Connect with us

Open Access

Broadband Breakfast Announces Digital Infrastructure Investment as a Physical/Virtual Event on August 10, 2020

Published

on

Illustration by ItNeverEnds via Pixabay used with permission

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2020 – Breakfast Media LLC, the publisher of Broadband Breakfast, on Tuesday announced that its Digital Infrastructure Investment mini-conference at the Broadband Communities Summit will be a Physical/Virtual event.

Visit Broadband Breakfast’s event page for the most up-to-date information about the Digital Infrastructure Investment mini-conference.

Originally announced in February as part of the Broadband Communities Summit in Houston, Digital Infrastructure Investment will take place on August 10, 2020, from 1 p.m. ET to 7 p.m. ET (or 12 Noon CT to 6 p.m. CT, for those located in Houston).

It will feature programming on “Last Mile Digital Infrastructure,” “The Experience of Infrastructure Investment Funds,” “Federal Funds and Opportunity Zones” and “The Neutral Host Infrastructure and Small Cell Deployments.”

Register, for FREE, for Digital Infrastructure Investment.

With Tuesday’s announcement, in addition to taking place live in Houston, Digital Infrastructure Investment event will also take place Live Online. It will join Broadband Breakfast’s growing #broadbandlive series of programming, including “Broadband and the Coronavirus.”

“This exciting program will continue in person and online,” said Drew Clark, Editor and Publisher of Broadband Breakfast, a 12-year old news organization based in Washington building a community of interest around broadband policy and internet technology.

Broadband Breakfast’s motto is “Better Broadband, Better Lives,” and strives to put in place its belief about the vital importance of broadband communications.

“Uncertainty surrounding the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic means that many who are interested in enhancing broadband networks are concerned about travel,” he said. “At the Digital Infrastructure Investment Physical/Virtual Event, panelists and attendees alike will be able to participate either in person or online and be on an equal footing.”

Those who plan to attend Digital Infrastructure Investment in person should also use this link to register for the summit. The in-person version of Digital Infrastructure Investment is free to all registered Broadband Communities Summit attendees. Those who are unable to attend the summit in person can still register for Digital Infrastructure Investment.

“We’ve heard a lot recently about the dynamism of open-access networks, particularly in this time of the coronavirus,” said Clark. “High-capacity symmetrical fiber networks are more important now that ever before.”

“But there remain several crucial questions about how the digital infrastructure builds of today scale beyond municipal-level deployments,” he said. The Digital Infrastructure Investment event aims to gather the infrastructure investment fund managers, institutional investors, private equity and venture capitalists, and senior leaders from fiber, mobile, and data center solutions providers to bring clarity on the next business model for advanced internet infrastructure.”

“The Broadband Communities Summit is the leading event for community leaders, multifamily property owners and network builders and deployers interested in the building, managing, marketing and monetizing of high-speed broadband technologies and services,” said Barbara De Garmo, CEO of Broadband Communities. “It is focused on the successful delivery of high-speed broadband networks to communities – from multifamily properties and planned developments to the city or town where you live.”

On March 17, Broadband Communities and the Rural Telecommunications Congress announced that Broadband Communities Summit and its rural broadband track, which were previously scheduled for late April, have been postponed until August 10-13, 2020 because of concerns associated with the coronavirus.

The event remains at the Marriott Marquis Houston, Texas. For those who have already paid the registration fee, Broadband Communities will roll registrations over to the August dates.

For more about the summit, visit the home page, and learn more about the Summit Chairmen.

Digital Infrastructure Investment Topics Areas

  • TOPIC 1: Last-Mile Digital Infrastructure
    Ownership models are evolving. Who will play the lead role in constructing? What entities, including cities, will own digital assets? Who will manage the networks?
  • TOPIC 2: Infrastructure Investment Funds
    Infrastructure financing is available for broadband. Will it dwindle or accelerate with the coronavirus pandemic? What is the experience of institutional investors?
  • TOPIC 3: Federal Funds and Opportunity Zones
    The FCC is making $20.4 billion available for rural broadband. The U.S. Treasury’s Opportunity Zones help urban projects. Can these funds make a difference?
  • TOPIC 4: Shared Infrastructure and Small Cell Deployments
    Cellular towers were once proprietary, before carriers partnered with infrastructure owners. Will the neutral host infrastructure also take over small cells and 5G?

