Monica Alleven

Dish Network wants to buy 800 MHz licenses from T-Mobile, but it doesn’t have $3.5 billion on hand to finance the purchase, so it’s asking the US government to give it 10 more months to come up with the capital. In a filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Dish argues that turmoil in global capital markets in the past few years have made Dish’s ability to buy the licenses more onerous than anticipated. Dish figures that 10 months is enough time to raise additional capital and obtain financing, in part because its just-announced 

AT&T, which was the second biggest spender in the Federal Communications Commission's C-band auction in 2021, is taking advantage of the satellite companies’ early clearing of the band to access its full C-band spectrum holdings. AT&T has been deploying a combination of C-band and 3.45 GHz across the country, with its 5G network mid-band network now covering more than 175 million people. AT&T’s nationwide 5G network, which includes low-band spectrum, covers about 290 million people. AT&T said it’s now doubling its available C-band spectrum for deployment.

The 5G for 12 GHz Coalition is urging the Federal Communications Commission to take action by December 31, 2023, to expand the 12.2 GHz band for terrestrial fixed use, giving entities like Dish Network the ability to use the band for fixed wireless access (FWA). The 12.2 GHz band is currently allocated to Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service (NGSO FSS) and fixed service.

Republic Wireless, once a pioneer in the “Wi-Fi first” movement, will stop operating as a stand-alone wireless brand. Dish acquired the business in 2021 and is moving all Republic customers over to Boost Infinite.

Representatives for T-Mobile and Ka’ ena Corporation met with Federal Communications Commission officials to argue why T-Mobile should be able to acquire Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile from Ka’ ena. According to a June 5 , 2023 filing with the FCC, T-Mobile presented a PowerPoint spelling out why the transaction will not harm the competition or consumers.

Ericsson and MediaTek say they set a new 5G upload record of 440 Mbps using uplink carrier aggregation (CA). That uplink speed was achieved in an Ericsson lab. The test was performed with Ericsson’s Radio Access Network (RAN) Compute Baseband 6648 and a mobile device using a MediaTek Dimensity 9200 flagship 5G smartphone chipset. Specifically, the CA combination involved here was 50 MHz FDD 2.1 GHz and 100 MHz of TDD C-band, or 3.7 GHz.

A who’s who of former Federal Communications Commission leaders sent a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate Commerce Committees urging Congress to restore the FCC’s spectrum auction authority as soon as practicable. “As former leaders of the Federal Communications Commission, we have worked together, on a bipartisan basis, to lay the foundation for America’s global wireless leadership. Although our policy priorities at times differed, we share an understanding that central to Americans’ wireless success is the FCC’s spectrum auction authority,” the letter states.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recently released a report that shows Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is working. However, CBRS opponents, led by CTIA, insist that CBRS remains an unproven experiment in spectrum sharing, with constraints like low power levels that make it impossible to provide broad coverage.

With T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G buildout at 275 million points of presence (POPs) and a year-end target of 300 million POPs, the question is: How easy or difficult is it to cover that last 25 million people? “It gets harder and harder. And as a rule of thumb, I would say that it’s about 3 times harder for every 10 million that you add.

AT&T's fixed wireless access (FWA) product is called Internet Air and sells for $55/month. AT&T is currently offering Internet Air to a limited set of copper-based customers in places where AT&T has wireless coverage and the capacity to deliver a “high-quality” customer experience. There will be places where a fixed wireless service will enable a better experience for customers than their existing copper-based service can provide, according to AT&T. Eligible customers will receive direct mail and email that instructs how to migrate to AT&T Internet Air from their current