Wireless Internet

Who would Americans trust to best understand the broadband-related interests of the residents of a city: its mayor, or the head of the Federal Communications Commission? About twice as many Americans have a positive view of their local government than they do the federal government. Americans would be right in trusting mayors more than federal officials.

The US needs a positive alternative to the Chinese 5G model, and it needs to put it forward right now, before or during Barcelona. If we don’t, this year’s Mobile World Congress risks turning into a victory lap for Huawei and Beijing. The solution is not, as some have put it, to “become like China to beat China.” China is playing to its own strengths—state-directed investment and financing, lack of checks and balances internally, and a unified decision-making structure—to support its goal of wireless domination.

AT&T plans to stop providing service to devices that use third-generation wireless technology in early 2022 as it makes room for more powerful standards. The decision follows rival Verizon Communications' warning that it will disconnect old 3G cellphones at the end of 2019. The companies are driven by necessity. Cellphone users with unlimited data plans stream more video on the go, testing the limits of what service providers can handle. Getting customers off 3G allows carriers to free up wireless frequencies for 4G signals over broader swaths of the radio spectrum.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the digital divide is the “homework gap.” The term – first coined by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel – describes the situation faced by the estimated 12 million students that cannot complete their school assignments because they have no broadband access at home. As she notes, roughly 7 in 10 teachers assign homework that requires a broadband connection, which means that many students, especially in low-income communities, are missing out on the educational opportunities afforded to their connected peers.

Members of Congress are fed up with the state of cellphone coverage in the United States and they weren’t afraid to lodge their complaints personally — with the leaders of some of the country’s biggest wireless networks. As Sprint and T-Mobile went to Capitol Hill to defend their $26 billion proposed merger, lawmakers buttonholed T-Mobile’s chief executive, John Legere, and Sprint’s executive chairman, Marcelo Claure, on the frustrating inability to get a cell signal in many parts of the country, particularly in rural areas.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and eight of his colleagues sent letters to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim asking that they strike down a proposed merger deal between T-Mobile and Sprint. “Our enforcement officials are the last line of defense preventing reconsolidation of our telecommunications markets at the expense of American consumers,” the senators wrote.

In January 2018, T-Mobile acquired Iowa Wireless Services (iWireless), a regional carrier that provided postpaid and prepaid wireless service to approximately 75,000 customers in Iowa, western Illinois, and eastern Nebraska. Prior to the acquisition, iWireless had one of the largest retail footprints of any wireless carrier in Iowa, with 129 corporate and authorized dealer locations. iWireless was notable for its rural presence and for its affordable and flexible prepaid plans.

Since 1998, the E-Rate program (more formally known as the schools and libraries universal support mechanism) has provided support for connectivity to and within schools and libraries.