Wireless Telecommunications

If regulators approve their merger proposal, Sprint and T-Mobile promise to offer in-home internet services to roughly 9.5 million American households by 2024, or about 13% of the country. The company said that figure would give it a market penetration of around 7%, making it the nation’s fourth largest in-home ISP based on current subscriber counts.

T-Mobile and Sprint have filed with the Federal Communications Commission for approval of their proposed merger, and promised in their public interest statement that the deal would create more jobs, more choice in video and business service, and world-class 5G service, while lowering consumer prices and helping close the rural high-speed divide. They said the goal is to beat AT&T and Verizon, not emulate them. They pointed to Verizon and AT&T getting into other businesses, saying that is not their strategy. 

Verizon is pledging to stop selling information on phone owners’ locations to data brokers, stepping back from a business practice that has drawn criticism for endangering privacy. The data has allowed outside companies to pinpoint the location of wireless devices without their owners’ knowledge or consent. Verizon said that about 75 companies have been obtaining its customer data from two little-known CA-based brokers that Verizon supplies directly — LocationSmart and Zumigo.

AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner will create a media conglomerate that combines premium content with a vast distribution network to deliver it to consumers. One of its first experiments in marrying the two will be a "skinny bundle" called AT&T Watch, providing Time Warner content (minus sports) to mobile customers.

The Federal Communications Commission has opened a comment docket on the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger and signaled the deal is about to be filed with the commission. The two wireless companies announced April 29 that they had struck a deal to merge that valued the combined company at $146 billion (including debt). It is only the latest in a flurry of merger activity, from the approval of the AT&T-Time Warner deal by a federal judge to Comcast's announced play for 21st Century Fox assets.  The FCC has even set up its 180-day shot clock on the proposed T-Mobile-Sprint meld, though it w

This has been, perhaps, one of the most important weeks in the history of the Internet. On June 11, the repeal of net neutrality consumer protections went into effect, laying the regulatory groundwork for large Internet service providers to (transparently) favor some (their own) content. On June 12, a court approved a huge combination of content with a major internet service provider. We can do the math.

AT&T and San Jose (CA) have added a public-private partnership to their existing small cell agreement. The new agreement calls for San Jose to trial AT&T's smart city solutions. AT&T's digital infrastructure, which the company has described as a "smartphone for cities," is connected hardware with integrated sensors that can be attached to lamp posts to capture information about the environment. AT&T said the solutions it plans to trial with San Jose may include LED smart lighting, public Wi-Fi, digital infrastructure and structure monitoring.

There's finally a finished 5G standard. The 3GPP — the international group that governs cellular standards — officially signed off on the standalone 5G New Radio (NR) spec. It’s another major step toward next-generation cellular networks finally becoming a reality. There’s still more work to be done to finalize things. The real work will be waiting for the entire industry to build the hardware, infrastructure, chips, modems, phones, and antennas that will actually work with 5G. Don’t forget the massive undertaking of actually rolling out those new networks across the globe.

We are in the midst of a global race to 5G. There is a lot at stake in winning this race. Being first to 5G could mean three million new jobs, half a trillion dollars added to the GDP, and $275 billion of private sector investment—all without a penny of new taxes. We want that. But our friends and competitors in Europe and Asia want that too. So how are we going to win this race? The good news is that we don’t need to invent a new strategy—we already know the winning playbook. Just as we did with 4G, we have to focus on two things: spectrum and infrastructure.

The White House pushed back on legislative efforts to reverse President Donald Trump’s deal with China that eases penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE, helping to revive the company. White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley defended the administration's agreement to impose lessened penalties on the company, maintaining that the punishment was "massive" and "historic." “This will ensure ZTE pays for its violations and gives our government complete oversight of their future activity without undue harm to American suppliers and their workers," Gidley said.