Wireless Telecommunications

As it looks at 2025 and beyond to 2030, the telecommunications industry is expected to work to keep cutting costs, keep capital expenditures under control, monetize their past investments, and use mergers and acquisitions to drive value. Growth-oriented companies will likely also find ways to grow revenues faster than core connectivity growth would suggest. However, the market for telecommunications is rapidly evolving.

US cable companies Comcast and Charter Communications have long suggested that they will build their own small-scale public wireless networks using their 3.5GHz CBRS spectrum holdings. Doing so, according to the companies, will help them reduce their MVNO payments to Verizon.

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following T-Mobile’s 5G expansion into small towns and rural areas of the U.S., but Ookla made it official this week, crowning T-Mobile the leader for its 5G coverage in rural areas.

Ericsson’s analyst and media day at County Hall on the banks of the River Thames in London, England last week heralded a significant shift — not just for the Swedish vendor, but for the entire communications industry.  “We are at an inflection point,” Erik Ekudden, Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), pointed out in his opening remarks. After a sticky start, carriers have recognized the value of 5G and are finally starting to successfully monetize it in new ways beyond just selling capacity, moving beyond POCs (proofs of concept) to launching revenue-generating services.

In an age of platforms, apps, and streaming services, telecommunications policy has a distinctly antiquated ring. Conventionally associated with POTS—plain old telephone systems—telecommunications policy, some might say, is decidedly not about PANS—pretty awesome new stuff. However, both POTS and PANS depend on a global infrastructural backbone of fiber optic cables, satellites, spectrum, and networks to bring the digital age to people’s homes, offices, and mobile phones.

Having reached much of their 5G coverage and capacity goals in the urban and suburban areas of the U.S. in 2023, the big-three national U.S. wireless operators have turned their attention toward expanding their 5G networks into rural markets. This strategy is intended to help operators acquire new subscribers, particularly as growth in the urban and suburban markets has slowed. But the big three U.S. wireless operators have taken very different approaches when it comes to expanding their 5G networks into less-densely populated areas. 

Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

If you know anything about Brightspeed, it’s been all about building fiber broadband.

Spectrum for Broadband Competition officially launched, bringing together a coalition of industry leaders to advocate for spectrum policies that foster increased competition, consumer choice and innovation in the home broadband market. The coalition also launched its first campaign, ‘End the Cableopoly,’ highlighting the cable industry’s attempts to undermine competition from 5G home broadband by starving wireless providers of the spectrum needed to expand access and help close the digital divide. The coalition’s founding members include 5G Americas and CTIA.

T-Mobile announced it was throwing open the doors to its satellite messaging beta test — powered by Elon Musk’s Starlink — for free until July 2025. The twist? You don’t even need to be an existing T-Mobile customer to try it. “If you see the sky, you can connect,” said Mike Katz, T-Mobile’s president of marketing, strategy and products, in an interview.