Martha DeGrasse

Federal funds and municipal bond money have flowed to school districts during the past two years to help connect students to the internet during the global pandemic. Some of this funding has helped create private LTE networks using CBRS spectrum under General Authorized Access. One of these networks serves Texas’ Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD). The network was designed to favor capital investment rather than ongoing operating expenses, since a windfall of funding was available from a bond and from the government’s Emergency Connectivity Fund.

AT&T CEO John Stankey forecast a banner year for infrastructure investment in 2022 and told investors he expects the operator to complete planned asset sales despite protestations by some US politicians. Stankey predicted the wireless industry will invest heavily in infrastructure in 2022 due to the availability of C-Band spectrum and new air interfaces. “This is going to be a phenomenal year in terms of reinvestment back into infrastructure in the US on behalf of the industry in total”, Stankey projected.

Spectrum is the resource carriers spend billions to acquire and billions more to deploy, so clearly there is value in using it efficiently. Tech startup GenXComm recently raised a $20 million with the goal of hiring new talent to develop its private wireless business. Investors including Intel Capital, BMWi Ventures and Motive Communications are backing the company as it markets its solutions to carriers, with a particular focus on helping them deploy private networks. “We are able to do backhaul and access in the same frequency”, explained GenXComm co-founder and CTO Hardik Jain.

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.

Non-profit wireless internet service provider DigitalC is using Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) and leveraging federal funds and private donations to subsidize broadband service and infrastructure deployment to last-mile homes in Cleveland (OH).

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has been extremely popular with the telecom companies he’s regulated for the last four years, but one corner of the industry will not be sad to see the chairman step down. The carriers that provide mobile service to the nation’s neediest citizens say Pai is trampling them on his way out the door while pulling critical service away from those hit hardest by this year’s economic downturn. Lifeline providers say an FCC order that took effect December 1 will force them to stop offering free data service to qualified low-income customers.

It’s been just over a year since the Federal Communications Commission dropped the educational use requirement for the Educational Broadband Service (EBS) spectrum, saying most licensees weren’t deploying the spectrum for its intended use. Now, with thousands of students facing the possibility of another semester outside the classroom, schools that hold spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band are reconsidering its value.

Comcast says its broadband network has earned high marks for its performance so far during the Covid-19 pandemic, and now Wall Street analysts are projecting more broadband subscriber growth for the company. Comcast claims its network is delivering above-advertised speeds nationwide, based on the results of more than 700,000 daily diagnostic network speed tests. Upstream traffic is up 32% as more Americans work from home, and downstream traffic is up 11%.

Companies that deploy fiber broadband networks are seeing increased demand for their services. The pandemic is highlighting the need for faster uplink speeds, according to Adtran's Gary Bolton. “Video conferences are symmetric, and on a cable network you are lucky to have a [megabit] of upstream,” he said. “The need for fiber infrastructure is greater than ever.” Bolton thinks the current situation will have a lasting impact on demand for broadband. “When we get back to 'normal' it is not going to be the world we once knew,” Bolton said. “More people realize they need broadband. ....

AT&T and San Jose (CA) have added a public-private partnership to their existing small cell agreement. The new agreement calls for San Jose to trial AT&T's smart city solutions. AT&T's digital infrastructure, which the company has described as a "smartphone for cities," is connected hardware with integrated sensors that can be attached to lamp posts to capture information about the environment. AT&T said the solutions it plans to trial with San Jose may include LED smart lighting, public Wi-Fi, digital infrastructure and structure monitoring.