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December 2015

Verizon Executive: The 'philosophy that Verizon is spectrum short is just false'

Verizon chief financial officer Fran Shammo is fighting back against the notion that Verizon is rapidly running out of capacity on its wireless network. Shammo said that only 40 percent of the carrier's total spectrum assets are currently being used by its LTE network technology, which he said indicates the carrier still has enough network capacity to continue to grow. "We are extremely efficient the way we deploy spectrum," Shammo said. "I still have 60 percent of a spectrum capacity sitting out there [using CDMA/EVDO network technology] that I can move in time [to LTE] to create capacity within my network without really spending any additional money on spectrum. So this philosophy that Verizon is spectrum short is just false. We have plenty of spectrum."

Shammo explained that, until recently, the cheapest way for a wireless carrier to add capacity to its network was through purchasing new spectrum. And he pointed out that Verizon continues to do that; the carrier purchased $10.4 billion worth of spectrum licenses during the Federal Communications Commission's recent AWS-3 spectrum auction. But he said that, due to the rising cost of spectrum, it's now more financially efficient for Verizon to improve its network capacity by refarming its spectrum to the more efficient LTE technology, and also by densifying its network.

Go90 and Net Neutrality: Verizon CFO Says Sponsorships Will Sidestep Issues

Verizon expects to launch a sponsored version of its Go90 mobile video offering in 2016 that would enable end users to watch video without having it count against their monthly data allotment, said Verizon Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo. Shammo hastened to add that Verizon “will make sure we can deliver [this] to others” in order to avoid Net Neutrality issues. By “others,” he apparently meant other content providers. Verizon is pinning a lot of hope on its Go90 offering, which offers a mixture of pre-existing and original content to mobile devices on Verizon and other mobile networks. The service was originally launched in October but Shammo noted that the company only began mass advertising to support it beginning on November 27.

Spectrum Policy and the EU Digital Single Market: Lessons from the United States

The European Union has outlined a set of ambitious goals in its Digital Single Market proposals, including a set of proposed reforms to radio spectrum management to create an EU-wide market for mobile communications. While challenging, the goal of a single telecoms market is also the most promising: the mobile digital economy is poised to have a tremendous impact on growth, productivity, and progress throughout the 21st century. Europe should take this opportunity to achieve a true single market for mobile by moving wireless policy from the national level and centralizing spectrum management functions, harmonizing regulations, and allowing for industry consolidation to fit the scale of a single market.

The difficulty in enacting these reforms is considerable, with member countries wanting to retain autonomy and control over industries and inputs, but success will mean significantly greater value throughout the entire EU mobile ecosystem. ITIF recommends bold action over half-measures—most importantly in centralizing EU-wide spectrum management—and hopes the Commission is successful in these efforts. We offer five key lessons from the United States that may help inform the European Union’s attempt to create a true single market for mobile communications:

  1. Consolidated EU-wide spectrum management and harmonization of regulations.
  2. Permissive merger policy.
  3. Reallocation of broadcast spectrum for mobile broadband.
  4. Technologically neutral, flexible licenses tradeable on a secondary market.
  5. Neutral spectrum policy eschewing active market shaping.

US can't access NSA phone records in California terror case

The US government's ability to review and analyze five years' worth of telephone records for the married couple blamed in the deadly shootings in California lapsed just four days earlier when the National Security Agency's controversial mass surveillance program was formally shut down. Under a court order, those historical calling records at the NSA are now off-limits to agents running the FBI terrorism investigation even with a warrant. Instead, under the new USA Freedom Act, authorities were able to obtain roughly two years' worth of calling records directly from the phone companies of the married couple blamed in the attack.

The period covered the entire time that the wife, Tashfeen Malik, lived in the United States, although her husband, Syed Farook, had been here much longer. FBI Director James Comey declined to say whether the NSA program's shutdown affected the government's terrorism investigation in California. "I won't answer, because we don't talk about the investigative techniques we use," Director Comey said. "I'm not going to characterize it."

Broadband adoption rates and gaps in US metropolitan areas

Until now, public, private, and civic leaders have frequently concentrated on broadband adoption at a national or international scale, looking at how rates vary across large segments of the population. However, new survey questions from the US Census Bureau enable analysis at the metropolitan scale, creating new ways to measure and understand where America falls short in getting people online. This brief uses 2013 and 2014 American Community Survey data to track current and changing broadband adoption rates at the metropolitan scale, while using a combination of other Census and Internet speed data to model what factors affect metropolitan adoption rates. In turn, the results of this analysis have clear implications for efforts to address the significant gaps in American Internet adoption. Among the findings:

  • While 75.1 percent of American households had a broadband Internet subscription in 2014, there is enormous variation in US digital connectivity across demographic groups and between metropolitan areas.
  • Multiple factors -- including higher levels of income, educational attainment, and telecommuting -- all have a positive and significant effect on broadband adoption rates in metropolitan America.
  • From 2013 to 2014, the share of households with a broadband Internet subscription rose by 1.7 percentage points nationally, including a statistically significant increase among 58 of the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas.

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