Wireless Telecommunications

Cord cutting is coming to home internet access, not just pay TV – but not every embittered broadband customer will be able to fire their current provider and switch to residential wireless from T-Mobile and Verizon. Both carriers offer connectivity at speeds that may not match those of cable internet but should be fast enough for many home uses. They also don’t inflict cable’s data caps or modem-rental fees.

Recommendations for how the U.S. can leverage digital infrastructure to further its economic competitiveness:

The fastest-growing mobile-phone carriers in the US aren’t phone companies. More than five million Americans now pay for mobile-phone service through their cable-TV providers, enticed by low prices and the ability to easily adjust their phone plans, a flexibility that proved particularly useful during the pandemic.

Opponents to Verizon’s planned acquisition of prepaid TracFone often cite the negative impacts they believe it will have on Lifeline subscribers and the prepaid market overall. But Verizon is pitching the transaction as a means of improving TracFone’s ability to provide Lifeline-supported services and better serve the prepaid sector. Verizon said that TracFone, as part of Verizon, will become a stronger competitor against the flanker prepaid brands of AT&T (Cricket ) and T-Mobile (Metro).

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), in conjunction with the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB), released updated data on fixed broadband deployment, and mobile voice and broadband deployment as of June 30, 2020. These data were collected through FCC Form 477 and are available on the Commission’s website.

Verizon said it is working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to recall 2.5 million hotspot devices after an investigation found the devices’ lithium-ion batteries could overheat and pose fire and burn hazards. The Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspot models MHS900L, MHS900LS, and MHS900LPP were imported by Franklin Wireless Corp. and sold between April 2017 and March of 2021.

After a long pilot period, T-Mobile is making its 5G home internet service a reality. The company says 30 million homes are now eligible for the service — 10 million of which are in rural areas. The service costs $60 per month, or $65 without autopay, which is $10 more per month than when the pilot program was introduced. The service comes with no data caps, hardware rental fees, or annual contracts, and customers self-install their own equipment. T-Mobile says most customers will experience speeds of 100Mbps, and all eligible customers should see average speeds of 50Mbps.

Dish Network sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, complaining that T-Mobile — its partner for wireless services — is rushing to shut down a network still used by millions of Dish's Boost Mobile customers. T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint was only allowed after it agreed to sell a chunk of assets to Dish, including its Boost prepaid business. Dish is highly reliant on T-Mobile for network services as it builds out its own 5G network over the next several years.

Spectrum policy is a long game, so the successes, failures, and impacts are not generally immediately apparent or recognized. Thinking about Women’s History Month cannot help but bring to mind Anita Longley, a much-admired spectrum pioneer from the NationalTelecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS). Along with her ITS colleague Phil Rice, in the 1970s Longley developed the Longley-Rice propagation model.

Concerns about the 5.9 GHz band came up again during a hearing of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, where Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gave testimony. But that wasn’t all. Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) reiterated his concerns about potential interference from 5G in the C-band – the very band where the likes of Verizon and AT&T just pledged over $80 billion for access to airwaves for 5G.