Wireless Telecommunications

In what they characterize as a successful test, Samsung, Qualcomm Technologies and Verizon said they have achieved a mobile 5G speed of 1.7 Gbps using a 400 MHz swath of millimeter wave spectrum in the 28 GHz band. The companies used 5G New Radio (5G NR) compliant equipment and Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access-New Radio Dual Connectivity (EN-DC), which takes advantage of 5G and LTE technology.

Nearly 8 out of 10 smartphone users in the US use their phones to access the internet at home more than or as much as a computer, according to an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll. It's a sign of how much people's online habits have evolved, as smartphones and smart TVs are becoming the primary gateway to internet at home compared to desktops and tablets. More than twice as many people said they use smartphones more often than computers to connect with the internet, compared to those who use computers more often. Other findings:

The Federal Communications Commission released a draft of the appendices to the Communications Marketplace Report. A draft version of the Communications Marketplace Report, scheduled for consideration at the FCC’s December 12, 2018 Open Meeting, was released on November 21, 2018. The appendices include the data collected and analyzed by FCC staff in developing the draft Communications Marketplace Report.

Public Knowledge joined 19 other public interest, rural, Native American, and consumer groups (including the Benton Foundation) in a letter urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to either issue a new Public Notice examining the classification of text messaging and short codes, or to classify both as Title II telecommunications services. 

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit was the first time that journalists were able to see real, consumer 5G devices running on real 5G networks from Verizon and AT&T. On the island of Maui, a handful of 5G devices are available, but  journalists aren’t being allowed to try 5G in any meaningful way.

I’m pleased to note that the Americas region continues to work hard and steadily advance regional proposals for the 2019 International Telecommunication Union World Radio Conference. We are deeply focused on the WRC-19.

Sens Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) are asking the White House to look into whether the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE violated US sanctions by helping Venezuela track and monitor its citizens. The senators write that they are concerned that, by building a database to help Venezuela track its citizens, ZTE "may have violated US export controls and sanctions laws" as well as an agreement between the Commerce Department and ZTE reached earlier in 2018.

In June the Department of Justice released a report that declared a solution to prevent criminal activity from happening within prisons: it successfully tested a jammer that would block mobile signals from smuggled cell phones inside a Maryland prison. Throughout the corrections world the news spread fast.