Industry News – 6/7/19

It was all about rural broadband in the state capital this week, starting with Monday’s unveiling of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania study on BB availability throughout the Commonwealth. The report was highly critical of the FCC’s attempts to accurately map where BB has been deployed with study author Sascha Meinrath saying that “there are huge swaths of the state without true access to broadband.” Not surprisingly, the FCC took exception to the study findings, with Commission spokesman Mark Wigfield telling WPSU that the agency’s latest report finds that BB is available to 95 percent of Pennsylvanians and that the Meinrath study doesn’t consider the fact that many consumers don’t purchase the highest available speeds.