Midcontinent Communications (Midco) wants to use fixed wireless to deliver broadband to remote portions of its rural footprint. And it’s currently testing residential fixed wireless speeds of 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstreaming using its 3.65 GHZ nationwide nonexclusive and 3.5 GHz CBRS band spectrum licenses.

“Midco’s fixed wireless innovation extends to the millimeter wave, where we are beginning testing,” said Justin Forde, Midco’s senior director of government relations, testifying Friday during a hearing on 5G conducted by Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation chair John Thune (R-S.D.). A transcripts of Forde’s testimony is available here.

Midco is among a number of telecom companies, Comcast and Charter included, looking at delivering services through high-band frequencies committed to the Citizens Band Radio Service. 

“Using shorter distances from towers to consumers, we can use the 70 and 80 GHz bands for our point-to-point connections and the 50 and 60 GHz bands for our point-to-multipoint connections,” Forde added. “A new meshing technology will increase redundancy and reliability, and we will be testing Gigabit fixed wireless services. Millimeter wave technology can be an additional tool in the toolbox to offer high-speed and reliable broadband to rural America.”

Related: CBRS Alliance Declares Interop a Success, Says Commercial Deployments are ‘Imminent’

Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Midco serves more than 400,000 residential and business customers count on Midco services in 342 communities in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, and Wisconsin.

Forde rendered his testimony as the FCC, which was also present at Friday’s hearings, looks to change the way it allocates spectrum for so-called “5G” services, the name which larger wireless carriers are using to market their new fixed wireless offerings.

“It would be detrimental to rural America if valuable and limited spectrum was allocated only to 5G, especially as 5G requires a high concentration of small cells to operate,” Forde said. “Using current mobile 5G technology, it would take an estimated 350 small cell towers to provide 5G to Sioux Falls, with a square footage of only 74 miles. While technology that requires end users to be in such close proximity to a tower is a possibility in Sioux Falls, Rapid City, and other urban areas, mobile 5G it is not currently a realistic solution to close the Digital Divide in rural areas.

“On behalf of our friends and neighbors who still lack access to broadband, we ask that Congress and the FCC allow fixed wireless providers like Midco to have equal access to spectrum as that valuable resource is freed up for commercial use,” Forde added. "We know from field testing that the 3.5 GHz band is key spectrum for us to provide speeds of 100/20 and higher to homes that are over 8 miles away from the tower.

The FCC is currently changing the rules for the 3.5 GHz band. Under those rules, Forde said, “After 2020, we will lose our interference protection in the 3.65 GHz band, and we will then need to either use general authorized access spectrum, in which case our operations would not be entitled to interference protection, or bid on priority access licenses in the 3550-3650 MHz range that will be auctioned. Moreover, only 70 MHz of spectrum will be auctioned, and there is no guarantee Midco will be able to gain access to that spectrum.”

Five more U.S. MVPDs have joined Cablevision Systems in striking deals with Hulu that will enable them to offer the over-the-top streaming service to their respective customers. 

Armstrong, Atlantic Broadband, Mediacom Communications, Midcontinent Communications and WideOpenWest (WOW!) have agreed to distribute the OTT service. Those deals follow a similar agreement announced by Hulu and Cablevision on April 28. 

Hulu’s subscription service sells for $7.99 a month as a stand-alone OTT service. In its announcement about the Hulu agreement, Mediacom noted that pricing, availability date and “other particulars” will be announced in the near future, echoing what Cablevision said last month.

Update: A Hulu official confirmed that the OTT service will also sell for $7.99 per month via its MVPD partners. 

Hulu said the agreements will allow its pay TV partners to offer Hulu's full library of content, including Hulu originals, directly to their video and broadband subscribers via their "advanced set-top boxes."

“At Hulu, we believe users should have the ability to consume their favorite content, when, where and how they want,” Tim Connolly, Hulu’s senior vice president, distribution, said in a statement. “We are very excited to partner with these MVPDs to bring Hulu to users where they are already watching TV.” 

“We believe Hulu is the perfect complement to Mediacom’s Internet service offerings,” John Pascarelli, Mediacom’s EVP of operations, added in a statement issued by the MSO. “Hulu brings a robust video selection to our customers who want to supplement their traditional cable service with online content at home or on the go.”

Hulu, co-owned by NBCUniversal, Walt Disney Co., and 21st Century Fox, announced last week that it has nearly 9 million subscribers, a 50% increase since 2014.

Jones/NCTI said it has struck a three-year deal to provide Midcontinent Communications with a suite of learning tools for the MSO’s frontline field technicians and call center teams.

The package includes Jones/NCTI's course material, mobile learning application and career path development tools, as well as LogiCALL customer service support.  Under the deal, Midcontinent’s techs and call center staff will get access to Jones/NCTI's Master Technician and Master Representative course materials, and the MSO will deploy Amp, Jones/NCTI's mobile learning application. 

Jones/NCTI will also provide opportunities for career planning and advancement with career paths created and tailored for Midcontinent.

Midcontinent will introduce the new Jones/NCTI program to employees in early 2015. 

“Our team is excited to deepen our relationship with Midcontinent by providing their frontline technicians and customer care teams with a results-driven learning program that supports a clearly defined career path,” said Stacey Slaughter, CEO of Jones/NCTI, in a statement. “ All MSOs can benefit from the way we have restructured our offerings to integrate with and supplement existing learning programs."  

"We're thrilled to provide our team with tools to expand the superior customer service they provide today through our relationship with Jones/NCTI,” added Kathy Green, director of talent development at Midcontinent.  “These solutions will deliver on-demand, next-level learning to help our employees on the job as well as throughout their careers. I expect deployment of the Jones/NCTI solutions will have a positive impact on our company, our employees and ultimately, our customers."

The American Cable Association has asked the FCC to impose what it calls "targeted" conditions on the proposed Comcast/time Warner Cable merger and associated Charter system spin-offs for at least nine years, perhaps more, to prevent potential anticompetitive harms.

That came in comments filed for the Dec. 23 reply comment deadline.

The FCC is maintaining the comment cycle, though it has stopped the informal clock on vetting the deal until Jan. 12 and a lawsuit filed by programmers challenging third-party access to deal contracts could delay a decision until the middle of 2015.

ACA is particularly concerned with the number of video subs the combined company and Charter would negotiate on behalf of, which ACA says would increase from 21 million to 31.4 million. Comcast is spinning off some systems to Charter to keep the total sub count below 30 million, but ACA is counting the subs negotiated for on behalf of Bright Nouse Networks and Midcontinent Communications.

ACA wants improved baseball style arbitration and nondiscriminatory access conditions. ACA says Comcast should be prohibited from negotiating programming agreements on behalf of Bright House or Midcontinent and that Charter and Comcast-affiliated programmers should "be prohibited from interfering with a third-party programmer’s ability to provide any prices, terms, or conditions to an MVPD."

The group says those and other conditions should last for nine years, and even then require Comcast and Charter to demonstrate that they are no longer needed.

“ACA’s chief goal is for the FCC to make clear that Comcast- and Charter-affiliated programmers are prohibited from demanding rates, terms, and conditions that are discriminatory or higher than fair-market value from Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs), and that the enforcement mechanisms for these safeguards work, particularly for small and medium-sized MVPDs,” ACA President Matt Polka said in a statement.  “Such remedial conditions have, in the main, provided vital protections to MVPDs in the past, and, with ACA’s recommended improvements, must again be imposed by the FCC in this case.”