1708080050), a BAC proponent told us. The BAC plan isn't the answer and would interrupt satellite operations across the band, the Satellite Industry Association said. “Neither the BAC nor any other party has proposed a framework that would adequately protect existing and future satellite operations,” SIA said. “The BAC Petition’s approach would undercut, not advance, its stated goal of bridging the digital divide.” SIA member Intelsat also opposed the BAC proposal. Technology provider NetMoby endorsed the BAC proposal. The 3.7 GHz band is the largest “underutilized swatch of spectrum” below 6 GHz managed by the FCC, NetMoby said. The coalition's three lead members are Mimosa Networks, the Wireless ISP Association and New America’s Open Technology Institute. “Shared access to this high-quality spectrum can narrow the high-capacity broadband gap in rural and other low-density areas, while increasing competition in areas where consumers have only one choice for high-speed service,” Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America told us Wednesday. “As a fiber substitute, fixed wireless can fill the void between fiber, where it’s too expensive to trench, and mobile, which cannot yet provide enough capacity to be an adequate substitute for fixed broadband at home or work.” The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition is a member of BAC and supports the proposal, Executive Director John Windhausen said: “Rural areas are struggling to find sufficient broadband capacity, and this is especially true of community anchor institutions, who need much higher capacity than residential consumers. 5G technologies, while exciting, are largely an urban play and rural areas are likely to fall further behind unless there is more focus on rural broadband solutions.”

The 14 largest cable and telco providers in the U.S., with about 95 percent of the market, acquired close to 230,000 net additional broadband subscribers in Q2, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Friday. LRG said those companies combined have more than 94.1 million subscribers, with 59.9 million for cable ISPs and 34.2 million for telcos. The Q2 additions were 7 percent higher than in Q2 2016, LRG said. It said cable ISPs added about 460,000 subs in Q2 2017, but telcos lost 230,000. The researcher said the past year saw about 2.55 million net broadband adds, compared with 3 million in the previous 12 months.

Design and construction is underway to expand Altice's fiber-to-the-home network footprint so it reaches 1 million homes by the end of 2018, the company said in a news release Monday. It said work is underway covering several hundred thousand homes in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. The operator said that, beyond its FTTH network, it has expanded its 1 GB broadband service to more than 60 percent of its Suddenlink footprint and launched gigabit service in seven cities.

U.S. broadband penetration (at 82 percent) passed pay-TV penetration (81 percent) in Q2, Pivotal Research's Jeff Wlodarczak wrote investors Tuesday. While the rate of growth among new data subscribers dropped year over year in the quarter, to 140,000 adds, cable took all the share of those net new subscribers despite aggressive AT&T promotional activity, the analyst said. Cable's ramping up of its speeds to 1 GB and faster, so telcos aren't likely to see positive net fixed data subscriber growth, he said, saying cable has "plenty of room" for taking some of the roughly 22 million DSL-based telco data subscribers. Pay-TV lost an estimated 1 million subs in Q2, with that to accelerate in Q3, Wlodarczak said. Q2 was the fourth straight quarter of accelerating year-over-year declines, and pay-TV penetration likely will be down to near 80 percent, he said.

Hughes wants FCC International Bureau approval for 20 gateway earth stations to communicate with the HNS 95W satellite, the application for which is pending before the bureau (see 1706220002). In a set of bureau applications posted Thursday (for example, here), it said the proposed gateway earth stations would be in 14 states, and HNW 9W would provide broadband services in the Ka- and Q/V-bands.

Edge providers routinely engage in behaviors, like discriminating against content and throttling, that they complain are "destroying the Internet" if done by an ISP, telecom consultant Jonathan Lee blogged Wednesday. He said the argument that ISPs want a cable TV-like internet, with access to collections of sites offered like subscriptions to cable channel packages, lacks explanation of how ISPs could offer such a service or profit from it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's May en banc decision in USTelecom v. FCC (see 1705010038) said ISPs can offer curated service under Communications Act Title II regulation, but no ISP has gone that route, he said.

Inmarsat completed an "around the world" Global Xpress test flight, using a Gulfstream IV jet that covered more than 25,000 miles over seven days in June to show in-flight connectivity capabilities via its Global Xpress constellation, said a news release Wednesday. The company said the flight went across 28 spot beams and there were three satellite-to-satellite handovers. It said during the flight, the in-flight connectivity supported such applications as video conferencing, high-speed internet access and file transfer and phone calls.