Monica Alleven

When AT&T first floated a proposal to move Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) from 3.5 GHz down to the lower 3 GHz band, it sounded like a joke to some of the folks who work with CBRS on a daily basis. Such a move would be highly disruptive to the CBRS industry, which includes users as diverse as airports running private networks, farmers using precision agriculture and broadband providers serving rural areas.

If T-Mobile is contemplating a bigger footprint in fiber, it’s not showing its cards, which would be dumb, right? Instead, it’s publicly digging in its heels right where it’s at, which, by the way, isn’t a bad place. At over $284 billion, its market cap recently set a record as the highest ever for a U.S. service provider, far exceeding AT&T and Verizon’s current valuations. It remains a darling of Wall Street.

Given the slowdown in spending on the part of big wireless carriers as the 5G era shifts into low gear, why does UScellular think it can make a viable business selling space on its towers? After all, a booming tower business implies carriers will spend more on their networks, not less.

Hurricane Helene caused devastating damage smack dab where Carolina West Wireless offers wireless services in western North Carolina. At the peak of the storm’s damage, nearly 70 percent of its network was down. Nearly a month later, only a few sites remain out of service, including a site in the mountain community of Chimney Rock, which was nearly wiped off the map.

Analysts expect the U.S.

For competitive reasons, wireless carriers typically don’t reveal too many specifics about their network expansion and upgrade plans. So when T-Mobile executives were asked to elaborate on their plans for mid-band 5G upgrades, they steered the conversation to the tools they use to determine how they’re going to expand coverage – as opposed to detailing exactly where and when they will deploy. Their approach – and brace yourself, this is going to be a real shocker – is based on artificial intelligence (AI).

AT&T and the FirstNet Authority are sitting pretty after the FCC voted 4-0 to hand over a chunk of the 4.9 GHz band for the operation of FirstNet’s nationwide public safety network. The 50 megahertz of spectrum in question is reportedly worth up to $14 billion. But their giddiness might not last too long if the Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) has anything to do with it. CERCI is already threatening to challenge the FCC’s decision in court.

And just like that, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted Dish parent company EchoStar’s request for more time to meet 5G buildout requirements in exchange for accelerated deployments in certain markets and other commitments. The approval appears to have come in near record time as the FCC typically isn’t known for quick decision-making, to put it mildly.

Critics may have proclaimed 5G a flop, but T-Mobile certainly doesn't see it that way. The operator's President of Technology Ulf Ewaldsson said that the 5G story isn’t so bad after all. Ewaldsson is one of the relatively rare individuals with a good 5G story to tell. He recounted how 10 years ago, T-Mobile was dead last in the race for network superiority and its network was full of coverage holes. T-Mobile had a 3G network when everybody else had moved onto 4G LTE. Then the wave hit. “5G for us became a wave that we could ride all the way out,” he said.

At the beginning of 2024, Verizon executives were skeptical about the direct-to-device (D2D) market, uninterested in using their spectrum for a satellite-based service. Now, Verizon is bragging about how it will be the first mobile carrier to commercially launch smartphone connectivity on Skylo’s non-terrestrial satellite network and be the first mobile carrier to launch a commercial D2D service offering. Not only that, but it’s made a $100 million investment in AST SpaceMobile, which will use 85