Wireless Telecommunications

Understanding the Trend to Mobile-Only Connections for Internet Access: A Decomposition Analysis

Household internet access via a mobile-only connection increased from 8.86% in 2011 to 20.00% in 2015. This paper uses national data to model the propensity of a mobile-only connection via logistic regressions. An inter-temporal non-linear Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition is then used to determine the driving factors behind this trend. The results show that while changing characteristics over time account for less than 1% of the trend, behavioral relationships changed dramatically as specific groups were much more likely to be adopters of mobile-only in 2015. The primary behavioral relationships leading to increased mobile-only connections are those associated with age (50.55%), race/ethnic background (4.75%), and non-metro status (1.88%). The finding that these demographic groups are becoming more willing to adopt the internet via the mobile-only connection can have important implications for future broadband policy.

US Rural Mobile Broadband Speeds are 20.9% Slower Than Urban

T-Moble and Verizon Wireless were the two big winners of the 2017 U.S. Market Report by Ookla, which measures broadband performance for wireless networks. Overall, Ookla’s data found that U.S. mobile broadband download speeds have increased by 19% during the past year to reach 22.69 Mbps. Rural mobile broadband speeds lag the national average. The speed scores assess performance for both upload and download speeds. Average upload speeds increased slightly to 8.51 Mbps, a 4% improvement.

Percentage improvements in both download and upload speeds were smaller than in previous years. U.S. global rankings slipped as a result, with the U.S. now ranked 44th globally, down from 42nd for Q1-Q2 2017. Ookla found an average rural mobile broadband speeds of 17.93 Mbps, which is 20.9% slower than the national average. This translates into an ASR of 69.6% in rural service areas (RSAs) compared to a national ASR average of 74.9%. Metropolitan service areas had an ASR of 76.2%.

Modernization Month at the FCC

Since becoming Chairman, I have consistently emphasized the need for the Commission’s regulations to match realities of the current marketplace. Our rules must reflect today’s technological and economic conditions, not those of yesterday. And at this month’s open meeting, we will advance this objective by focusing on whether to update or scrap outdated rules. That’s why we’re dubbing September .

Remarks of FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly at Latin America Spectrum Management Conference

By most accounts, the U.S. broadcast incentive auction was a success. Does that mean it was perfect? No. This was a very complex undertaking. Were lessons learned? Absolutely, and I will discuss that a bit later. But all things considered, the mechanisms designed and put in place worked relatively well. Through the incentive auction, the U.S., on a completely voluntary basis, reallocated broadcast spectrum to mobile use, which will now be used by private commercial providers to offer 4G and 5G broadband networks. In fact, one U.S. winning bidder has already announced that it will initiate 5G in 600 MHz and has already turned on its first 600 MHz LTE system.

How to Free Up Government Held Spectrum in the Face of Increasing Budgetary Pressure

Federal agencies, especially the Department of Defense (DoD), don’t face normal marketplace pressures to economize their use of spectrum. While the potential societal gains of reallocating federal spectrum for commercial use are likely in the hundreds of billions of dollars, attempts at addressing this problem have met many roadblocks. Today, I’m offering another idea for consideration: the option of allowing agencies to free up some of their spectrum holdings in exchange for budgetary relief. While I still believe the imposition of Agency Spectrum Fees is the best course of action, this new proposal represents a compromise between differing carrot and stick approaches. And it is particularly timely today, as many of these federal agencies face increasing budgetary pressure. I suggest that federal agencies be permitted to use their spectrum holdings to offset the annual budgetary caps and sub caps. This would mean that, in achieving its respective budget limits, a federal agency could substitute the market value – as determined by an average of Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget estimates – of their surrendered spectrum to offset other cuts or even expand its spending options. It amounts to a spectrum-for-cash swap.

Public policy will lay the foundation for 5G and beyond

Public policy has probably never been more important for the US wireless industry as it will be over the next several years. And the schedule for Mobile World Congress Americas underscores that. Legislative and regulatory issues will play a major role at the trade show, starting with the first keynote Sept 12 featuring Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and CTIA CEO Margaret Attwell Baker. Other discussions include a panel analyzing the FCC’s incentive auction of 600 MHz spectrum, a look at unmanned aerial services hosted by CTIA Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Jackie McCarthy and a round table examining how the coming transition to 5G is spurring new efforts to streamline siting processes. And that’s just day one.

Remarks of FCC Commissioner O'Rielly Before 7th Congreso Internacional de Espectro, Bogota, Columbia

As far as the US perspective, our priorities generally seek to create a regulatory environment that provides our telecommunications industries the opportunity to innovate, obtain investment and ensure continued growth for years to come. We also seek to promote the interests of our citizens, especially those who are unserved and in need of modern and robust connectivity in order to participate in the new digital economy.

