Wireless Telecommunications

The Federal Communications Commission Wireless announced that a second group of 2.5 GHz band spectrum license applications received as part of the Rural Tribal Priority Window have passed initial review and are accepted for filing. The Tribal applicants that filed these 57 applications are now one step closer to obtaining access to this prime mid-band spectrum to help address the connectivity needs of their rural communities.

By most measures, China is no longer just leading the US when it comes to 5G. It is running away with the game. China has more 5G subscribers than the US, not just in total but per capita. It has more 5G smartphones for sale, and at lower prices, and it has more-widespread 5G coverage. Connections in China are, on average, faster than in the US, too. When it comes to the things that are supposed to make 5G revolutionary, not just evolutionary—the apps made possible by the greater speeds and capacity—China’s front-runner status is less well-entrenched.

The first 100 days of a new Administration and new Congress are critical to charting a clear, bipartisan course for our nation’s policy agenda. From COVID relief to budget decisions, take bold and decisive action to finish the job of connecting every American home, business and anchor institution to U.S. broadband infrastructure. Particularly amid a global pandemic, the fact that an estimated 18 million American homes do not have broadband access is unacceptable.

Technological innovation has long been and will continue to be critically important to per-capita income growth, economic competitiveness, and national security. So it is important to examine President-elect Joe Biden’s policy agenda through that lens. This report compiles information from the president-elect’s campaign website and policy documents, from the Democratic Party platform, and from media accounts of statements he has made.

Recently, T-Mobile expanded the company’s home broadband pilot to more than 20 million households. Nov 9, T-Mobile is expanding Home Internet to more than 130 additional cities and towns across Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. T-Mobile Home Internet is just $50/month all-in and features many of the same benefits that have made T-Mobile the fastest growing wireless provider for the past seven years.

Broadband expansion is at the top of Biden’s telecom to-do list.

Players large and small are now building specially designed private 5G networks. In contrast with the 5G networks celebrated during the launch of the latest iPhone, these are intended as much for machines as people. Private networks are geographically constrained areas of coverage, intended to keep a local set of sensors, machines and computers in sync, and allow communications with the rest of the world as needed.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that T-Mobile will pay a $200 million penalty to the US Treasury to resolve an investigation of its subsidiary Sprint’s compliance with the FCC’s rules regarding waste, fraud, and abuse in the Lifeline program for low-income consumers. The payment is the largest fixed-amount settlement the FCC has ever secured to resolve an investigation.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), the nation’s spectrum and communications lab, released a new official code base for the Irregular Terrain Model (ITM) for use by experts and non-experts alike. ITM is the fifth propagation model code base that ITS has released on GitHub. In addition to the C++ propagation model source code, ITS published packages that target the .NET development environment. ITS also code signs its propagation software.