Spectrum

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is announcing a $25 million investment over five years to launch SpectrumX, an NSF Spectrum Innovation Center that will address the growing demand for usage of the radio spectrum. This represents the first federal investment in a national center focused on the transformation of wireless spectrum management.

Amazon isn’t the only company opposed to SpaceX's second-gen Starlink proposal. Viasat, a rival satellite internet broadband provider, also filed a protest letter urging the Federal Communications Commission to dismiss SpaceX’s request.

Federal Communications Commissioner Nathan Simington provided a keynote address at the University of Colorado’s Silicon Flatirons “Frontiers in Spectrum Sharing” conference.

The biggest threat to competition and consumers in our time is the collusion of big business and big government. As a case in point, see how AT&T is urging the Federal Communications Commission to hobble rival T-Mobile. AT&T asked the FCC to limit how much mid-band spectrum providers can acquire in future government auctions. T-Mobile acquired loads of mid-band when it purchased Sprint in 2020.

The radio spectrum that governments license to mobile operators is central to the development of mobile broadband services. However, there is significant variation around how much and when spectrum is assigned, as well as its costs. We assessed whether policies to assign spectrum had an impact on consumer welfare in 64 countries during the 2010–2017 period and found evidence that policies that reduce the amount of spectrum available to operators, delay the assignment of spectrum and increase the cost of spectrum all impacted two important consumer outcomes - network coverage and quality.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration commented in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking addressing federal earth stations, launch spectrum, and operation of a new federal environmental sensing satellite. These issues are connected by the principle that the responsibilities of the FCC and NTIA to manage our respective spheres of spectrum use require continued adjustment to reflect the realities of their interdependence. Here, it means:

There is broad consensus that American leadership in the 5G economy depends in part on smart spectrum policy. This includes a sharp focus on building a strong and competitive ecosystem in mid-band allocations, where wide bands can be coupled with capabilities such as edge computing and network slicing to enable 5G to act as a catalyst for transforming industries and economies.

AT&T responded to the alarm industry’s attempts to keep the 3G network up and running, essentially chalking it up to a delay tactic designed to line the pockets of alarm companies. While all three of the major US wireless operators are shutting down their 3G networks, the alarm industry is especially reliant on AT&T. That’s in part because AT&T offered aggressive pricing deals back when 3G networks were just getting started. Fast forward to 2021, and those alarm companies are in no hurry to switch to newer networks.

Louisiana passed extensive legislation in the past two sessions to help bridge the digital divide, including a plan to auction off valuable communications spectrum for broadband access. HB465 tasks the recently created Office of Broadband and Connectivity with supervising an auction of parts of the 4.9GHz band. The Federal Communications Commission voted in 2020 to allow every state to lease some of this spectrum to help expand broadband development. A state task force recommended to the Louisiana Legisla

Facebook’s desire to connect more people to the internet is well known. Signals Research Group (SRG) published a report assessing how the company's Terragraph initiative performs outside of trial situations. Terragraph is a fixed wireless access platform that uses 60 GHz spectrum. It’s unlicensed, so other applications can use the spectrum, creating interference concerns.