Register, for FREE, for Digital Infrastructure Investment.

Editor’s Note: The original post on the Digital Infrastructure Investment conference was published on February 27, 2020; This post was updated on April 28, 2020, and on May 17, 2020.

Broadband Breakfast is a decade-old news organization based in Washington that is building a community of interest around broadband policy and internet technology, with a particular focus on better broadband infrastructure, the politics of privacy and the regulation of social media. Learn more about Broadband Breakfast.

Open Access

Sweden’s Open Access Fiber Deployment Offers Lessons for U.S. Strategy

The country boasts internet penetration with 98% served with Gigabit symmetrical speeds.

Published

on

Photo of COS Systems CEO Mikael Philipsson from the company.

December 6, 2023 – The former CEO of a fiber deployer in Sweden urged the United States Tuesday to be bolder in broadband deployment, reflecting on the Nordic nation’s aggressive buildout of open access fiber networks that now provide 98 percent of the population with access to gigabit download and upload speeds.

COS Systems CEO Mikael Philipsson, and former CEO of GlobalConnect, highlighted at Broadband Breakfast’s Digital Infrastructure Investment Summit Tuesday how Sweden’s gigabit broadband strategy drove an open access “fiber race” in the Nordic nation, from which he said the U.S. can learn.

Philipsson called for U.S. network engineers to “plan for 100 percent,” saying if municipalities start to cherry pick which homes they build to, it will result in a fraction of the population likely never being served.

When GlobalConnect was planning its wholesale fiber network, it built fiber to the smallest, most rural locations first, then invited all ISPs to provide services over the network on equal terms, he said.

The Swedish government’s broadband strategy adopted in 2016 encouraged rapid investment and innovation. The government had several initiatives and strategies to encourage private investment in broadband networks, including subsidies and grants for private investment in rural areas, the promotion of public-private partnerships, and encouraging open access networks.

Today, 60 percent of the Swedish market has adopted internet service that utilizes the open access model, with the other 40 percent choosing a vertically-integrated fiber or cable offering that still relies on a wholesale fiber backbone. Due to consumer demand, even the former incumbent, Telia, adopted the open access model in order to maintain its competitive advantage.

Lessons along the way on the open access path

But there were hard lessons learned along the way, Philipsson said, including labor shortages and permitting issues that caused buildouts to stall for 12 to 15 months at a time.

“It’s going to be more expensive and take a longer time than you think,” warned Philipsson.

Fifteen years earlier, leaders of GlobalConnect were deciding whether to pursue an intensive infrastructure rollout. In what would become a defining moment, the team decided to challenge incumbent providers who at the time owned 99 percent of the physical infrastructure in the country, launching a fiber-to-the-home wholesale network with private backing.

The company’s move kicked off a land grab across Sweden, as infrastructure providers raced to compete for a share of the wholesale fiber market.

“It was a fight on the street to get customers,” recalled Philipsson. “We rolled tractors out on the street as a marker to say ‘We will serve this part of the town.’” Within five years, GlobalConnect had addressed two million households across Sweden with a fiber offering, and built its wholesale network to pass one million homes with a 70 percent take rate.

The positive effects of adopting the wholesale model across Sweden were sweeping for service providers, infrastructure providers, and residents, alike. Service providers with big ambitions were able to launch their services nationally with no capital expenditures, he said. Competition drove providers to become more customer centric, offering differentiated pricing models and expanded offerings to separate themselves, he added.

“Partner up with your former competitors, perhaps,” said Philipsson. “Sharing infrastructure is really the end game for digital infrastructure, just like all the other infrastructures.”

Continue Reading

Open Access

Gigapower Exec Pitches Value of Open Access Networks to Maximize BEAD Money Efficiency

The open access model allows multiple ISPs to use the same infrastructure. That could benefit Gigapower.

Published

on

Screenshot of Bill Hogg, CEO of Gigapower, during Broadband Breakfast Live Online

WASHINGTON, September 13, 2023 – Gigapower is in talks with state broadband offices about potentially building out open access infrastructure with grants from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program, the company’s CEO said Wednesday. 

“I think that when the time comes for BEAD, this platform will be a perfect fit,” Bill Hogg, the company’s CEO, said at a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event. 

