Wireless Telecommunications

Verizon scored another win on the spectrum front, securing early approval from US federal antitrust authorities to move ahead with plans to acquire 28 GHz spectrum from NextLink Wireless. A brief note posted on the Federal Trade Commission's website indicated federal regulators granted Verizon early termination of the waiting period implemented on deals under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. That means the carrier now has the green light to proceed with its NextLink transaction.

The issue of license transfer from NextLink to Verizon is now before the Federal Communications Commission. Back in February, Verizon wrapped up its deal to acquire fiber assets from XO Communications. But that transaction also included an agreement to lease millimeter wave wireless spectrum from XO affiliate NextLink Wireless, with the option to buy “under certain circumstances.” And it seems Verizon was eager to get the ball rolling on a NextLink acquisition. NextLink gives Verizon access to a significant number of 28 GHz spectrum licenses in and around major cities across the country, including New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington (DC), Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Miami, and Portland.

Rivada Networks might have lost the FirstNet contract to AT&T, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still in the game. Led by co-CEOs Declan Ganley and former Sprint CFO Joe Euteneuer, Rivada Networks continues to respond to states that issue RFPs seeking input from vendors willing to build and maintain a statewide public safety LTE radio access network (RAN) that would be interoperable with FirstNet’s network. While FirstNet as an organization wants to see all the states opt in to the network it’s creating with AT&T, the law said states must be given the option to opt out. According to Ganley, that’s an important piece of the entire FirstNet endeavor. Spectrum was specifically allocated to FirstNet in part because public safety wanted to move away from the “stove piping” of the past where one vendor dominated. Moving to the inherently open LTE standard provided a way to do that.

The Supreme Court next term will decide whether law enforcement authorities need a warrant to track a suspect through his cellphone records, justices announced June 5. The case seeks to resolve a digital-age question that has divided lower courts relying on past Supreme Court precedents about privacy.

“Only this court can provide the guidance they seek about whether and how a doctrine developed long before the digital age applies to the voluminous and sensitive digital records at issue here,” wrote American Civil Liberties Union lawyers representing Timothy Carpenter. Investigating a string of armed robberies in the Midwest in 2010 and 2011, a prosecutor sought access to more than five months of historical cellphone location records for Carpenter, his lawyers said. Law enforcement officials did not seek warrants based on probable cause, but asked for the records under the Stored Communications Act.

As we move from the networks of today to those of tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission wants to work collaboratively with everyone affected—particularly Tribal partners. That’s why, later in June, I’ll hit the road to discuss this transition with Tribal Nations. Some FCC coworkers and I have been kindly invited to attend the Mid-Year Session of the National Conference of American Indians (NCAI), which is the “oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization” serving Tribal interests. We’ll be participating in consultation sessions with a number of Tribes (and in addition to these NCAI sessions, dedicated FCC staff are already doing outreach to Tribes on both conference calls and visits to Indian Country).

I believe that the FCC and Tribal Nations share the same goal—ensuring high-speed Internet access to anyone who wants it, while respecting and preserving sites with historic, religious, and cultural significance to Tribes. To achieve this goal, the FCC needs to and wants to exchange perspectives with Tribes on the full range of issues associated with the deployment of wireless broadband infrastructure. I invite the leaders of the 567 federally-recognized Tribes and Native Hawaiian Organizations to join this important conversation.

As a long-time political activist, Malkia Cyril knows how smartphones helped fuel Black Lives Matter protests with outraged tweets and viral video. But now Cyril is having second thoughts about her iPhone. Is it a friend or a foe?

For all of the power of smartphones as organizing tools, the many streams of data they emit also are a boon to police wielding high-tech surveillance gear, allowing them to potentially track movements and communications that activists such as Cyril would rather keep private. Such worries are driving a nationwide push by Cyril and other activists to train members of their movement in the tactics of digital defense — something they say is crucial with an aggressive new president who has displayed little sympathy for their causes.

