Matt Kapko

New York’s Public Service Commission has approved T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint with some conditions related to jobs and benefits provided to employees in the fourth most populated state in the country. The state agency determined that the merger is “not expected to cause interruptions or changes in service for existing Sprint wireline customers.” Moreover, as a condition for approval, the commission is requiring the company to continue to operate its relay call center in Syracuse and honor existing contracts until they expire.

C Spire, the nation’s sixth-largest wireless operator, is partnering with Airspan Networks, Microsoft, Nokia and Siklu to improve and extend the availability of fixed and wireless broadband in rural areas. The consortium announced plans to develop new coordinated models with regional fixed and wireless broadband providers, utilities and other agencies to close the gap in affordability and access in rural communities. The rural broadband initiative is set to begin the week of Jan 28 with technical discussions at a workshop in New Orleans (LA).

California’s Public Advocates Office, a nonpartisan and publicly funded agency that advocates on behalf of California residents with respect to energy, water, and communications regulations, strongly recommended a denial of T-Mobile’s proposed merger with Sprint.

For most consumers and businesses, 5G is still an intangible technology that appears to be driven more by marketing than actual results, but Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr tried to synthesize the opportunity in remarks at the European 5G Conference in Brussels. Carr was unable to travel to the event due to the ongoing partial government shutdown, so he recorded a video to share his vision for 5G and the actions regulators need to take to make it a reality.

Sacramento (CA) has come to stand as an example of the complexities involved in actually getting 5G services turned on. Sacramento’s journey toward 5G started in 2016 with an agreement between the city and a company called XG Communities.  The agreement called for XG to identify and organize a database of city assets—namely, street light poles, conduit, fiber and utility circuitry—that could be made available to carriers that wanted to pay for the rights to install small cells on city property.

A growing number of US households are exclusively accessing the internet via smartphones, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. While much of the discussion about cord cutting in the US is focused on households that are canceling cable or satellite TV services, this latest finding indicates the trend is now expanding into broadband services.