Network management

Starlink has added a $100 “congestion charge” to certain new subscribers of their Residential Services. The one-time fee applies to new service plans within areas of “network congestion.” The Support section of the Starlink website provides details of the new charge. “In areas with network congestion, there is an additional one-time charge to purchase Starlink Residential services.

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.

Verizon and Frontier Communications announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for Verizon to acquire Frontier in an all-cash transaction valued at $20 billion. This strategic acquisition of the largest pure-play fiber internet provider in the U.S. will significantly expand Verizon's fiber footprint across the nation, accelerating the company’s delivery of premium mobility and broadband services to current and new customers.

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

Even though UScellular plans to sell off big chunks of its spectrum and subscribers to T-Mobile, that's not stopping the regional wireless carrier from pursuing its fixed wireless access (FWA) ambitions—even if that means going head to head with T-Mobile in some regions. In fact, now UScellular is working with Tarana Wireless to increase its FWA capacity in West Plains, Missouri, a town where the demand for FWA is high. So high that the carrier has been getting such good uptake of its fixed wireless in West Plains that it was about to run out of capacity on its mobile network.

US cable operators are struggling to return to broadband subscriber growth, but their mobile strategies continued to bear fruit in the second quarter of 2024. Cable's share of total mobile phone net adds (both post-paid and pre-paid) was roughly 54 percent in the quarter, MoffettNathanson found in its latest analysis of the US mobile market. Analyst Craig Moffett attributes the bulk of US cable's mobile growth to relatively lower pricing when compared to many of the plans offered by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

AT&T and Verizon are urging telecommunications regulators to reject a key part of SpaceX's plan to offer cellular service with T-Mobile, claiming the satellite system will interfere with and degrade service for terrestrial mobile broadband networks. Filings urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny SpaceX's request for a waiver were submitted by AT&T and Verizon.

I’ve written a lot about the unprecedented success of fixed wireless access (FWA) being sold by cellular carriers. By the end of the first quarter of 2024, T-Mobile and Verizon had accumulated 8.6 million customers nationwide on FWA cellular home broadband. This is an amazing success for a product that was just launched in 2021. The big cable companies have been downplaying the success and capabilities of FWA. They commonly characterize FWA as too slow and inconsistent.

To hear well-known Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett tell it, Verizon spent a mind-boggling $52 billion on C-band spectrum which “isn’t very good” and fixing its 5G coverage problem is going to require even more money—“lots of money.” That was one of the hottest and most publicized take-aways from Verizon’s Q2 earnings call. While Moffett described Verizon’s overall wireless Q2 results as “fair,” the gist of his report focused on “Verizon’s C-band problem,” one that he said will take a whole lot of densification to rectify.

With the increase of 5G phones and network technology, wireless customers are experiencing fewer problems according to the J.D. Power 2024 U.S. Wireless Network Quality Performance Study—Volume 2. The reduction of problems has led to improved consumer perception of reliability and increased network quality satisfaction. Highlights from the study include: