Governor Tom Wolf provided opening remarks at Wednesday’s Pennsylvania Priorities Summit in State College which featured several panels focused on rural broadband deployment in the state. Wolf was touting his Restore PA plan which proposes to monetize a gas severance tax and utilize the proceeds for a variety of infrastructure projects, including broadband. Not all […]

The White House has politely declined the request of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) to produce communications between the President and his advisers regarding the merger of AT&T and Time Warner according to The Hill. Nadler is attempting to determine whether the President tried to influence the Justice Department in any manner to […]

At its Public Meeting yesterday, the PUC unanimously approved the application of Tri-Co Connections to be designated as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier; allowing the rural electric cooperative to receive federal USF funding. In a 4-0 vote, (Chairman Brown recusing herself since her brother works for Frontier), the Commission approved the Joint Petition of Frontier Communications […]

In case you missed it, the FCC recently announced that it will vote sometime next month on eliminating the rural rate floor which is scheduled to increase to $26.98 on July 1 absent any action by the Commission. On the books since 2011, telcos which do not charge at least the floor have their Federal […]

A swirl of commentary this week (See related story in Quotable Section), as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a draft notice teeing-up an overall cap on all of the federal Universal Service Fund programs. In the pro-cap corner is Commissioner Michael O’Rielly who tweeted that 3 of the 4 USF programs already have hard caps […]

Very good news out of Windstream in the wake of its recent bankruptcy announcement. CEO Tony Thomas said this week that it added 14,000 new broadband subscribers in 2018; giving the company 12 consecutive months of broadband growth. Thomas added that Windstream doubled the availability of homes and small businesses with access to 100 Mbps […]

The nuisance of robocalls will be the focus of a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing to be held next Thursday, March 21st. Senator Andrew Dinniman (Chester County) is the moving force behind the event and PTA has been invited to testify.

News on funding for state-level broadband projects continues to surface across the country and this week’s offering comes from Wisconsin. The state is appropriating $78 million for deployment of a statewide network with speeds of 25Mbps by 2025, and the Governor’s administration is criss-crossing the state soliciting input for best ways to spend the money.

In the wake of a federal judge ruling which concluded that it broke its agreement with bondholders, Windstream filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday.  Company president and CEO Tony Thomas issued a press release expressing Windstream’s strong disagreement with the ruling, and offering that the bankruptcy filing was a decisive act to secure the […]