Joan Engebretson

AT&T plans to deploy fixed wireless technology to meet Connect America Fund broadband deployment requirements, said AT&T President of Technology Operations Bill Smith.

The company will use the technology in areas where it is “uneconomical to build wireline” said Smith of AT&T fixed wireless plans in a question and answer session at Pacific Crest Global Technology Leadership Forum. The AT&T fixed wireless deployments apparently will use licensed spectrum, as Smith noted that the company typically buys spectrum covering geographic areas that include rural areas and that in rural areas, the spectrum is “somewhat underutilized.” Smith expects the AT&T fixed wireless service to support speeds of 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. That’s the minimum speed that Connect America Fund dollars will support. There are “few applications that can’t be supported,” at those speeds, Smith said.

Although Verizon to date has declined to accept funding through the Connect America Fund (CAF) program to bring broadband to unserved parts of its local service territory, the company may be having a change of heart. Comments filed by Verizon with the Federal Communications Commission suggest the carrier may be interested in bidding in the CAF reverse auction, which will award funding for areas where an incumbent price cap carrier declined funding. Although the FCC is hoping to fund some CAF deployments at gigabit speeds, Verizon cites some sobering data suggesting that should be a relatively limited option. Verizon notes that as many as 750,000 locations could be eligible for the CAF reverse auction. Of those, about 450,000 are in high-cost areas of price cap territories where the incumbent declined funding. The other 300,000 are “extremely high cost” locations scattered across all price cap territories.

According to Verizon, the FCC cost model shows that subsidies of well over $600 million per year would be required to bring broadband to all 750,000 locations, but the budget for the CAF reverse auction is only $215 million annually. With this in mind, Verizon CAF auction ideas include prioritizing bids for baseline service above those for above-baseline and gigabit service in order to “maximize the number of homes and businesses that obtain at least the baseline level of broadband from the auction.” In some cases, high-latency options such as satellite broadband may be less costly to deliver than lower-latency terrestrial wired or wireless options. But Verizon stops short of asking the FCC to stretch funding by prioritizing high-latency services. Instead, the carrier argues that all terrestrial options should be prioritized over high-latency options. “End users in competitive bidding-supported areas should not be relegated to lesser services,” Verizon argues.

On the long-debated question of whether or not it’s OK for communications service providers to operate as “dumb pipes,” Verizon clearly believes the answer is “no.”

Verizon sees great value in the ability of its wireless network to gain knowledge about customers, including location-based information, and to use that information to customize advertising and content offerings, with customer consent. In the last two years or so the company has made a range of moves to support this strategy. Some industry observers see substantial challenges for Verizon as it pursues a mobile strategy, however. And Verizon’s mobile content strategy has drawn criticism from those who believe the company’s investment in company’s such as AOL and Yahoo detracts from its ability to invest in its network infrastructure, particularly on the landline side of its business. Those critics tend to believe that it’s fine for service providers to pursue a dumb pipe strategy – as long as they deliver the highest quality and highest capacity pipes possible. It could be years before we know whether Verizon has made the right choices on the dumb-versus- smart-pipe question.

Verizon’s announcement that the company has completed a specification for ultra-high-bandwidth 5G wireless is the latest example of the company’s increasingly wireless focus. The Verizon 5G spec was completed in advance of industry fifth-generation wireless standards efforts, raising the question of what is driving Verizon to push this technology so aggressively and so soon. It’s important to remember that in its initial incarnation, 5G will be a fixed wireless technology. And as Verizon’s announcement indicates, the company has been testing the technology for fixed deployments.

“Propagation and penetration testing across residential single and multi-dwelling units built in field locations has validated the feasibility of millimeter wave systems,” the company said. It would appear that Verizon sees 5G as the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) alternative it has been missing for boosting residential broadband bandwidth. In late May, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said that using 5G for fixed wireless may offer enough of a business case alone to justify the carrier’s investment in 5G and that any profits from 5G mobile would be “gravy.”In the announcement, Verizon notes that the Verizon 5G spec “provides guidelines to test and validate crucial 5G technical components” and that it “allows industry partners such as chipset vendors, network vendors and mobile operators to develop interoperable solutions and contribute to pre-standard testing and fabrication.”

Microsoft and Adaptrum have partnered with MyDigitalBridge Foundation to conduct a trial of a TV white spaces broadband network in Namibia. It is the world’s largest TVWS deployment measured by geography.

The network is intended as a blueprint for countrywide broadband Internet connectivity.

The Africa network covers more than 9400 square kilometers and is providing speeds between 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps over distances of 8 km to 12 km, the partners said. Twenty-eight schools now have Internet connectivity using the network.

The wireless price war continues. AT&T joined in on the fighting through its Cricket Wireless business, offering customers a $100 bill credit through October 18 for T-Mobile and Sprint customers who port a number to Cricket.

And now T-Mobile said it would quadruple the monthly data allotment for customers on the company’s Simple Starter plan for an additional five dollars a month. Customers who previously received 500 megabytes of LTE data will now get 2 gigabytes for the extra five dollars.

ViaSat announced it will begin offering what it calls “virtually unlimited” satellite broadband service. The service will be available immediately to new customers in Florida and will also be available in some other limited markets, but the company anticipates expanding service moving forward.

The “virtually unlimited” offering, which will carry the name “Freedom,” gives customers unlimited lower-speed bandwidth and at least 150 gigabytes of data for the higher-bandwidth services, which Farr said should be plenty for most customers. And even customers who exceed that level will not be throttled back immediately -- and possibly not at all.

Cincinnati Bell has joined the roster of network operators who have announced plans to offer broadband at speeds up to 1 Gbps. Service will be available beginning September 8. The gigabit service will be known as Fioptics Gigabit Internet. The existing fiber-to-the-home infrastructure in Cincinnati supports the company’s triple play of high-speed Internet, voice and video service.

With unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum becoming increasingly crowded, equipment manufacturers and service providers are pushing to make more spectrum available on an unlicensed basis -- and while substantial progress has been made on that front, more work remains, according to investor research firm Bernstein.

Associated partner Paul Margie at DC law firm Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis shed light on several open issues – including how much unlicensed spectrum is likely to be made available through the voluntary TV broadcast spectrum auction in the 600 MHz band, the three-tier plan that the FCC has proposed for unlicensed spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, and Globalstar’s proposal for a private Wi-Fi network in the 2.4 GHz band. As Margie explained, those are three of the four bands -- including the 5 GHz band -- where additional spectrum could be made available to support Wi-Fi or similar offerings.

An announcement from ADTRAN touts the efforts of C Spire to create a new “Silicon South” economy in Mississippi through gigabit connectivity. The release also notes that ADTRAN is supplying fiber-to-the-home equipment to C Spire to support its gigabit deployment.