Network management

The Federal Communications Commission's proposed ban on Huawei and ZTE gear in government-funded projects will hurt small Internet providers' efforts to deploy broadband, according to the Rural Wireless Association (RWA), a lobby group for rural Internet service providers. Under FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal, ISPs who use federal money to build or expand broadband service would end up with fewer options for buying network gear. This would "irreparably damage broadband networks (and limit future deployment) in many rural and remote areas throughout the country," the RWA told the FCC. 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai shared with his fellow Commissioners a proposal to help address national security threats to US communications networks and their supply chains. Specifically, the draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, if adopted, would propose to bar the use of money from the FCC’s Universal Service Fund to purchase equipment or services from companies that pose a national security threat to United States communications networks or the communications supply chain. Chairman Pai will call for a vote on this proposal at the Commission’s April 17 meeting.

Recently, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing: Facebook also had about two years' worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received. Facebook uses phone-contact data as part of its friend recommendation algorithm.

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to make a directive on 5G, the next-generation, high-speed wireless standard, that could significantly affect local government control of infrastructure. Two cities, San Jose (CA) which lies in the heart of Silicon Valley, and Lincoln (NE) an innovative university and capitol city, both could be profoundly affected if the FCC decides to “cut red tape” with modifications to small cell antenna deployment rules.

The US can still win the race to 5G—but it’s got to pass some significant reforms like those being considered by the Federal Communications Commission to make it happen. That’s the message from CTIA (a large wireless industry trade group) President and CEO Meredith Attwell Baker, who’s calling 2018 the year for action, because, as she puts it, “The stakes are huge.” Baker said she wholeheartedly agrees with Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri’s assessment of the situation, where the US and China are neck-and-neck when it comes to 5G.

Verizon says that as it mulls its involvement in the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming $2 billion Connect America Fund auction this July, the regulator needs to provide more guidance on how it will determine whether a CAF-supported service meets speed requirements.  In an FCC filing, Verizon said that potential bidders need to know two main elements:  how the FCC will measure speed and whether the tested service is compliant, i.e., the statistical standards that the speed measurements will be required to meet.

The objective of this paper is to independently assess the impacts of regulatory reviews required for the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NHPA/NEPA) on 5G small cell roll-outs by US wireless carriers. In assessing the costs wireless carriers incur in relation to these reviews, Accenture found the following:

A bipartisan group of Senators, led by Sen Roger Wicker (R-MS) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai expressing serious concerns about the agency’s recently released Mobility Fund Phase II (MF II) map. The purpose of this fund is to allocate $4.53 billion over the next 10 years to preserve and expand mobile coverage to rural areas.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote on an order at its March 22 meeting eliminating the need for federally mandated historic preservation and environmental reviews when deploying small cells, meaning states and localities without such rules will be out of luck. But proponents of local self-reliance see it as phase one in transferring the management of public rights of way and the leasing of access from counties and cities over to the wireless industry.

The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled later in March to vote on new rules designed to smooth the deployment of small cells for LTE and 5G, primarily by reducing fees local governments and other entities can levy against those buildouts. And, according to a variety of wireless players, those fees are “excessive,” to say the least.