Harvey Hurricane shows it is time for FCC to improve emergency alerts

[Commentary] It’s time to stop the regulatory foot-dragging and require the mobile phone industry to use its technology’s capabilities to deliver safety alerts with the same accuracy that delivers a taxi and the same functionality that delivers video. Immediately after the installation of the Trump Federal Communications Commission, the mobile carriers filed a petition to stop the implementation of the earlier decision on Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) improvements that were strongly advocated by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children as well as public safety managers across the country. The Trump FCC magnified the failure of the current system by not acting on the WEA improvements proposed last September. The new FCC majority even removed wireless alerts form the charter of the public safety and industry working group that made the original recommendations.

If the Obama FCC regulations and recommendations were in effect, geo-targeting could deliver the precise message to specific audiences; those messages could contain links to maps and other important information; and the ability to link with users would allow the collection of information from victims, providing a rapid triage among survivors and targeting the delivery of rescue and other services. Instead, in Houston, victims overloaded the 911 system and public safety officials had to resort to social media. The FCC must learn from what happened in Hurricane Harvey.

[Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow with the Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation, and former Chairman to the FCC.]

Delaware becomes latest state to streamline rules for small cell deployments

Delaware became the latest state to pass legislation aimed at streamlining policies for the siting and deployment of small cells. And unlike some other states, Delaware’s effort apparently didn’t face much vocal opposition.

As expected, Gov John Carney (D-DE) signed House Bill 189—dubbed the Advanced Wireless Infrastructure Investment Act—which enables carriers and their partners to apply to place small cells on public rights-of-way directly through the state’s department of transportation. The bill passed the Delaware General Assembly in July unanimously, according to The Coastal Point, a local media outlet. Naturally, the wireless industry was quick to praise the move.

Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force Announces Webinar to Discuss Proposals put Forth in the Connect America Fund Phase II Auction Comment Public Notice

On August 4, 2017, the Commission released the Connect America Fund Phase II (CAF II) Auction Comment Public Notice, seeking comment on detailed proposals for conducting the Phase II reverse auction designated as Auction 903. While many of the pre-auction and bidding procedures and processes proposed for this auction are similar to those used in other Commission auctions, the proposals include some new procedures and processes. To facilitate public input on the proposals, the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force announces that the Wireless Telecommunications and Wireline Competition Bureaus will host a webinar about the proposed auction process on September 11, 2017, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET.

House Communications Subcommittee Schedules Repack Hearing for Sept 7

The House Commerce Committee has switched gears and will hold a Sept. 7 hearing on the post-incentive auction repack in its Communications Subcommittee. The committee had planned to hold a high-profile hearing on network neutrality on that date, but sources say that has been indefinitely postponed. Now, the Communications subcommittee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. titled “The Broadcast Incentive Auction: Update on Repacking Opportunities and Challenges.” No witnesses had been set at press time. The repack will be getting in gear this fall, with almost a thousand TV stations having to move to make room for wireless operators in the swaths of broadcast spectrum purchased in the spectrum auction.

DOJ Implores FCC to Combat Prison Cellphone Problem

The US Department of Justice is pressing federal regulators to come up with a way of keeping inmates from using cellphones in the nation's prisons. In a letter, Assistant Attorney General Beth Williams told the Federal Communications Commission that addressing the security threat posed by contraband cellphones "should be a chief priority" of both the FCC and Justice, which oversees the federal Bureau of Prisons.

The letter follows an appeal from South Carolina's prisons director to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June, beseeching the top prosecutor for help pursuing FCC permission to jam cell signals of the phones, which are thrown over fences, smuggled by errant employees, even delivered by drone. A decades-old law says federal officials can grant permission to jam the public airwaves only to federal agencies, not state or local ones. Telecommunications companies are opposed, saying jamming cell signals could set a bad precedent and interfere with legal cell users nearby.

Smartphones help blacks, Hispanics bridge some – but not all – digital gaps with whites

Blacks and Hispanics remain less likely than whites to own a traditional computer or have high-speed internet at home, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2016. But mobile devices are playing important roles in helping to bridge these differences.