That’s because consumers could still choose from multiple internet providers offering different services at different price points, all on BEAD-funded Gigapower infrastructure, Hogg pitched. The traditional ISP-owned infrastructure model would only bring service from the provider that won a state contract to expand their network, he claimed. 

“They like the idea that multiple ISPs will be able to bring choice to their constituents,” he said of state broadband officials. “They don’t have to pick a winner or a loser.”

Gigapower, a joint venture between AT&T and the investment firm BlackRock, is already slated to build a 1.5-million-location open access network. That means it will own and operate a fiber network while allowing multiple internet service providers to use that network to connect individual homes and businesses.

Spawned from the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act, the BEAD program allocates $42.5 billion to subsidize broadband infrastructure – primarily fiber – in areas that still lack adequate internet service because of geographical barriers or low population density. After submitting initial proposals by the end of the year, states will be able to start doling out this money to fund projects.

Gigapower is actively looking to add more service providers to its lineup, Hogg said. 

“We fully intend to have other ISPs on the network,” he said. “We’re having good discussions with potential future tenants.”

Benefits of open access

AT&T will be the first tenant on the open access network, part of its deal with Blackrock. The telecom is looking to reach more people as quickly as possible, said Erin Scarborough, its president of broadband and connectivity, but building out fiber is costly and expensive. Making use of a network outside the company’s existing infrastructure will make it easier to expand into new areas and was a key motivator for investing in the project.

“That’s one of the key tenets of this agreement and why we were looking to do it,” Scarborough said.

The open access model is a departure from the norm in American telecommunications. There are regional open access networks like Utah’s UTOPIA Fiber, but large ISPs have traditionally opted for the security of owning and operating their own networks. 

“When you start thinking about operating more efficiently with less capital, sharing networks has always made sense,” Hogg said. “We think that this model is going to break down the historical bias telecos have had about not controlling all the assets.”

Despite the company’s investment in the project and first-provider status, Scarborough and Hogg were emphatic that AT&T will not have a management role over the network.

“We are the network operator,” Hogg said of Gigapower. “We own the assets. We own the negotiation for the commercial terms.”

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, September 13, 2023 – AT&T and BlackRock’s Gigapower Joint Venture

In December 2022, AT&T and BlackRock, through a fund managed by its Diversified Infrastructure business, jointly invested  in the Gigapower joint venture that is expected to build fiber connectivity to an initial 1.5 million customer locations beyond AT&T’s current footprint. Notably, AT&T will rely on a commercial wholesale open access platform, where multiple providers share space and compete for customers over the same fiber infrastructure. Could Gigapower alter the historical reluctance of U.S. telcos toward such networks? How will the deployment impact open access projects throughout the United States? Get the facts from this special Broadband Breakfast Live Online event.

Panelists:

  • Bill Hogg, CEO of Gigapower
  • Erin Scarborough, President, Broadband and Connectivity Initiatives at AT&T
  • Adam Waltz, Managing Director at BlackRock Infrastructure
  • Roger Entner, Founder and Lead Analyst of Recon Analytics
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Adam Waltz is a Managing Director in BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Fund focused on investments in digital infrastructure opportunities across fiber networks, data centers, and wireless infrastructure. He serves as a Board Director at Gigapower, BlackRock’s joint venture with AT&T to develop a commercial wholesale open access platform on a state-of-the-art fiber network.

Bill Hogg leads Gigapower, an open access, wholesale fiber broadband company that builds and operates fiber solutions lit for fast connectivity and designed for network resiliency and reliability. Bill retired as President, AT&T Technology Operations, and was responsible for all planning, investment, engineering, construction, delivery, and assurance of AT&T’s wireless and wireline networks. Previously, Bill served as President-Technology Development, responsible for the development of AT&T’s products and services, digital experiences for customers, and systems supporting the operations across AT&T’s networks and services.

Erin Scarborough leads the team responsible for AT&T’s efforts to connect more Americans to greater possibility through fiber and wireless 5G investment initiatives, participating in government funding programs and public private partnerships. She and her team are taking a strategic, state-by-state approach working closely with state and local governments as they assess their broadband access, affordability and adoption needs. She also leads the combined broadband and mobility product management teams and has cross-functional responsibility for product profitability, pricing, customer experience, product design, multi-year roadmaps, development, and value-add services across the product portfolios.

