Wireless Telecommunications

Public broadcasters are reacting with disappointment to a Federal Communications Commission decision that will give cellular providers access to a swath of spectrum previously reserved for use by educational entities. The FCC’s July 10 vote affects the Educational Broadband Service spectrum, a portion of the 2.5 GHz band that the commission designated for noncommercial use in 1962.

Europe is host to a fiercely competitive environment of stakeholders all wanting to prove they can deploy 5G first. Obstacles such as spectrum auctions in some countries remain, but the region's networks have shown that when necessary, they can accelerate their own plans to catch up and keep pace with industry leaders around the world. One trend so far among European networks is the bundling of unlimited data with extra products or services, such as home broadband, or unlimited data reserved specifically for gaming or video streaming.

T-Mobile, Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson have completed what they say is the first 5G low-band data session on a commercial 5G modem. The 5G 600 MHz session was conducted at T-Mobile’s lab in Bellevue (WA). The 600 MHz spectrum band is what T-Mobile will use for its nationwide 5G rollout. “This is a key step toward achieving our vision of 5G for All,” said T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray. “This modem will power devices that tap into the 600 MHz low-band spectrum we’ll use to blanket the country with 5G."

The Federal Communications Commission held its monthly open meeting on July 10. We gave a preview of the meeting a few weeks back. There were eight items in total in the action-packed agenda, but we’re going to unpack a few of the actions that are especially relevant to open, affordable, high-capacity broadband in the U.S. 

Tensions over 5G have come to a head within the Trump administration, prompting Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to convene a high-level White House meeting to hammer out policy disputes between government agencies.

“We must move aggressively to help consumers combat scam robocalls that use and abuse caller ID spoofing, and that’s why we held today’s summit. The summit was productive, and we received generally encouraging signs that companies are headed toward full implementation of the SHAKEN/STIR caller ID authentication framework. I was pleased to hear from voice service providers, vendors, consumer advocates, and others about the successes to date and the challenges that remain.

No matter how you look at it, mobile network performance has improved in the US thus far in 2019. In Q1-Q2 2019, the US ranked 40th in the world for mean download speed over mobile, which positions the country between Spain and Saudi Arabia. Mean download speed over mobile in the US increased 24.0% between the same quarter in 2018, to 33.88 Mbps. This raised the US three spots in world rankings for mobile download speed over the prior year. The US ranked 94th for mean upload speed, between Angola and Poland.