Fierce

CTIA President Meredith Attwell Baker wants to create a spectrum "report card" that would assess how efficiently government agencies are using their spectrum.

That's one piece of a broader agenda she has for getting more airwaves for mobile broadband use beyond this fall's coming auction of AWS-3 spectrum and the 2015 incentive auction of 600 MHz broadcast TV spectrum.

Baker, who became the head of the wireless industry's trade association and lobbying arm in early June, said a report card would "keep people's feet to the fire to make sure we're utilizing the spectrum, [and that] we're not warehousing it." She said that CTIA is going to continue to work towards the goal President Barack Obama laid out in 2010 to free up 500 MHz of spectrum for mobile and fixed wireless broadband use by 2020.

Baker said CTIA might push to go beyond that but wants to hit that milestone. Baker added that CTIA is also focused on sharing spectrum with federal agencies. "I want us to be at the forefront of sharing, and I want us to be able to test it and see how we can collaborate more successfully than we have in the past," she said.

Google Fiber overcame a major hurdle in bringing its service to Portland (OR) as the City Council voted 5-0 to approve a franchise agreement, reports the Portland Business Journal.

Under the terms of the 10-year agreement, which extends until 2024, the city will allow Google to begin plotting out where it would place huts that would house electronics to deliver services to residents and "fiberhoods."

One of the key pieces of getting the agreement done was that Portland city commissioners had to agree to tone down some of their restrictions on the placement of utility cabinets along rights of way. Although the franchise agreement was approved, there's no promise that Google Fiber will actually deploy service in Portland.

"This franchise agreement is an important step along the path to Fiber, so it's great that it's been approved," Google spokeswoman Jenna Wandres told the Portland Business Journal in an email. "There's still a lot of work to do beyond this one agreement, but we hope to provide an update about whether we can bring Fiber here later this year."

One out of every three LTE smartphones shipped globally in the first quarter came to the United States, according to a new research report, another indication of the country's continued leadership in the LTE market.

According to Counterpoint's Market Monitor, the US led in the LTE smartphone market, which grew 91 percent year-over-year in the first quarter. According to Counterpoint's Neil Shah, LTE smartphones reached their highest ever first-quarter shipments, contributing to more than a fourth of the total smartphones shipments globally in the period.

A brewing controversy over technical standards and hiring issues are some of the latest bugaboos haunting the First Responders Network Authority (FirstNet) as it crafts plans for the national public-safety broadband network (NPSBN).

During board committee meetings here, held June 2 prior to the annual PSCR Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder meeting, FirstNet board member Kevin McGinnis noted that the mission of enabling mission-critical voice communications over LTE is progressing, as the 3GPP standards body moves ahead on technological specifications for the service as part of the group's work on Releases 12 and 13.

However, McGinnis expressed displeasure at the fact that "certain vendors" are attempting to shift LTE public-safety standardization out of 3GPP and into the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). McGinnis said he did not know which vendors are behind the move, but he has been told that they aim to move proceedings "to a standards body where those vendors presumably have more influence." He called the move "distracting," and said it detracts from the progress that has been made within 3GPP.

Sprint will soon jump into LTE Advanced carrier aggregation as part of its Sprint Spark initiative, and the operator is also taking hard looks at numerous other cutting-edge technologies, such as SON and even Cloud RAN, for inclusion in its long-term roadmap, said a top executive.

"Historically we've looked to technologies a bit differently than everyone else. We're the only ones deploying TD-LTE. We're the only ones deploying 8T8R," observed Ron Marquardt, vice president of technology for Sprint technology innovation and architecture. That willingness to stand out from the crowd means technologies that other US operators may not consider could find a home at Sprint.

"We're evaluating everything from CoMP (coordinated multipoint) to even Cloud RAN on the more speculative end, just because of the backhaul requirements for that," said Marquardt.

Advanced self-organizing network (SON) technologies, enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (EICIC), high-order MIMO options and other advanced antenna systems "are all under consideration," Marquardt added. "We're actively investigating all sorts of SON options--architectures as well as specific implementations," he noted, though cautioning that "we're not even close to making any decisions, much less any announcements."

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said he does not see the carrier going head-to-head in the near-term with the likes of Comcast, Verizon Communications and AT&T in the market for wired home broadband Internet access.

