Spectrum

Big Tech and Big Telecom are wrangling over a Federal Communications Commission plan that would open up an unprecedented amount of airwaves to meet the nation’s Wi-Fi demand. The FCC is expected to vote before the end of April on a plan that may quintuple the amount of spectrum available to handle data from millions of Wi-Fi-connected smartphones, laptops, and other devices.

This past Nov, a bipartisan majority at the Federal Communications Commission adopted a vertical, or “z-axis,” location accuracy metric of plus or minus 3 meters for wireless 911 calls. That means that in the coming years you will be able to more accurately identify the floor-level for most 911 calls and reduce emergency response time.

Halfway through its 5-year rural broadband project, Microsoft said its Airband Initiative is now in 25 states and Puerto Rico. Started in mid-2017, the Airband Initiative aims to eliminate the rural broadband gap and Microsoft said it's on track to meet its target of expanding high-speed internet to 3 million Americans living in unserved areas by 2022.

If you follow spectrum policy at all, you will have heard about the C-Band Auction and the 5.9 GHz fight. But you would be forgiven if you hadn’t heard much about the fight over opening the

On Feb 28 the Federal Communications Commission voted to approve a new order paving the way for the expanded use of “white space broadband,” a promising technology that uses the spectrum freed from the shift to digital television to beam broadband into traditionally harder to reach rural areas. In 2017, Microsoft announced an ambitious plan to bring the technology to more than 2 million rural Americans across a dozen states by July 2022.

The Federal Communications Commission proposed targeted changes to its White Space device rules to pave the way for improved broadband coverage for rural Americans. White Space devices operate in portions of the broadcast television bands that are not used by television stations and can be used to provide broadband and other wireless services.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules to auction and make available quickly and efficiently 280 megahertz of midband spectrum for flexible use, including 5G. Making this critical spectrum available represents another important step to closing the digital divide, especially in rural areas, and secures US leadership in 5G.

Wall Street has become fascinated with a battle over 5G airwaves at the Federal Communications Commission — not because of the next-generation technology itself, but because of the potential investment wins. The spotlight has been brightest on Intelsat, which has about 

Reps. Billy Long (R-MO) and Susan Brooks (R-IN) are siding with the wireless industry and asking Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to reserve a portion of the 6 GHz airwaves for auctioning off spectrum for licensed use.