Sue Marek

Affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is considered a necessity in the U.S.

With the future of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) looking grimmer every day, wireless operators and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are preparing for its demise and weighing their alternatives. The ACP is expected to run out of money by mid-May, leaving millions of Americans without discounted internet services.

If Congress doesn’t act soon, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is expected to run out of money by the end of April, leaving millions of Americans without discounted internet services.

Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez, who joined the agency in September 2023, said that her top priorities for the FCC include setting the stage for vibrant competition and promoting connectivity for every consumer. Key to that connectivity is making spectrum available, which the Commissioner said is an area of top importance.

Dish Wireless collaborated with Qualcomm Technologies and Samsung to successfully test simultaneous 5G 2x uplink and 4x downlink carrier aggregation (CA) using Frequency-Division Duplexing (FDD) spectrum across FDD bands n71, n70 and n66. The result, according to Dish, is that it was able to achieve 200 Mbps peak uplink speeds with just 35 MHz of 5G spectrum and 1.3 Gbps peak downlink speeds with just 75 MHz of spectrum.

Despite the cable mobile virtual network operators' (MVNO's) success with bundled offerings and heavily discounted wireless service plans, don’t expect Verizon to follow suit. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg dismissed the cable MVNO's strategy of offering free or discounted wireless service plans when bundled with broadband. “Lowballing and discounting won’t help us,” he said, adding that the company recently ended its $25/month discounted pricing for its 5G Home fixed wireless access offering.

Mobile operators are spending less on their 5G buildouts, but that doesn’t mean that the 5G deployment phase is over. Executives at the big-three tower companies —American Tower, Crown Castle, and SBA Communications — said that the tower leasing business is still thriving because mobile operators are still expanding their 5G networks, particularly in their mid-band spectrum, where much of the 5G traffic will be carried. Along with that mid-band expansion, operators are starting to densify their networks with small cells, particularly

Some experts anticipate that US mobile operators will spend more on their small cell deployments in the coming months and use the technology to fill in coverage gaps and boost capacity in their 5G networks. Joe Madden, founder and lead analyst at Mobile Experts predicts that now that operators have deployed much of their 5G macro network, they will turn their attention to small cells and use the technology to fill in coverage gaps, solve capacity issues and provide in-building coverage. Although small cell deployments didn’t get a lot of attention in 2022, industry trade group CTIA reported

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is a bright spot for UScellular, which is struggling to turn around its mobile business. The regional operator now has close to 100,000 FWA subscribers, according to UScellular EVP and CTO Mike Irizarry.

Low-income students in the St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont (CO) will soon have access to free broadband services thanks to a private LTE network deployed by the City’s municipal fiber provider, NextLight. In 2014 NextLight built a municipal fiber network in Longmont that currently covers 44,000 locations and provides service to around 26,000 customers. NextLight also provides fiber connectivity for the St.