Wireless Telecommunications

Microsoft wants to be the global wide area network (WAN) for 5G. Victor Bahl, chief technology officer of Azure for Operators, noted that while 5G offers big boosts in speed, those speeds get watered down because “every network operator ultimately depends on the internet at some point.” Bahl said ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) within the 5G New Radio standard is nice; its delay specification can be anywhere from one to four msec on-air latency.

AT&T is preparing to upgrade customers in three Louisiana towns to GPON fiber after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on its copper assets. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T said Hurricane Ida “significantly damaged” its copper cables and terminals in Baton Rouge, Denham Springs and Zachary (LA) when it made landfall in late August 2021.

The Federal Communications Commission, backed by the Department of Justice, told the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that it was reasonable for the FCC to reclaim a swath of 5.9 GHz licensed vehicular communications spectrum for unlicensed WiFi and it had the authority to do so.

According to advocates of the Convergence Apocalypse theory, telecommunications companies’ increasingly ambitious fiber deployments pose a big threat to major cable companies at the same time that cable companies’ increasing success in offering mobile service poses a big threat to the major telcos. Both threats are real, researchers argue, but they don’t see the threats as symmetrical. Instead, they see cable companies having the advantage. MoffettNathanson offers several data points to illustrate the threat that telco fiber deployments pose to cable companies.

US carriers have further expanded their 5G coverage using their low band 5G networks. However, the largest and most notable improvement was driven by the expansion of mid-band 5G. AT&T and Verizon are about to receive the first tranche of C-band spectrum (3.7–3.98 GHz) — which will be released in December 2021, and have made plans already to deploy their own mid-band 5G and follow the path T-Mobile pioneered with the deployment of its 2.5 GHz spectrum. 

We need to use this moment to build a foundation for new growth and new opportunity in the post-pandemic world. For this foundation, I believe we need to do two things: reinvigorate the momentum toward 5G and pave the way for 6G and beyond. At the FCC, we are focusing on five principles for delivering 5G that is fast, secure, resilient, and, most importantly, available everywhere in the country:

Nokia is throwing its weight behind an initiative it calls Broadband Zero, aiming to help connect as many people as possible with a minimal impact on the environment. Sandy Motley, President of Fixed Networks at Nokia, said the company’s Broadband Zero campaign is based on four key pillars: zero left behind, zero limits, zero touch and zero waste. She explained the first pillar is focused on applying fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) technologies to connect every home and building as quickly as possible.

Once a glimmer in the eyes of executives from Shenzhen to Silicon Valley, 5G now dominates a broad swath of the global supply chain—and the competition to control different parts of it is heating up. Equipment makers, smartphone sellers and chip designers are all vying for control of machines and services that use the fifth-generation wireless standard, which is becoming easier to find across parts of Asia, Europe and North America.

Major US wireless carriers have long touted the benefits of fifth-generation wireless networks, claiming faster speeds and reduced latency. But less attention has been paid to the environmental costs. While 5G networks can be more energy efficient at transferring data—up to 90% more efficient per unit of data transferred than their 4G predecessors, a study by STL Partners and Vertiv found—5G can also sap more energy over its life cycle because it will drive the increased use of data centers and 5G-enabled technologies and products.

These days, everything lives in the cloud. Increasingly, mobile networks are doing their work there, too. That is especially true for wireless networks being built by upstart operators such as Dish Network and Rakuten Group that are trying to get a cost edge over bigger, more established rivals. The expense of installing and maintaining customized network equipment—made by suppliers such as Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei—helps explain why the bill for an unlimited monthly cellular data plan can top $70.