Wireless Telecommunications

Proponents and opponents of data caps make conflicting claims about the effect of data caps on prices, network capacity and speeds, subscription, congestion, and consumer surplus. In this paper, we survey the academic literature on data caps and analyze the relationship between the characteristics of each paper's model or data and the paper's results.

We find that model or data assumptions about service differentiation, purpose of the data cap, and amount of competition strongly influence each paper's results. Consequently, conclusions about the effect of data caps are often limited to certain types of service providers (fixed or mobile) and/or to certain types of data caps (heavy-users or profit-maximizing). We find that most proponents' claims about data caps in fixed broadband service are incorrect, and that most proponents' claims about data caps in mobile broadband service are likely to be correct if and only if data caps increase competition. We also discuss how data caps may be evaluated under the FCC's 2015 Open Internet Order. We find that heavy-users caps on mobile broadband service are likely to satisfy the Order's rules, that profit-maximizing caps on mobile broadband service may or may not satisfy the rules, and that caps on fixed broadband service are unlikely to satisfy the rules.

[Scott Jordan is associated with the University of California, Irvine]

What kind of spectrum is AT&T looking to as it plots it 5G strategies? “All of it,’’ according to Hank Hultquist, AT&T’s vice president of federal regulatory. And AT&T isn’t alone in taking a holistic view of the role spectrum will play as carriers roll out 5G services and technologies in the coming years.

Indeed, that was the overriding theme during a round table discussion Sept 13 at Mobile World Congress Americas focusing on airwaves and next-generation networks. 5G “is not a particular band; it’s more a weaving together,” said Julie Knapp, chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology. Rather, it will see carriers use a wide variety of wavelengths as they build next-generation networks, using the most appropriate spectrum and antennas in specific areas based on multiple factors.

In many ways, the release of the first iPhone 10 years ago launched the smartphone era. Since then, mobile data consumption has skyrocketed and, in the process, helped turn wireless companies into digital media conglomerates. By the numbers:
Mobile data traffic has experienced a nine-fold increase since 2012 in North America, and it has the highest smartphone and 4G network adoption rates of any region worldwide, according to GSMA.
In 2016, there were 291 million unique wireless subscribers in North America, representing 80% of the region's population.
There are now more mobile subscriptions in the U.S. than people

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the federal government in hopes of curbing the wide-ranging ability of federal agents to search and seize the smartphones and computers of travelers — including US citizens — as they arrive on American soil but have not yet formally entered the country.

The practice, which remains rare but has grown more frequent in recent years, allows agents in border zones such as the arrivals areas of international airports to sidestep the Supreme Court’s landmark Riley decision in 2014 requiring that law enforcement officers get search warrants before examining the contents of digital devices.That ruling grew from the long-running contention by civil rights groups that modern digital devices carry such massive amounts of data and such sensitive records — including photographs, location data, e-mails, videos and Web browsing histories — that they should be afforded full Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures without warrants.

Sept 13's suit demands stricter legal standards for device searches in border areas. They argue that relatively lax rules established for searching luggage or goods bought in duty-free shops should not apply to modern smartphones, tablets and laptop computers routinely carried across borders. The suit says that the number of such searches — conducted by Customs and Border Protection agents, sometimes with the assistance of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has grown sharply in recent years and is on track to hit about 30,000 in the current fiscal year. That remains a tiny fraction of the several hundred million travelers who enter the nation every year.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has put the 20th Wireless Competition Report on the agenda for the FCC’s September Open Meeting. Technically, the Wireless Competition Report is a non-rulemaking agency report to Congress, similar to the many reports the FCC does on everything from the prices paid for cable services to the state of the Satellite industry. But the Wireless Competition Report has become something of a big deal in recent years, owing to the refusal of the FCC since 2010 to find whether or not there is “effective competition” in the wireless industry.

Chairman Pai is now putting it back at the Commission level and the Report is once again finding that we have “effective competition” — whatever that means. So it seems like a good time to run through the Wireless Competition Report, what it is, what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and how it gets used and/or abused. And, of course, how it relates to network neutrality, since everything in the world relates to net neutrality these days.

