Wireless Internet

“Competition is critical to a strong economy—among the four largest cell phone carriers, that competition has led to lower prices, better service, and more innovation. That’s why, when this merger was first reported, I raised serious antitrust concerns about combining two of the four remaining nationwide wireless carriers, and I have since urged the Justice Department to reject the deal as anticompetitive," said Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

The Department of Justice announced that it and the Attorneys General for five states reached a settlement with T-Mobile and Sprint regarding their proposed merger. The settlement requires a substantial divestiture package in order to enable a viable facilities-based competitor to enter the market. Further, the settlement will facilitate the expeditious deployment of multiple high-quality 5G networks for the benefit of American consumers and entrepreneurs.

On June 12, 2019, all five commissioners from the Federal Communications Commission testified at an oversight hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee. Recently, FCC Chairman Pai followed up on some questions raised during the hearing. His responses to written questions touch on the following topics:

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, International Bureau, Office of Engineering and Technology, and Office of Economics and Analytics invite interested parties to supplement the record to address issues raised by commenters in response to the FCC's July 2018 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in GN Docket No. 18-122. The FCC sought comment on several approaches, including auction-based approaches, for making some or all of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band (C-Band) available for terrestrial, flexible use.

Microsoft, Google and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) are urging the Federal Communications Commission to allow co-channel spectrum sharing in the C-band. The proposal would allow fixed wireless operators to use the same spectrum band as incumbent users, who are comprised largely of satellite operators that use the spectrum for their earth stations. The FCC is currently pondering how it might best make a portion of the C-band, comprised of spectrum between 3700 and 4200 MHz, available for wireless services.

Europe is host to a fiercely competitive environment of stakeholders all wanting to prove they can deploy 5G first. Obstacles such as spectrum auctions in some countries remain, but the region's networks have shown that when necessary, they can accelerate their own plans to catch up and keep pace with industry leaders around the world. One trend so far among European networks is the bundling of unlimited data with extra products or services, such as home broadband, or unlimited data reserved specifically for gaming or video streaming.

The Federal Communications Commission held its monthly open meeting on July 10. We gave a preview of the meeting a few weeks back. There were eight items in total in the action-packed agenda, but we’re going to unpack a few of the actions that are especially relevant to open, affordable, high-capacity broadband in the U.S. 

The Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate program is a vital source of support for connectivity to—and within—schools and libraries. In particular, the E-Rate program provides funding for internal connections, which are primarily used for Wi-Fi, a technology that has enabled schools and libraries to transition from computer labs to one-to-one digital learning. We propose to make permanent the approach adopted by the FCC in 2014 to fund these internal connections.

According to the Senate Joint Economic Committee, there are 12 million kids all across the country who lack the internet access they now need for nightly schoolwork.  According to the Associated Press, nearly one in five students nationwide falls into the Homework Gap. We are a nation that finds problems and fixes them. Here are my ideas. First, we need to gather data locally and raise awareness. I think every city and town can build their own local assessments to understand what is behind their Homework Gap.