Wireless Telecommunications

While you probably never thought you needed to understand the intricacies of how cellular networks operated by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon work, some big news that affects those operations will have real-world impacts on the services that they offer and that we rely on. In every country around the world except the US, 5G networks have been built around mid-band spectrum because it offers the right combination of coverage area and width of data lanes over which our TV shows can be streamed, Instagram posts uploaded, worldwide web browsed, etc.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the winning bidders and the final bid totals in Auction 107—commonly referred to as the C-band auction. Auction 107 net winning bids totaled $81,114,481,921 and gross winning bids totaled $81,168,677,645. Twenty-one bidders won all of the available 5,684 licenses. Verizon was the big winner -- nearly $45.5 billion spent to gain 3,511 licenses. AT&T was a distant second: nearly $23.5 billion spent on 1,621 licenses. T-Mobile spent $9.3 billion on 142 licenses. Down payments on the spectrum licenses are due March 10.

A flurry of orders, rulemakings, inquiries, and adjudications aimed at advancing the United States’ economic recovery and preparing for a post-COVID world.:

FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel shared with her colleagues a proposal to open a formal discussion on Open Radio Access Networks—sometimes called Open RAN—the opportunities they present, and what the FCC should be doing to promote the concept.

Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel shared with her colleagues a draft Order that would make much-needed mid-band spectrum available for 5G. If adopted at the FCC’s March 17 Open Meeting, 100 megahertz of mid-band spectrum in the 3.45-3.55 GHz band would be made available for auction and 5G deployment across the contiguous United States.

We evaluate the impact of mobile operator mergers on the unit price of data and voice by using country-level observations on retail revenue for data, cellular data traffic, retail revenue for voice, and outgoing voice minutes. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we estimate the effect of operator merger by comparing the difference between the non-merging countries and the merging countries before and after the introduction of the operator merger.

We’ve been promised a fourth industrial revolution with fantastical things like remote surgery and driverless cars. Instead, what we have now is widespread 5G that’s more or less the same speed as (or even slower than) 4G and super-fast mmWave 5G in some parts of some major cities with highly limited range. So where is this 5G future we’ve been promised? The truth is that it’s coming along, but it will materialize more slowly and in less obvious ways than what we’ve been led to believe.

A new Opensignal report shows that rural areas are benefiting most from boosts in 5G availability after T-Mobile’s launch of a nationwide standalone (SA) 5G network last year, but a focus on low-band 600 MHz for SA has left speeds lacking. Compared to urban users, 5G consumers in rural locations are spending a greater percentage of time connected 5G since T-Mobile’s August SA launch, according to Opensignal's analysis, though both geographies saw increase

Aviat Networks announced that LTD Broadband, an internet service provider (ISP) and top recipient in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction with a total of $1.3 billion in funding, will deploy Aviat's WTM 4000 microwave and multi-band platform systems in its network middle mile and for fiber redundancy. The company has already deployed these Aviat systems in its current network, which delivers high-speed connectivity to commercial and residential subscribers in IA, MN, WI, SD, NE, and KS, with other states in planning as part of the company's RDOF expansion.

Verizon's $6.2 billion bid to buy wireless company TracFone has raised concerns that the deal could cut off access to affordable mobile phone service. The deal has flown under the radar, but TracFone is one of the nation's largest providers of subsidized cell phone service for low income people, an especially important program during the coronavirus pandemic — and one that Verizon hasn't traditionally focused on. The Justice Department declined to dig deeper into the deal in November, signaling that it didn't raise competition concerns.