What’s the next Wi-Fi frontier? And how can we tap into it for public good? A key band of airwaves that companies are seeking is the unused spectrum in lower frequencies that sit between TV channels. The spectrum in the gaps between bands of airwaves reserved for broadcast television offers prime real estate for companies seeking to bolster connectivity. Those unused bands of airwaves, known as “TV white spaces” (TVWS), are a target for Microsoft in particular. The company recently introduced a program to bring free Internet access to rural families to help bridge the “homework gap” in Charlotte and Halifax counties in southern Virginia.

In 2016, New America’s Open Technology Institute also urged the Federal Communications Commission to allow schools to leverage TVWS to give students lacking broadband at home remote access to the school’s high-capacity broadband, which would be subsidized by the federal E-Rate program.

Licensed spectrum remains perhaps the most important building block in the wireless industry. As a result, nationwide carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint are eager to both obtain suitable spectrum holdings across the country, and to use those spectrum licenses in the most effective way possible. But where exactly do these nationwide carriers own spectrum? And what type of spectrum do they own? And how much?

To answer these questions, FierceWireless has once again partnered with Allnet Insights & Analytics, a wireless spectrum research and analysis firm, to map out exactly how much spectrum each of the four Tier 1 nationwide US wireless carriers currently owns. Also included in this list is Dish Network, which for the past several years has been quietly accumulating a war chest of spectrum that today almost rivals that of T-Mobile. These maps and charts include all pending spectrum transactions filed before April 30, 2017 (the FCC reviews all license spectrum transactions). Importantly, these maps and charts also include the results of the FCC’s recently completed incentive auction of TV broadcasters’ unwanted 600 MHz licenses. For complete details on the results of that auction, click here. Allnet Insights' data also includes the spectrum AT&T is getting access to through its partnership with FirstNet.

Nearly six in 10 (58%) of mobile users in a nationwide mobile data plan survey would switch mobile services providers if they had more choice and control regarding how they used their data. That includes those with unlimited mobile data plans, according to the survey conducted by digital commerce technology provider Matrixx Software. Yet more revealing, more than half said they would switch data plans at least once a month if they could choose the plan they believe best meets their needs. Some said they would do so as often as once a day.

On May 31 T-Mobile will launch Digits, a revamp of how T-Mobile phone numbers work, virtualizing customer numbers so they can work across multiple devices.

It sounds a lot like Google Voice—rather than having a phone number tied to a single SIM card or a device, numbers are now account-based, and you can "log in" to your phone number on several devices. T-Mobile says the new phone number system will work "across virtually all connected devices," allowing multiple phones, tablets, and PCs to get texts and calls. This means T-Mobile needs apps across all those platforms, with the press release citing "native seamless integration" in Samsung Android phones, Android and iOS apps, and a browser interface for PCs. The new phone number system is free to all T-Mobile customers. Customers can also buy an extra phone number for $10 or by signing up to the $5-per-month "T-Mobile One Plus" package, which is a bundle of extra features like a mobile hotspot and in-flight Wi-Fi. Here, the "extra number" use case matches what Google Voice users have been doing for years: a personal and business number, or a number to give to online sales sites like Craigslist, or an easily dumpable number for your Tinder dates.

[Commentary] When the government engages in prospective cell-site surveillance, it obtains a court order requiring a cell provider to provide the phone’s location at that moment in “real time.” That contrasts with collection of historical cell-site records, when the government obtains a court order requiring the provider to hand over stored records retained by a cell provider in the ordinary course of business from some time in the past. Although every circuit court and state supreme court to rule on historical cell-site collection has concluded it is not a search, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Tracey v. Florida that prospective cell-site surveillance is a search. Importantly, Tracey went out of its way to say that it was ruling only on prospective surveillance and not on historical collection. On May 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in United States v. Wallace that the reasoning of its precedents on historical collection applies equally to prospective cell-site surveillance. In Wallace, the Texas Department of Safety had a warrant out for the arrest of a gang member. The police knew the suspect’s cell phone number, so they obtained what the opinion calls a “Ping Order” authorizing the police to determine the locations of cell site towers being accessed by a number.

[Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School]