Hesse's comments, made during a Sprint meeting with industry analysts and relayed by an analyst, stand in contrast to the long-term vision of Sprint Chairman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who has said Sprint could eventually compete in and shake up the wired broadband market in the US. According to Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson, Hesse said that Sprint isn't planning to go after the home broadband market actively, and that it would be difficult to make money in that market, especially given how much video wired broadband customers tend to use.

AT&T, for instance has said its average, non-U-verse broadband customers use around 21 GB of data per month; overall average monthly usage on North American fixed access networks was 51.4 GB, according to a May study from network vendor Sandvine. Those numbers are much bigger than the average monthly data consumption by wireless phone users.

Dawson said that Sprint is simply focused on other business priorities right now and does not plan to aggressively compete in the home broadband market. He said that such a plan is "not on the roadmap" right now but could be somewhere down the line as the carrier expands its Spark service and increases speeds. For now though, Dawson said, Hesse was acknowledging that Sprint's spectrum position and the realities of deploying Spark make it infeasible to actually enact Son's vision.

"The difference is between the strategic vision Masa Son is laying and the operational reality of running the Sprint business today with the spectrum holdings they have," he said.

The deal-making chess pieces are being moved around in the telecom industry, and one financial analyst thinks the next move might be for Comcast to make a bid for T-Mobile US.

According to a research note from UBS analyst John Hodulik, AT&T's proposed deal to buy DirecTV for $49 billion, and the implications that has for mobile video delivery, "could be the final straw that draws Comcast into the wireless mix."

Hodulik notes that Comcast's current wireless strategy leverages Wi-Fi deployments and a Verizon Wireless resale deal.

"While this may be a capital-efficient way to put a toe in the water, we believe it is not a long term strategy," he wrote. "In our opinion, this could eventually lead to the acquisition of T-Mobile -- if it is still independent. Initial moves to execute on a Wi-Fi-MVNO strategy will inevitably spark the speculation that Comcast will indeed need to go further and put a still-independent T-Mobile back on the merger target list were the SoftBank deal to be rejected."

AT&T is feeling encouraged by its initial rollout of its 1 Gbps fiber-based broadband service and a more favorable permitting process from local communities.

AT&T CFO John Stephens told investors that these factors are making it more bullish about the opportunity to potentially extend service into new markets outside of Austin (TX). Like other telecommunications companies, AT&T needs to get permitting approval from local communities to get access to necessary rights of way (ROWs) along public streets and utility poles to lay fiber and install related network electronics.

"In Austin, we were able to do a success-based build with some of the new streamlined permitting, right of way easement processes," Stephens said. "What we have seen is great adoption by our customers of high-speed products, strong customer satisfaction scores and appreciation for the product."

The early success and acceptance of the Gigapower service in Austin combined with its ongoing U-verse broadband expansion efforts has driven the telco to consider deploying FTTH in other markets.

AT&T Mobility will likely be adding between 1,500 and 3,000 macro cell sites to its network per year for the next few years as part of a wide-ranging effort to beef up its network and improve coverage and capacity, according to a senior AT&T executive.

Bill Smith, president of AT&T network operations, said the carrier would be adding that many sites to its network per year "for the foreseeable future." That will likely happen in parallel with AT&T's deployment of new spectrum bands for LTE service, such as the 2.3 GHz WCS band or AWS-3 band, which the Federal Communications Commission will be auctioning later in 2014.

According to new maps from Mosaik Solutions, Verizon Wireless could be subject to bidding restrictions across virtually the entire country in the Federal Communications Commission's 600 MHz auction in 2015.

Meanwhile, AT&T Mobility could face restrictions in locations across wide portions of the West and East Coasts, but not in the central part of the country.

Maps from Mosaik provide the clearest view yet as to exactly how the FCC's 600 MHz auction rules will affect the nation's two largest wireless carriers. They show that Verizon could face restrictions in virtually every state in the country. The only major places where Verizon won't face restrictions are in Southern Texas, parts of the Great Lakes and in parts of the Northwest.

AT&T, meanwhile, could be restricted from bidding in parts of California, southern Texas and large sections of the Northeast. AT&T will be free to bid on 600 MHz without restrictions across wide swaths of the Western United States.