U.S. broadband providers wracked up collective capex of at least $86 billion in 2021, their biggest capital expenditure total ever, according to trade group USTelecom. 

The capex total represented an 8.3% increase over 2020. It was also $5.2 billion more than what was spent during the previous record year of 2019. 

"Yet even at this elevated level, the 2021 capex investment total is not surprising for two reasons. First, broadband deployment generally -- and fiber deployment specifically-- has been proceeding at unprecedented levels," wrote USTelecom President and CEO Jonathan Spalter in an org blog posting. "Analysts show that a selection of companies have announced that they will bringing fiber to 50 million additional households in the coming years.

"Second," Spalter added, "the 2021 investment total builds on a longstanding trend of continual communications network investment. In fact, since 1996, private U.S. communications providers have invested approximately $2 TRILLION ($2,000,000,000,000) building out America’s world-leading communications infrastructure. This amount is 67% higher than the funding for the entire Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was designed to reinvigorate all of America’s infrastructure."

We're going to hazard a guess here and suggest that record network usage during the quarantine portion of the pandemic also had an influence on spending. 

It's complicated. US Telecom, which has challenged the FCC's justification for new Open Internet rules, has asked a federal court for permission to weigh in in support of the agency.

Specifically, the trade group, which represents telco iSPs, has asked permission of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to intervene on behalf of the FCC in the single challenge of the agency's Title II-based rules by Full Service Network, which argues the commission was not regulatory enough.

"Unlike all of the other petitioners that have filed petitions to date, these petitioners intend to argue that the FCC should have imposed even more regulation on providers of broadband Internet access service, including USTelecom’s member companies," US Telecom told the court in explaining why it would be taking the FCC's side.

If it gets intervenor status, it could file a brief arguing why the FCC should not have imposed more regs than it did. US Telecom made it clear it was only siding with the FCC against the call for more regs, not against any of the other petitions -- like its own -- that have been filed against Title II as an over, not under, reach.