1. Monthly archive
  2. February 2020

February 2020

Former WorldCom Chief Bernard Ebbers Has Died. How the WorldCom Con Helped Huawei

The death of former WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers at 78 brings back memories of the “broadbandit” era of telecoms around the turn of the century, when a bubble burst that inflicted huge damage on the industry and its investors, contributing to the rise to pre-eminence of China's Huawei today. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2005, but was released in Dec 2019 on compassionate grounds to spend his final weeks with his family. He was convicted for orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom that led to the biggest bankruptcy in US history at the time.

FCC Opens Priority Window for Rural Tribes to Access Mid-Band Spectrum

The Federal Communications Commission announced that the Tribal priority window has officially opened for federally recognized Tribes and Alaska Native Villages to apply for spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band. This band—the single largest band of contiguous spectrum below 3 GHz—offers favorable coverage and capacity characteristics for next-generation mobile services, such as 5G. In 2019, the FCC modernized the regulatory framework for this swath of vital mid-band spectrum to make it available for advanced wireless services.

Sponsor 

 

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Date 
Thu, 02/06/2020 - 18:00 to 19:00

The United States has a real opportunity to lead in the next generation of 5G wireless connectivity, but doing so will require adequate public airwaves be made available to carry all the data. The so-called “C-band”—from 3.7 to 4.2 GHz—is widely seen as an ideal swath of spectrum for the job, as it offers an attractive balance of geographic coverage and capacity for large amounts of data. The global device ecosystem using these frequencies also has real momentum, with 23 countries and counting having allocated them for 5G.


Sponsor 

Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission

Date 
Wed, 03/11/2020 - 14:00 to 18:00

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission will hold two public workshops to solicit public dialogue on the draft vertical merger guidelines released on Jan. 10, 2020.


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