Wireless Telecommunications

The 5G Spectrum Act of 2019 (S. 2881) would amend existing law regarding the disposition of offsetting receipts from an auction of licenses to use a section of electromagnetic spectrum often called the C-band. Under the bill, the Federal Communications Commission would be authorized to spend, without further appropriation, up to 50 percent of the auction proceeds to compensate current users and another 10 percent for programs that support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in rural areas.

President Donald Trump says he wants America to win the race to the fast new wireless future. He took it seriously enough to sign a presidential memorandum setting a deadline of July 2019 for a new national strategy on allocating the airwaves. That deadline came and went with no strategy in sight. In September, a Commerce Department undersecretary promised that the strategy was still on the way, telling a gathering of government officials that it would be released in the fall. A Commerce official said that the department did indeed deliver a draft to the White House.

A Q&A with Robert Blair, senior advisor to the White House Chief of Staff. His new challenge: help further Trump’s global aims on 5G, including an ongoing campaign to prevent America’s allies from relying on Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. “One of the messages that I want to bring to people is: Take a breath,” Blair says. “The Chinese are not winning this race.”

Can Americans actually get 5G? The rollout of high-speed 5G hinges on a mix of domestic and global telecommunications policies, many of which still need to be resolved. US carriers need larger swaths of airwaves to transmit all that data, and new technology to make the most of their existing bandwidth. The highest 5G speeds will also require far more transmitters—think small antennas on every city block, not occasional towers. And on the global stage, 5G standards are still being hashed out by the world’s economic powers. Not all 5G is created equal.

It’ll be years before most people have 5G phones and a super-fast network to connect them, but the future of mobile technology is shaping up right now. Behind the promises lie some big government decisions about what to prioritize, how to compete, and how fast to move. As citizens and consumers, whether they know it or not, people are being asked to weigh convenience against privacy, national competitiveness against national security, and speed against price.

Technology now is creating and disrupting on shorter and shorter cycles.  It is breaking down old ways of doing business and introducing fresh competition. More than ever, technology is upending markets in which the status quo thrived for decades. In the face of all this change, however, some in government succumb to paralysis by analysis. This is a real danger that regulators—particularly those overseeing the telecom sector—must avoid.  While we rightly want to understand the impact that new technologies will have, too often “careful deliberation” is little more than code for indefinite in

The tech world is closely watching President Donald Trump’s two-day visit to India, which could have implications for digital trade, 5G and other policy areas. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is part of the US delegation in tow. “We will be discussing issues of mutual interest like 5G and bridging the digital divide,” Chairman Pai said in a video he shared via Twitter, “and we will aim to deepen the friendship between the world’s oldest democracy and its largest.”

In the race to dominate 5G, the Pentagon is the force causing the most concern. The most coveted piece of spectrum is the “mid-band,” a set of frequencies that can carry far more data than current cellphone signals. Since the 1960s, rights over much of the mid-band have been claimed by government agencies, most notably the Department of Defense, which says it needs to use mid-band waves for research and military communications.

AT&T's mandatory-arbitration clause is unenforceable in a class-action case over AT&T's throttling of unlimited data, a panel of US appeals court judges ruled. The nearly five-year-old case has gone through twists and turns, with AT&T's forced-arbitration clause initially being upheld in March 2016.

A new US Department of Agriculture initiative, the Agriculture Innovation Agenda, aims to align resources, programs and research to position American agriculture to better meet future global demands. Although the USDA doesn’t specifically reference broadband as one of those resources, it would seem highly likely that the initiative – if successful — could fuel broadband usage and deployment.