Wireless Telecommunications

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance has joined with the Communications Workers of America and Public Knowledge to submit a “friend of the Court” brief in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a Federal Communications Commission order that preempts municipal authority over the use of public property for 5G wireless deployments. The three organizations’ amicus brief was filed with the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

As the House prepares to take up funding legislation for departments including Commerce and Agriculture, lawmakers are attempting to hitch provisions tackling facial recognition tech, broadband mapping, and 5G. One Republican amendment would slate $90 million for Department of Agriculture to use on broadband buildout in unserved areas. Another would boost f

Apparently, the Justice Department is moving closer to approving T-Mobile’s $26 billion merger with Sprint, but only if the companies sell multiple assets to create a new wireless competitor. The department is pushing T-Mobile and Sprint to sell a prepaid mobile service and valuable radio frequencies that carry data to wireless devices. The companies have approached three internet and television providers — Dish Network, Charter and Altice — about buying Boost Mobile, a prepaid service owned by Sprint, and airwaves owned by Sprint.

Reps Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) introduced the TOWER Infrastructure Deployment Act (HR 3255), bipartisan legislation to help close the workforce shortage in the telecommunications industry. HR 3255 reflects the need for a highly-skilled, professional workforce equipped to deploy 5G, lightning-fast broadband networks, and new broadcast technology. The act: 

A year ago, the Trump Federal Communications Commission announced a proposal to reallocate C-band spectrum for 5G. With much fanfare, the FCC trumpeted a plan to outsource to the satellite companies the process of auctioning these airwaves. Rather than the kind of open and transparent auction process the agency has followed since the first spectrum auction in 1994, the Trump FCC declared it would be “faster” to embrace what they called a “marketplace approach” in which the licensees took over the job traditionally done by the FCC.

Public interest groups and telecommunications experts filed a complaint with the Federal Communication Commission centering on how AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon sold their customers' real-time location data to third parties without those customers' informed consent. The complaint reads:

As the share of Americans who say they own a smartphone has increased dramatically over the past decade – from 35% in 2011 to 81% in 2019 – a new Pew Research Center survey finds that the way many people choose to go online is markedly different than in previous years. Some highlights:

The Senate Commerce Committee held an oversight hearing of the Federal Communications Commission. Some highlights:

Four satellite companies known as the C-Band Alliance have enlisted a spectrum auction expert to develop a plan for an auction of spectrum in the coveted spectrum band known as the C-band.

Thousands of jails and prisons across the US use a company called Securus Technologies to provide and monitor calls to inmates. But the former sheriff of Mississippi County (MO) used a lesser-known Securus service to track people’s cellphones, including those of other officers, without court orders, according to charges filed against him in state and federal court. The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds.