Spectrum

The 5G for 12 GHz Coalition, a group that includes Dish Network, RS Access [and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society], said that it wants to set the record straight on Starlink’s “misinformation campaign.” The most recent spat started when SpaceX encouraged Starlink users to send messages to the Federal Communications Commission and lawmakers about the 12 GHz proceeding.

A new reverse auction by the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) will allow telecommunication companies to bid on funds. The PSC’s order for the auction, NUSF-131, was entered on June 28. It sets the procedure for the reverse auction to bring broadband services of at least 100 megabits per second to certain census blocks in the state. The affected areas are primarily in northeast and south-central Nebraska, with none of them venturing farther west than McCook (NE). This will be a first-of-its-kind effort for a state to pull off.

This report assesses spectrum sharing to help observers look realistically at the prospects for sharing and barriers to realizing its more aspirational promises. Key findings include:

The Federal Communications Commission granted the applications SpaceX Services to operate consumer and enterprise Ku-band Earth Stations in Motion (ESIM) and the application of Kepler Communications to operate unlimited Ku-band Earth Stations on Vessels (ESVs) in the territorial waters of the United States and aboard US-registered vessels throughout international waters worldwide. Both SpaceX and Kepler propose to use the 14.0-14.5 GHz band to transmit (Earth-to-space), and the 10.7-12.7 GHz band, including 12.2-12.7 GHz (generally known as the 12 GHz band), to receive (space-to-Earth).

SpaceX emailed Starlink customers June 28 asking for help in its battle against Dish Network over radio frequencies for its Starlink internet-from-space effort. Some Starlink customers received an email urging them to contact the Federal Communications Commission and members of Congress in order to support SpaceX in the ongoing dispute. “Today we ask for your support in ending a lobbying campaign that threatens to make Starlink unusable for you and the vast majority of our American customers,” the email reads in bold.

So much for the “win-win-win” scenario that Dish Network envisioned for the 12 GHz band. Dish and RS Access have argued that the 12 GHz band can be used by both satellite players like SpaceX’s Starlink and by companies like Dish that want to use it for 5G, all for the public’s benefit.

Big Tech companies are continuing to try and head off any Federal Communications Commission effort to establish what they said would be 'one-size-fits-all" standards for 5G receivers that would work against the FCC's goals of an innovative 5G environment. The FCC in April 2022 opened an inquiry into setting wireless receiver standards, one of several routes the FCC could take, alone or in tandem, to protect signals in increasingly crowded spectrum bands, a roadmap laid out by FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel.

Congress advanced an amendment that would provide billions in funding for next-generation 911, moving one step closer to possibly fulfilling a longstanding wish of the public safety community. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s communications and technology panel voted unanimously to approve an amendment to the Spectrum Innovation Act (H.R. 7624) that would use funding from wireless spectrum auctions to raise $10 billion for next-generation 911, a suite of IP-based technologies that enables 911 call centers to use location data, photos and video.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee Communications Subcommittee gave a big thumbs up to extending the Federal Communications Commission's ability to raise tens of billions of dollars through the treasury with spectrum auctions, not to mention freeing up spectrum in the process for Wi-Fi. The subcommittee voted unanimously to favorably report the Extending America’s Spectrum Auction Leadership Act of 2022, which would extend the FCC's spectrum auction authority, which otherwise would expire September 30 of this year, to March 21, 2024. Also favorably reported were:

Since it acquired the 2.5 GHz assets from Sprint, T-Mobile has been going gangbusters on 5G, to the point that it now covers 225 million points of presence (PoPs) and is well on its way to reach 260 million by the end of 2022. By the end of 2023, it expects to reach a population of 300 million with the “Ultra Capacity” 5G that relies on 2.5 GHz. In the short term, completing the integration with Sprint is job number. 1. “This is a big, big year for us from an integration perspective,” with network decommissioning.