Wireless Internet

Across Alaska, on fishing boats and cabin roofs and conex containers, flat white antennas are popping up like high-tech mushrooms. They’re Starlink terminals, delivering new technology that in just a few months has started radically transforming internet connectivity in some of the most remote parts of the state. The company, a subsidiary of SpaceX, started sending thousands of low-orbit satellites into space in 2019, shifting the paradigm on internet infrastructure around the globe.

Elon Musk, became involved in the war in Ukraine soon after Russia invaded, in February 2022. Along with conventional assaults, the Kremlin was conducting cyberattacks against Ukraine’s digital infrastructure. Ukrainian officials and a loose coalition of expatriates in the tech sector, brainstorming in group chats on WhatsApp and Signal, found a potential solution: SpaceX, which manufactures a line of mobile Internet terminals called Starlink. The tripod-mounted dishes, each about the size of a computer display connect with a network of satellites.

In July 2023, wireless and broadband provider Vistabeam acquired Airbits, which served the towns of Estes Park and Pole Hill, which are in Colorado’s Front Range area. Vistabeam also established a digital empowerment Center in Yuma, Colorado. The move into Colorado’s Front Range area is a sign that fixed wireless access (FWA) technology is maturing. The acquisition includes 25 towers. Vistabeam’s footprint is 40,000 square miles and covers more than 100 towns in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming.

Having worked for Senator Inouye, I experienced firsthand the kindness and collective spirit of Aloha that guides the people who call Hawai’i home. The agency has staff on the ground in Maui assessing the impact on communications services and infrastructure to help local, state, and federal authorities to identify how to best support restoration and emergency response.

Network restoration crews employed by wireless operators are accustomed to responding to emergencies caused by hurricanes, but the wildfires that devastated western Maui (HI) are a completely different animal. “We’re working around the clock.

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 

In coordination with the Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commission, The National Institute of Standards and Technology has completed the Congressionally directed (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021) studies on the following technology areas that are expected to be critical to the global competitiveness, economic growth, and national security of the United States in the coming decade: 

Years after a lawsuit alleged Apple was adding software that slowed down older iPhones, the tech giant has agreed to pay a settlement worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Cotchett, Pitre & McCarty, one of the firms representing Apple customers in the suit, announced Aug. 9, 2023, that the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals dismissed two appeals from people challenging the settlement.

The Federal Communications Commission has lost—albeit hopefully temporarily—its authority to conduct spectrum auctions. But luckily for consumers and industry, the agency still has tools to make desperately needed mid-band spectrum immediately available for terrestrial broadband uses. Thanks to changes in technology, the landscape around the lower 12 GHz band (12.2-12.7 MHz) has evolved significantly over the last several years. At the same time, 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) has taken the connectivity world by storm.

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.