Network management

On March 21, 2018, Sens Tom Udall (D-NM), Tina Smith (D-NM), and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), and Rep Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing concern over the FCC's report and order"wireless infrastructure streamlining" and asked the FCC to delay finalizing the rule, "until a truly meaningful consultation with Indian Tribes occurs." On Aug 3, Chairman Pai responded, saying that in developing the new rules, the Commission engaged extensively with tribal nations, inter-tribal organizations, and state and local historic preservation officers.

The mobile wireless broadband marketplace is either wildly competitive or definitely not so, depending on whom you ask.

The Senate Commerce Committee took a deep dive into various government and industry efforts to make more spectrum available for 5G. Helping focus the hearing were two bills currently working their way through Congress, the SPECTRUM NOW and AIRWAVES Act. "Identifying spectrum resources not just for the next three years, but for the next 10 years and beyond is essential if we are to retain American leadership," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD). Craig Cowden, SVP of wireless technology for Charter, put in a plug for its Wi-Fi mobile broadband play.

There’s a lot of pieces that need to come together to get 5G networks to work on mobile devices — new standards need to be agreed on, new modems need to be developed, and new networking hardware for towers needs to be rolled out. But Qualcomm might have just cleared one of the major hurdles with the announcement of its new QTM052 mmWave antenna modules, the first that have been announced that will enable the high-speed swath of networking spectrum to work with mobile phones. That’s a big deal, because not all 5G is created equal.

A bipartisan Senate bill introduced in late June would expedite placement of 5G infrastructure but limit state and local authority in negotiating application fees with mobile carriers. Already the proposed legislation has earned the praise of the wireless industry, with trade association CTIA stating S. 3157 “will help America win the global 5G race by accelerating deployment of next-generation wireless infrastructure while preserving local authority.”

Leading off our August agenda will be 5G, the next generation of wireless connectivity. We’ll finalize the rules for the auction of airwaves in the 28 GHz band and the auction of the 24 GHz band, which will follow immediately afterward.  These will be the first auctions of high-band spectrum for 5G services, but they won’t be the last.  Specifically, I’m excited to announce my plan to move forward with a single auction of three more millimeter-wave spectrum bands—the 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands—in the second half of 2019.

Some city light poles around Oahu (HI) are being equipped to produce more than street lighting. A contractor representing mobile phone service provider Sprint is installing data transmission equipment on 67 poles largely concentrated in Honolulu’s urban core but also in Central Oahu, Leeward Oahu and Laie. The equipment turns the light poles into miniature cell antenna towers that eliminate service coverage dead spots and increase data transmission capacity as more phone users consume more data, largely by watching videos.

CTIA’s Annual Wireless Industry Survey finds the industry beginning the transition from 4G to 5G wireless networks with significant growth in cell sites and data-only devices. That growth and continued demand for everything wireless contributed to Americans using an unprecedented amount of mobile data in 2017. The key wireless trends in this year's survey:

The good news is that, after years of having to pay per gigabyte, unlimited plans are now the norm at all of the major US wireless carriers. The bad news is that, somehow, those same companies have managed to create different categories of unlimited. At the low-end, some have data caps before speeds are throttled. At the high-end, many come with premium video services (the latest battleground).

AT&T: The biggest challenge with AT&T's unlimited plans is that the options and combinations keep changing.

Comcast's Xfinity Mobile service is imposing new speed limits on video watching and personal hotspot usage, and the company will start charging extra for high-definition video over the cellular network. Videos will be throttled to 480p (DVD quality) on all Comcast mobile plans unless you pay extra, while Comcast's "unlimited" plan will limit mobile hotspot speeds to 600kbps.