Roger Entner advises telecom, media and technology companies on strategic and tactical business as well as public policy issues to allow them to compete better in the marketplace. Some of the challenges he helped to address are mobile market trends and business drivers and how to position themselves for growth and profitability, TMT convergence, bundling, changes in media consumption, software-defined networking, transition from MVNO to MNO, as well as providing the evidence and arguments for light touch wireless regulation and spectrum allocation for 5G. Under Roger’s leadership, Recon Analytics has launched the fastest and most agile telecom insights service based on more than 400,000 respondents across consumer mobile, home internet and business telecom customers.

Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

WATCH HERE, or on YouTubeTwitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTubeTwitter and Facebook.

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

Continue Reading

#broadbandlive

Broadband Breakfast on September 13, 2023 – AT&T and BlackRock’s Gigapower Joint Venture

Gigapower CEO Bill Hogg and AT&T President Erin Scarborough headline event.

Published

on

See Gigapower Exec Pitches Value of Open Access Networks to Maximize BEAD Money Efficiency, Broadband Breakfast, September 13, 2023

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation in the webinar.

Wednesday, September 13, 2023 – AT&T and BlackRock’s Gigapower Joint Venture

In December 2022, AT&T and BlackRock, through a fund managed by its Diversified Infrastructure business, jointly invested  in the Gigapower joint venture that is expected to build fiber connectivity to an initial 1.5 million customer locations beyond AT&T’s current footprint. Notably, AT&T will rely on a commercial wholesale open access platform, where multiple providers share space and compete for customers over the same fiber infrastructure. Could Gigapower alter the historical reluctance of U.S. telcos toward such networks? How will the deployment impact open access projects throughout the United States? Get the facts from this special Broadband Breakfast Live Online event.

Panelists:

  • Bill Hogg, CEO of Gigapower
  • Erin Scarborough, President, Broadband and Connectivity Initiatives at AT&T
  • Adam Waltz, Managing Director at BlackRock Infrastructure
  • Roger Entner, Founder and Lead Analyst of Recon Analytics
  • Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Adam Waltz is a Managing Director in BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Fund focused on investments in digital infrastructure opportunities across fiber networks, data centers, and wireless infrastructure. He serves as a Board Director at Gigapower, BlackRock’s joint venture with AT&T to develop a commercial wholesale open access platform on a state-of-the-art fiber network.

Bill Hogg leads Gigapower, an open access, wholesale fiber broadband company that builds and operates fiber solutions lit for fast connectivity and designed for network resiliency and reliability. Bill retired as President, AT&T Technology Operations, and was responsible for all planning, investment, engineering, construction, delivery, and assurance of AT&T’s wireless and wireline networks. Previously, Bill served as President-Technology Development, responsible for the development of AT&T’s products and services, digital experiences for customers, and systems supporting the operations across AT&T’s networks and services.

Erin Scarborough leads the team responsible for AT&T’s efforts to connect more Americans to greater possibility through fiber and wireless 5G investment initiatives, participating in government funding programs and public private partnerships. She and her team are taking a strategic, state-by-state approach working closely with state and local governments as they assess their broadband access, affordability and adoption needs. She also leads the combined broadband and mobility product management teams and has cross-functional responsibility for product profitability, pricing, customer experience, product design, multi-year roadmaps, development, and value-add services across the product portfolios.

Roger Entner advises telecom, media and technology companies on strategic and tactical business as well as public policy issues to allow them to compete better in the marketplace. Some of the challenges he helped to address are mobile market trends and business drivers and how to position themselves for growth and profitability, TMT convergence, bundling, changes in media consumption, software-defined networking, transition from MVNO to MNO, as well as providing the evidence and arguments for light touch wireless regulation and spectrum allocation for 5G. Under Roger’s leadership, Recon Analytics has launched the fastest and most agile telecom insights service based on more than 400,000 respondents across consumer mobile, home internet and business telecom customers.

Breakfast Media LLC CEO Drew Clark has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

WATCH HERE, or on YouTubeTwitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTubeTwitter and Facebook.

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

Continue Reading

Signup for Broadband Breakfast News



Broadband Breakfast Research Partner

Trending