Wireless Telecommunications

AST SpaceMobile has been granted an experimental license from the Federal Communications Commission to conduct US-based testing of its BlueWalker 3 satellite. The company launched its first satellite in March 2019, and it plans to launch its second satellite, BlueWalker 3, summer 2022. AST Space Mobile, based in Midland (TX), plans to build the first space-based cellular broadband network designed to be accessible directly by standard mobile phones.

T-Mobile has a secret sauce for selling T-Mobile Home fixed wireless service in rural areas that involves a granular competitive analysis of 775 sub-markets, said CEO Mike Sievert. The company is seeing strong growth for the fixed wireless offering, having reached 1 million subscribers in less than a year.

Judging by what T-Mobile executives have shared publicly, the integration of Sprint into the T-Mobile sphere is going swimmingly. But if you’re the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the whole thing stinks. T-Mobile said it plans to finish transitioning all Sprint customers to the T-Mobile network over the next few months. The company also is on track to upgrade or decommission substantially all Sprint sites in 2022.

T-Mobile reported its results for first-quarter 2022, showing strong broadband subscriber growth. The company reported 348,000 postpaid net account additions for the quarter, as well as 1.3 million postpaid net customer additions. In addition, T-Mobile saw 589,000 postpaid phone net customer additions and 338,000 high-speed internet net customer additions. Approximately 45 percent of postpaid customers are using a 5G phone on T-Mobile's network. The company's 5G network covers 95 percent of Americans.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), in Boulder (CO) in collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD), announced 5G Challenge contestants selected from Early-Bird entries. This prize competition aims to accelerate the adoption of open interfaces, interoperable components, and multi-vendor solutions toward the development of an open 5G ecosystem.

This research analyzes the relation between mobile phone use – mobile Internet in particular – and employment, self-employment and job regularity in Uganda. It finds no evidence of any positive impact of mobile Internet use on employment or job quality, suggesting that either respondents do not use mobile Internet for job search practices or as a job tool, or that these uses are ineffective.

Verizon was a pioneer in fiber broadband with its Fios product, having launched it well over 15 years ahead of the fiber frenzy we now find ourselves in. Fios was very much the heart of Verizon broadband, but that appears to be changing. Today, and from all indications, the future of Verizon broadband is very much centered on its emerging fixed wireless business. Out of the 229,000 net broadband adds Verizon gained in Q1 2022, roughly 85 percent came from fixed wireless. In 2021, fixed wireless only accounted for 20 percent of the company’s net broadband adds.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is requesting comments on competition in the mobile application ecosystem.

The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau seeks to gain a better understanding of end-to-end Wireless Emergency Alerts performance. The bureau seeks to partner with alert originators to conduct localized, end-to-end WEA performance tests to be conducted in the third quarter of 2022. These tests will be designed to measure WEA’s capabilities with enhanced WEA geo-targeting enabled. The bureau will work with the selected alert originator(s) to define the parameters of the test and the roles and responsibilities of test developers and participants.