Today, we find ourselves nearing another possible hinge moment. We’ve seen remarkable progress, but it feels like we’re still waiting for another huge breakthrough. Well, 5G could well be what we’re waiting for.

Going from 2G to 3G was the mobile equivalent of switching from dial-up to broadband. Similarly, the transition from 4G to 5G promises to be more than just incremental change— we could see dramatic improvements in network speed, capacity, and responsiveness that will make the impossible possible. One analysis by CTIA suggests that 5G could create three million jobs and over $500 billion in additional GDP growth over seven years in the United States.

The US leads most of the world in both hardware and networks, according to new research the GSMA wireless industry group released. In what GSMA calls “North America” (U.S. and Canada, but dominated by the U.S.), 78% of people with phones own smartphones. (Which begs the question: Who are all those people with flip models?) The region closest to North America is Europe, with just 60% smartphone ownership. And 266 million Americans had at least one mobile service subscription—in a country with a total population—including children—of 326 million.

The US tops the planet in fast wireless: From 2011 to 2012, 4G coverage jumped from reaching 35% to 90% of the US population. (Apple’s first 4G-capable phone, the iPhone 5, came out in September 2012.) Today, 99% of Americans can access 4G, according to the report (although I know plenty of backroads where they can’t); and 63% of people with phones have 4G/LTE service. 5G is expected to take off just as quickly. With widespread launch in 2019 (led by AT&T and Verizon), 39% of U.S. customers will be able to get 5G service; by 2025, it will be 82%.

Federal Communications Commission officials conducted a webinar explaining how proposed Connect America Fund (CAF) II auction rules would work. The auction will award funding to help cover the cost of deploying broadband in unserved rural areas. It is expected to take place in 2018, officials said. The rules discussed were proposed in a public notice adopted in Aug. Interested parties have until September 17 to comment on the public notice, with reply comments due October 17.

The CAF II auction is a reverse auction, meaning that funding, in general, is designed to go to the service provider that offers to provide service at the lowest level of support (with some caveats). The maximum amount of support that any service provider will receive in the CAF II auction, also known as the “reserve price,” is the amount of support that was previously rejected by the incumbent price cap carrier. Collectively, the price cap carriers accepted the majority of funding offered, but up to nearly $2 billion (up to $200 million annually for 10 years) remains to be awarded for parts of 20 states. The FCC previously established weighting factors for the auction, designed to incentivize service providers to deliver higher-speed service with low latency.

For the first time since 2009, the Federal Communications Commission has concluded there is “effective competition” in the US wireless market.

The agency is required by law to conduct an economic analysis of the sector. Starting in 2010, after years of major consolidation among wireless carriers, the FCC declined to say whether it believed the industry was competitive. While the FCC had stopped short of declaring the industry noncompetitive, many industry observers still took it to mean the agency thought the nation’s largest carriers, AT&T and Verizon Communications, were too powerful. In 2011, the government blocked AT&T’s attempted buyout of T-Mobile US. Since then, T-Mobile and Sprint Corp. have been resurgent, stealing subscribers and transforming the industry by doing away with two-year contracts and bringing back unlimited data plans. AT&T and Verizon have lost customers and wireless prices have fallen by the largest margins on record, according to government data.

The FCC’s finding could have antitrust implications. If the wireless market is competitive, regulators may believe it could withstand another large merger. The nation’s smaller players, Sprint and T-Mobile, have been in talks about combining, people familiar with the matter have said. “A finding of effective competition certainly helps rhetorically for those trying to consolidate or trying to deregulate,” Harold Feld, a senior vice president at Public Knowledge.

A pair of senators want to make sure the public that relies increasingly on mobile devices for can access government websites. Sens Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) introduced the Connected Government Act to the Senate last week. The bill would mandate all new federal websites be mobile-friendly, and would also call upon the General Services Administration to report agency compliance to Congress within 18 months of enactment. The bill is the Senate companion to House legislation introduced in May by Rep Robin Kelly (D-IL) and co-sponsor Rep Frank Pallone (D-NJ). The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is scheduled to consider the House version on Sept 13.