Wireless Telecommunications

Despite the pandemic, the Federal Communications Commission advanced major spectrum policy and auctions in 2020. Yet despite continued successes of commercial spectrum auctions in which market actors pay for the right to use the public’s resources, policymakers persist in giving away valuable resources to Big Tech. 5G licensed mid-band spectrum is projected to deliver $191.8 billion to the US economy over 7 years. Wi-Fi revenues over unlicensed spectrum over 6 years are projected to bring $153.76 billion. When adjusted on an annual per MHz basis, 5G spectrum is $0.59 and Wi-Fi, $0.13.

Motorola is building a private LTE network for the nation’s third most populous county using CBRS spectrum. The network In Harris County (TX) currently supports 1,000 households and is expected to connect 6,000 by the end of 2021. Harris County Universal Services, which provides IT and communication services for the public sector, is using CARES Act funds to extend connectivity to Houston-area residents through the private wireless network. The county will give free CBRS modems to people whose homes are covered by the network.

Starry, a Boston-based fixed wireless broadband provider, is going public with FirstMark Horizon Acquisition Corp in a business combination valued at $1.66 billion. It marks a big turning point for Starry; the provider is using 802.11 technology to disrupt the home broadband space, going up against cable companies and increasingly, wireless carriers. The company charges $50 per month for internet service.

Chariton Valley Wireless, a provider in Northeastern Missouri, is selling its wireless assets to Verizon, AT&T and USCelluar. According to Federal Communications Commission filings, Verizon will receive 2 AWS-1 licenses and 2 cellular licenses. AT&T will receive 3 - 700 MHz band licenses. US Cellular will receive 2 PCS licenses.

AT&T saw notable drops in mobile traffic in major cities when Facebook and its popular Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger apps went offline for hours during a massive global outage. In two cities, mobile traffic declines hit double digits – 11 percent in New York City and 10.6 percent in Houston – on October 4 during the six-hour period “coinciding with a disruption across several top social media platforms,” AT&T said. Mobile traffic on AT&T’s network in Arkansas and in Miami/South Florida plunged 9.9 percent each, while Chicago was down 9.2 percent during that time.

A broadband expansion project in Fond du Lac County (WI) aims to increase access to high-speed internet for rural residents while also laying the foundation for further internet connectivity. The county will be the prime issuer of $80 million in bonds to support a multi-county broadband expansion project by Bug Tussel Wireless, LLC. The Fond du Lac County Board has approved a resolution to enter an agreement with Bug Tussel and subsequent intergovernmental agreements between the counties benefiting from the project.

The Federal Communications Commission's "rip and replace" program, formalized in June 2021 as the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program, is designed to reimburse small carriers so they can tear out network equipment from Chinese vendors like Huawei and ZTE that the US government has deemed insecure. The program's goal is to finance the replacement of that equipment with gear from "trusted" vendors.

AT&T will work with Frontier Communications to bring fiber-optic connectivity to large enterprise customers outside AT&T’s current footprint. The two companies signed multi-year strategic agreements that will also support the deployment of AT&T’s 5G mobility network. As the demand for edge computing and 5G networks grows, so too does the need for resilient fiber pathways for a connected society. Enterprises need more bandwidth to keep data moving fast.

T-Mobile is cutting the price of its new 5G wireless home broadband service by 17 percent, stepping up efforts to steal internet customers from cable and phone companies. The new price is $50 a month, a decrease of $10, T-Mobile said October 5. The six-month-old service is available to more than 30 million homes, but that’s just a fraction of the US total.

Convergence between wireline and wireless networks is one of those ideas that feels like it’s perpetually on the horizon. But a perfect storm of industry trends – virtualization, disaggregation, 5G, fiber, cloudification – has finally come together to bring the long-sought-after approach within reach. Dave Allan, distinguished engineer at Ericsson and leader of the Broadband Forum’s Wireless-Wireline Convergence Work Area, summed up why convergence is such a big deal and why operators continue to chase it.