Roughly eight-in-ten whites (83%) report owning a desktop or laptop computer, compared with 66% of blacks and 60% of Hispanics. There are also substantial racial or ethnic differences in broadband adoption, with whites more likely than either blacks or Hispanics to report having a broadband connection at home. (There were not enough Asian respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis.) But despite these inequalities, blacks and Hispanics have mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers in shares similar to whites. There are differences between Hispanics born inside and outside the U.S.: 88% of native-born Hispanics own a smartphone, compared with 62% of Hispanics born abroad. About three-quarters of whites and blacks own a smartphone. Mobile devices play an outsize role for blacks and Hispanics when it comes to their online access options. About two-in-ten Hispanics (22%) and 15% of blacks are “smartphone only” internet users – meaning they lack traditional home broadband service but do own a smartphone. By comparison, 9% of whites fall into this category. In addition, blacks and Hispanics are also more likely than whites to rely on their smartphones for a number of activities, such as looking up health information or looking for work.

Remarks of Chairman Pai Senior Counsel Nicholas Degani at University of Mississippi Tech Summit

What I want to talk about today: the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to harness the power of communications technology to improve the lives of the American people and boost economic growth and US competitiveness. I’d like to focus on three specific priorities. Think of them as the three "I's": Inclusion, Investment, Innovation.

Public Knowledge Responds to D.C. Circuit SNR Wireless v. FCC Decision

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit remanded the SNR Wireless v. Federal Communications Commission case to the FCC. Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge Harold Feld said, “We’re extremely pleased that the D.C. Circuit agreed with our analysis that although the FCC had the authority to deny the small business credit, the agency should have given DISH Network, SNR Wireless and Northstar a chance to remedy the problem. As we noted in our amicus brief, the small business credit put licenses in the hands of new competitors and constituted the single largest win of FCC licenses by minority-owned businesses like SNR Wireless and Northstar."

Harvey Shows Progress on Emergency Communications Since Katrina

While connectivity was almost completely lost in Rockport (TX) which was hit hardest by the storm, the Federal Communications Commission says just 4 percent of the 7,804 cell sites in Harvey’s path were wiped out, affecting 148,565 people. By contrast, more than 1,000 cell sites were knocked out during Katrina, preventing millions of calls from going through, according to a post-Katrina FCC report. Now, Texas’s 9-1-1 system has been overloaded with calls, but “those calls are going through,” says Adm. Jamie Barnett, former chief of public safety and homeland security at the FCC. “By and large we’re hearing that the cellular networks stood up. That means there’s been some learning.”

USTelecom’s Deep Dive on FCC Broadband Data: 90% Can Get 25 Mbps, 10% Can Get a Gigabit

Ninety percent of US housing units had fixed wireless or landline broadband service at speeds of 25 Mbps downstream/ 3 Mbps upstream available to them as of mid-2016, according to an analysis of Federal Communications Commission broadband data conducted by USTelecom and CensusNBM. Ten percent of housing units could get service at downstream speeds of 1 Gbps (and any upstream speed), USTelecom/ CensusNBM said. If fixed wireless is not included in the analysis, both numbers drop by one percentage point.

The numbers also vary when urban and rural areas are broken apart. Just 64% of people in rural areas can get 25/3 Mbps fixed wireless or wired service, while 97% of people in non-rural areas can get service at those speeds, according to the report, titled “U.S. Broadband Availability Mid-2016.”

FCC Seeks Comment on Process for Relicensing 700 MHz Spectrum in Unserved Areas

In the 2007 700 MHz Second Report and Order, the Commission adopted rules for relicensing of 700 MHz Lower A, B, and E Block, and Upper C Block spectrum that is returned to the Commission’s inventory as a result of licensees’ failure to meet applicable construction requirements. The Commission set forth the overall rules and policies for the relicensing process and delegated authority to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (Bureau) to implement those rules and policies. To the extent the 700 MHz Second Report and Order and other Commission rules set forth elements of the relicensing process, we cite to those rules, and, by this Public Notice, otherwise seek comment on the Bureau’s proposed approach to the remaining elements of the process, including the respective costs and benefits of the various proposals.

Cell Networks Suffer Outages in Harvey’s Wake

Wireless networks along the Texas coast suffered outages as a result of Hurricane Harvey, federal regulators said, leaving customers in some counties with limited or no cellphone service. Rockport (TX) near where the hurricane made landfall, was the hardest hit, according to the Federal Communications Commission. About 95% of cell sites there aren’t working, the agency said Aug 27, meaning cellphone users relying on the sites can’t send or receive phone calls or data. Of the 7,804 cell sites across the region, 320 are out of service, or about 4%. At least 148,565 people in the path of the hurricane were without cable or wireline service on Aug 27, the FCC said.

