Wireless Internet

The Justice Department and a group of states asked a federal court to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet. The request follows a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S.

In an increasingly congested wireless spectrum, conflict is both inevitable but often resolvable. Between commercial applications (e.g., terrestrial and non-terrestrial wireless communications, navigation, and telemetry), scientific activities (e.g., radio astronomy, polar research, earth observation), and other vital spectrum-dependent uses (e.g., air traffic control), competition for spectrum access will only increase with new and emerging applications and technologies.

With USCellular's agreement to sell AT&T $1.018 billion of spectrum, all three of the major mobile operators "have taken a chunk" of the rural carrier's assets. The agreement includes the sale of 1,250M MHz-Pops of 3.45 GHz and 331M MHz-Pops of 700 MHz B/C block licenses to AT&T. This spectrum will likely enable AT&T to layer in better coverage on its existing 5G footprint. The sale, once approved by regulators, will add additional spectrum to AT&T's existing bandwidth to improve overall coverage. The 700 MHz band is valuable for distance coverage.

The fixed wireless access (FWA) market has largely matured, and it's no longer offering many surprises. As a result, the pressure the technology has put on the cable industry appears to be easing. "We now have better insights into FWA collectively," wrote the financial analysts at New Street Research. The analysts now expect T-Mobile to gain around 1.45 million fixed wireless customers next year.

Rise Broadband announced it has acquired MidAtlantic Broadband’s 100% fiber-to-the-home broadband/internet business in Missouri. Operating under the Yondoo Broadband brand, MidAtlantic Broadband’s business in Missouri adds almost 10,000 residential and commercial locations across eight markets in the eastern part of the State. With this acquisition, Rise Broadband will now provide service in the cities of Kahoka, Canton, La Grange, Bowling Green, Elsberry, Potosi, Belle, and Bland in Missouri. 100% of homes passed are serviceable with fiber-optic service. 

In 2016, to address the unique needs of providing broadband service in Alaska, the Federal Communications Commission established the 10-year Alaska Plan to support the maintenance and deployment of voice and broadband fixed and mobile services. This Plan, along with other frozen support and model-based support, has resulted in substantially increased deployment of both fixed and mobile broadband services.

In what is bad news for many other internet service providers (ISPs), both T-Mobile and Verizon have plans to continue their aggressive growth of FWA cellular broadband.

It’s clear we need more resiliency in our broadband policy. If nothing else, the hurricanes ravaging the U.S. Southeast have shown us that. In the last few weeks, pervasive wireless and wireline communication outages have left people that are already struggling in the wake of disaster completely cut off from resources, important news updates, and loved ones.

The House Oversight Committee recently decided to investigate the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision in 2022 to deny Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) funding to Starlink. The timing of this announcement clearly has political overtones since it was announced as Elon Musk took the stage at a campaign event with one of the presidential candidates. RDOF was awarded using a reverse auction, where the provider willing to take the lowest amount of subsidy winning the funding.

For competitive reasons, wireless carriers typically don’t reveal too many specifics about their network expansion and upgrade plans. So when T-Mobile executives were asked to elaborate on their plans for mid-band 5G upgrades, they steered the conversation to the tools they use to determine how they’re going to expand coverage – as opposed to detailing exactly where and when they will deploy. Their approach – and brace yourself, this is going to be a real shocker – is based on artificial intelligence (AI).