Wireless Telecommunications

When it comes our August meeting’s main attraction, repurposing C-band spectrum for 5G, we feel the need — the need for speed. I circulated final draft procedures for a C-band auction to be held on Dec 8, 2020, and we will vote on them at our August meeting. They spell out the many details of the auction — competitive bidding procedures, application requirements, and deadlines governing participation in Auction 107. To spur the deployment of ultra-fast, world-leading 5G networks, we need to make C-band spectrum (among other spectrum bands) available as quickly as possible.

Wireless equipment provider Nokia expects the International Telecommunications Union to begin work on defining the next generation of wireless technology to be known as 6G in 2021. But the company already has some ideas of its own about what 6G should look like. Nokia visionaries see the technology supporting peak speeds of 1,000 Gbps, and they see service being deployed in the terahertz (THz) band, which is even higher frequency than the multi-gigahertz (GHz) millimeter wave bands that are being pioneered for 5G.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US will impose visa restrictions on Chinese technology firms, the latest move expected to strain relations between Washington and Beijing. “State Department will impose visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese tech companies like Huawei, that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally,” Sec Pompeo said.

National Advertising Division (NAD), an advertising self-regulatory monitor, claims that Verizon has agreed to discontinue claims in two TV ads about the speed and availability of its 5G wireless network.

Apparently, Britain will bar new deployments of Huawei equipment in its fledgling high-speed 5G network, in what is a major blow to the Chinese technology giant and a significant win for the Trump administration, which has been pressing allies to shun the firm. The British decision, expected to be announced July 14, is part of a growing shift away from China in the global 5G competition, especially among advanced democracies increasingly concerned that the firm’s ties to the Communist government create an unacceptable security risk.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that the post-incentive auction transition has successfully reached the July 13, 2020 deadline established for television stations to move off their pre-auction channel assignments. This milestone signals that all of the valuable low-band airwaves sold in the ground-breaking broadcast incentive auction are now available for wireless mobile broadband services. This newly licensed 600 MHz band spectrum is already benefiting millions of US consumers, as it is being used to provide wireless service, including 5G, across the country.

To meet the booming demand for mobile broadband that was being fueled by the smartphone revolution, Congress empowered the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a first-of-its-kind, two-sided auction that would allow spectrum used for broadcast TV to be repurposed for wireless services. In April 2017, we closed the bidding in the incentive auction, which yielded $19.8 billion in revenue. Roughly $10 billion went to broadcasters as incentive payments for giving up their spectrum.

The Commerce Department, as statutorily obligated by a recent law, sought feedback on how to best implement an administration 5G security strategy and has now posted all its comments. Around 80 parties weighed in, from the city of New York to companies like AT&T, Qualcomm and Ligado.

Speedtest Intelligence reveals AT&T was the fastest mobile operator in the US in Q2 2020 with a Speed Score of 41.23 on modern chipsets in competitive geographies. T-Mobile was the second fastest, Sprint third and Verizon Wireless fourth. Although Sprint merged with T-Mobile earlier in 2020, Ookla considered the companies’ performance separately as the networks have not been fully integrated. We will combine their results when the integration is complete.

Verizon has completed the first data session on its new 5G standalone core and plans to start shifting mobile traffic over later in 2020. All US carriers have deployed 5G networks in non-standalone (NSA) mode, which relies on a 4G LTE anchor. With 5G standalone that’s no longer the case. With a 5G core implemented, it means Verizon can start introducing key 5G technologies, like network slicing to enable new use cases. The carrier expects full commercialization of its 5G standalone core in 2021.