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Advanced Business Broadband – Project Canceled

We regretfully must announce the cancellation of the Advanced Business Broadband service we previous mentioned.

In summary, we were working with Straight Path to lease spectrum which we would use to operate this service. It turned out that Straight Path was in trouble with the FCC and was fined $100M (yes, million) in early 2017. Straight Path never followed through with the lease to us in late 2016, which led us to the first announcement. In order to avoid fully paying the FCC fine they were given a few options, one of which was to sell their licenses. We have since learned that the buyer is A&T. Update: Verizon outbid AT&T.

We are clearly disappointed with this outcome. This left us with no choice but to make assumptions based on what little information we have been able to obtain externally. Since it seems highly unlikely that AT&T Verizon is going to turn around and start leasing spectrum instead of using it for themselves, and the lack of communication with Straight Path, this firmly places our plans into the “canceled” category.

UPDATE: We received notices from Verizon that the 39GHz leases we do have will be terminated in September 2018, so that’s the end of that.