Reporting

The Commerce Department, as statutorily obligated by a recent law, sought feedback on how to best implement an administration 5G security strategy and has now posted all its comments. Around 80 parties weighed in, from the city of New York to companies like AT&T, Qualcomm and Ligado.

 House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-PA) said that a lot of broadband internet access service providers, "for whatever reason," claim they have service where they don't, something he said everyone knows "has been going on for years." He said that since Democrats and Republicans agree that broadband maps aren't good, the Federal Communications Commission would just be throwing $20 million out the window by starting to give out most of the Rural Development Opportunities Fund (RDOF) subsidy money.

China is using the same tactics it employed to drive down the price of telecommunications equipment from Huawei to flood the US market with fiber optic cables—crucial underlying infrastructure for fifth-generation networks—a senior Commerce Department official said. "China is currently driving massive overcapacity in critical sectors including steel, aluminum and optical fiber cables,” said Nazak Nikakhtar, Commerce’ assistant secretary for industry and analysis.

Frontier will pay a $900,000 fine to Washington state after the attorney general's office found it has misled customers about internet speeds and charged them undisclosed fees. The bulk of the $900,000 fine will go to former Frontier customers in Washington. Earlier in 2020, Frontier sold its broadband services in three states, including Washington, to Kirkland-based WaveDivision Capital in partnership with Searchlight Capital Partners for $1.35 billion. WaveDivision renamed Frontier Communications Northwest as Ziply Fiber.

Speedtest Intelligence reveals AT&T was the fastest mobile operator in the US in Q2 2020 with a Speed Score of 41.23 on modern chipsets in competitive geographies. T-Mobile was the second fastest, Sprint third and Verizon Wireless fourth. Although Sprint merged with T-Mobile earlier in 2020, Ookla considered the companies’ performance separately as the networks have not been fully integrated. We will combine their results when the integration is complete.

Verizon has completed the first data session on its new 5G standalone core and plans to start shifting mobile traffic over later in 2020. All US carriers have deployed 5G networks in non-standalone (NSA) mode, which relies on a 4G LTE anchor. With 5G standalone that’s no longer the case. With a 5G core implemented, it means Verizon can start introducing key 5G technologies, like network slicing to enable new use cases. The carrier expects full commercialization of its 5G standalone core in 2021.

How will students from low-income families connect to the internet to learn from home if they can’t attend school physically this fall? What role can school systems play in ensuring home broadband access for all students, given the budget crisis many districts will be facing next year? The simplest solution would be for the Federal Communications Commission to lift the restrictions barring E-rate recipients from using their networks to extend broadband service into students’ homes.

School districts are taking it upon themselves to help families get connected to the internet as they face down a long future of virtual learning. Most schools don't even know which students are lacking internet service, and the neediest families are often the hardest to reach. Perhaps the most ambitious initiative is a $50 million, public-private partnership in Chicago, which aims to provide 100,000 public school students with home internet service for four years. The most successful districts have maximized their purchasing power by partnering with other nearby districts or municipalities

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders’ “unity task forces” — which brought together backers of each camp to bridge differences in their agendas — unveiled policy recommendations that featured positions on a number of key tech policy issues. The task force included a recommendation on how the party should approach resurrecting the repealed Obama-era net neutrality protections, saying “Democrats will restore the FCC's clear authority to take strong enforcement action against broadband pro

Dozens of foreign nationals working as journalists in the US for Voice of America, the federal government's international broadcaster, will not have their visas extended once they expire. Michael Pack, the new CEO of the US Agency for Global Media, signaled he will not approve the visa extensions. The foreign journalists are particularly valued for their language skills, which are crucial to VOA's mission as an international broadcaster.