NAB, tech industry throw down over TV white spaces

The TV white spaces (TVWS) debate is cranking back up again thanks to a proposal that recommends that the Federal Communications Commision set aside three 6 MHz-wide TVWS channels for unlicensed use in every market across the country. The economic argument for broadband connectivity is undisputed and obvious: Without broadband connectivity, businesses can’t compete, and it’s more difficult for consumers to access critical educational, healthcare and governmental services. Today, approximately 34 million Americans currently lack basic broadband access, according to the FCC—and the majority of them, about 24 million, live in rural areas that simply do not have infrastructure in place to enable it.

To address the gap, strategies for making inexpensive unlicensed spectrum available to ISPs have been a cornerstone of the FCC’s plan to bridge the digital divide. The FCC previously ruled that the 600 MHz duplex gap between 652-663 MHz and Channel 37 would be not be sold to wireless carriers and would be available on an unlicensed basis, once the recent TV spectrum incentive auction was over—given that that broadcasters would be vacating that real estate. The FCC also has an unfinalized notice of proposed rulemaking that would reserve an additional 6 MHz channel in each broadcast market for unlicensed use, at 54-608 MHz. It’s the future of this last band that’s at stake. A bipartisan coalition of 43 Congressional representatives asked the FCC earlier this summer to reserve at least three TV white space channels in the 600 MHz band to support rural broadband deployments—a plan first proposed by Microsoft.

Before Hurricane Harvey, wireless carriers lobbied against upgrades to a national emergency alert system

For years, the Federal Communications Commission has endeavored to upgrade the sort of short text-based messages — often accompanied by a loud alarm — that authorities have used since 2012 to warn Americans about rising floods, abducted children and violent criminals at large. But efforts to bring those alerts into the digital age — requiring, for example, that they include multimedia and foreign-language support — have been met with skepticism or opposition from the likes of AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile, and even some device makers, too. Carriers have argued that some of those changes could prove technically difficult or costly to implement, while congesting their networks — and in recent months, they’ve encouraged the FCC to slow down its work. Tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, meanwhile, also have lobbied the agency against some proposed rules that might put more burden on them for delivering emergency alerts to smartphones. It all amounts to a great deal of well-lawyered bickering in Washington (DC) and it stands in stark contrast to the dire Category 4 megastorm that’s poised to cause immense rainfall, flooding and damage in Texas.

FCC Releases Data on Mobile Deployment as of June 30, 2016 and December 31, 2016 Collected through FCC Form 477

The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (Bureau) today released data from two separate data collections representing mobile voice and broadband deployment as of June 30, 2016, and December 31, 2016. These deployment data were collected through FCC Form 477.

1 million people pay nothing for cellphone service, so how does FreedomPop make money?

There are times when FreedomPop founder Stephen Stokols would get better coverage or service using a competing cellular carrier. Like when he got booted from his own provider after getting tripped up by confusing settings. But Stokols — along with his 2 million customers — has been willing to suffer occasional headaches in exchange for an unbeatable deal. Half the people using FreedomPop pay nothing for cellphone service, including mobile Internet access. There are limits on monthly usage (500 megabytes in the U.S.) and caps on calling and texting (three hours and 500 messages). Finding a shop, reaching a customer service agent or buying a phone from FreedomPop can be complicated. And users need a credit card.

Stokols contends, though, that many should find the trade-offs attractive because he pegs median mobile data usage in the U.S. at about 700 megabytes per month. FreedomPop can afford to slash prices thanks to its departures from industry conventions, including accepting lower profit margins. FreedomPop’s investors say that the company is special because its marketing costs, about $10 per customer, are lower than anyone else’s. Free offers tend to get noticed with little spending on advertising. That lets FreedomPop charge customers less.

Small Business Benefits of Rural Broadband are Plentiful

There are many small business benefits of rural broadband, argues ACT – The App Association in a well-researched blog post that cites numerous real-world examples of those benefits. ACT, an association of small technology firms, wrote the blog post to advocate for TV white spaces (TVWS) broadband, but the benefits cited would apply to other high-speed broadband technologies as well. The business benefits of rural broadband that ACT references include:
Small and medium businesses that access global markets over the internet have a survival rate of 54%, which is 30% higher than for SMBs that are not internet-connected, according to the World Economic Forum.
30% of companies that sell goods online through Etsy are based in rural areas – and considering that $2.84 billion in goods were sold through Etsy last year, those rural retailers apparently are generating considerable revenues online. Etsy sellers generally are small businesses, which the company refers to as entrepreneurs and “internet-enabled microbusinesses.”
Small businesses create roughly two thirds of jobs in rural America, according to the U.S. House of Representatives small business website, highlighting the important economic benefits those businesses could generate, provided that they have high-speed broadband available to them.