Wireless Telecommunications

The Trump administration’s offensives aimed at frustrating the 5G ambitions of China and mobile-technology giant Huawei might end up impeding America’s wireless ambitions, too. Recent White House actions land as China and the US race to launch the superfast cellular networks, with Huawei and its Chinese customers targeting a nationwide 5G rollout in 2020. A US Commerce Department measure, designed to hinder Huawei from buying critical components, might make it harder for American and European telecom-equipment makers to buy certain supplies as well, Western industry executives said.

Plans to upgrade wireless service in some rural areas is being halted abruptly since President Donald Trump issued an executive order that banned the purchase of equipment from companies posing a national security threat. That includes gear from Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a major supplier of equipment to rural wireless companies.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has recommended the agency approve T-Mobile’s $26 billion acquisition of Sprint, following a set of new commitments from the companies. Now, all eyes now turn to the Department of Justice to approve or reject the deal to create the “New T-Mobile.” 

It may have begun as a trade war, but the US conflict with China is increasingly becoming a technology war. President Trump’s decision to confront Beijing over policies that he says discriminate against foreign companies and distort global markets has become a battle for control of advanced communications and computing technologies. That evolution is taking the transpacific conflict into sensitive realms of national security and human rights, making a quick settlement an ever more distant outcome.

The United States 5G Leadership Act of 2019 legislation would establish US policy for the commercial deployment and security of fifth generation (5G) networks by creating the Supply Chain Security Trust Fund grant program. This program would help US communications providers remove from their networks Chinese equipment determined to threaten national security. The bill:

Justice Department staff members who’ve have been reviewing the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint had recommended that the US government sue to block the $26 billion deal, fearing the combination of the country’s third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers could threaten competition. The recommendation came before the two companies offered new concessions meant to appease regulators, including pledges to divest certain lines of business and cap prices for consumers. Despite the recommendation, a decision to bring such a case has not been made.

Rep Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) led the introduction of a bipartisan bill to protect next-generation telecommunications systems and mobile infrastructure in the United States. Rep Spanberger introduced the legislation alongside Rep Susan W. Brooks (R-IN), Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ), Francis Rooney (R-FL), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

Qualcomm unlawfully suppressed competition in the market for cellphone chips and used its dominant position to exact excessive licensing fees, a federal judge ruled in a decision that could challenge the company’s business model and shake up the smartphone industry. US District Judge Lucy Koh sided sided with the Federal Trade Commission, which brought an antitrust lawsuit against Qualcomm in January 2017. Judge Koh found that Qualcomm violated antitrust law, charging unreasonably high royalties for its patents and eliminating rivals.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has now decided that a handful of promises, made just days ago by T-Mobile and Sprint, puts this $26 billion transaction in the public interest. But these promises are speculative, unsubstantiated, and entirely unenforceable.

Sens Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) reintroduced the bipartisan Rural Reasonable and Comparable Wireless Access Act to help close the rural-urban digital divide and expand access to broadband in rural parts of West Virginia, New Hampshire, and across the country. The Act directs the Federal Communications Commission to establish a national standard for determining whether mobile and broadband services in rural areas are “reasonably comparable” to service provided in urban areas.