What’s in the news?
Why Telecom Carriers Are Resisting a Program for Low-Income Internet Subsidies by Fortune magazine. “For decades, low-income households have been getting subsidized telephone service under the federal government’s Lifeline program. Back in April, the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the program, decided to extend the subsidy to cover broadband Internet service as well. After all, about one-third of the 40 million households eligible for the Lifeline program lack broadband.” AT&T, VZ and C-Link have told the FCC they are opting out.
However, AT&T is taking another government contract. DSLR is reporting that “AT&T is the likely winner of a government contract to build our first nationwide emergency broadband network known as FirstNet.” FirstNet is the nationwide wireless emergency network that was suggested after 9/11!
Cable Nodes Becoming a Choke Point.
“Not all Internet service providers use monthly data caps to control bandwidth usage, but default unlimited plans appear to be rapidly going the way of the dodo. WideOpenWest Holdings LLC (WOW) COO Cash Hagen says when it comes to broadband providers and usage caps, “it’s not a matter of if we all do it at some point, but when, how and how the customers adapt to that.” [lightread]
Presidio is filing for their IPO and “expected to value it at as much as $3 billion”! (Presidio is an MSP, a telecom broker and a Cisco partner.)
GoDaddy has made 3 moves this year. First they bought FreedomVoice for the service that is like Google Voice for $40M. Today it was announced that GoDaddy is buying Host Group Europe for $1.79B. Strangely, in September, GoDaddy bought Serbia’s ManageWP, a multi-site WordPress management tool.
