Spectrum

In 2019, 5G will a buzzword you’ll hear increasingly often, but it’s not likely to change anything in your life. By 2029, it’ll be so ingrained into your daily life you’ll have trouble remembering when your phone (or watch or eyeglasses or smart mirror) used to be slow to respond, or unable to stream such high-resolution video, and nerds will be salivating over the when 6G data networks will finally arrive. And sometime in between, someone will come up with something that will fundamentally turn how we live on its head all over again.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the March Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Friday, March 15, 2019:

It's great to be with the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE). I’d like to briefly walk through the latest developments on three key issues where our interests overlap: the transition to ATSC 3.0, the next-generation broadcast television standard; the post-incentive auction repack; and interference involving FM translators.

The US needs a positive alternative to the Chinese 5G model, and it needs to put it forward right now, before or during Barcelona. If we don’t, this year’s Mobile World Congress risks turning into a victory lap for Huawei and Beijing. The solution is not, as some have put it, to “become like China to beat China.” China is playing to its own strengths—state-directed investment and financing, lack of checks and balances internally, and a unified decision-making structure—to support its goal of wireless domination.

AT&T plans to stop providing service to devices that use third-generation wireless technology in early 2022 as it makes room for more powerful standards. The decision follows rival Verizon Communications' warning that it will disconnect old 3G cellphones at the end of 2019. The companies are driven by necessity. Cellphone users with unlimited data plans stream more video on the go, testing the limits of what service providers can handle. Getting customers off 3G allows carriers to free up wireless frequencies for 4G signals over broader swaths of the radio spectrum.

On March 15, we’ll aim to make progress on many of the issues core to the Federal Communications Commission’s mission: promoting US leadership on 5G, closing the digital divide, advancing public safety, modernizing our media rules, helping rural consumers, and more.

During the second year of the Trump Administration, the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) has made great strides in supporting America’s bright future. In January 2019, OSTP welcomed the confirmation of Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier as its new Director. Other highlights:

One of the most disturbing aspects of the digital divide is the “homework gap.” The term – first coined by FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel – describes the situation faced by the estimated 12 million students that cannot complete their school assignments because they have no broadband access at home. As she notes, roughly 7 in 10 teachers assign homework that requires a broadband connection, which means that many students, especially in low-income communities, are missing out on the educational opportunities afforded to their connected peers.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and eight of his colleagues sent letters to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Department of Justice Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim asking that they strike down a proposed merger deal between T-Mobile and Sprint. “Our enforcement officials are the last line of defense preventing reconsolidation of our telecommunications markets at the expense of American consumers,” the senators wrote.