Industry officials say they’re hearing little about when the FCC will approve final rules for the 5.9 GHz band. FCC commissioners approved an order in November 2020 opening 45 MHz of the band for Wi-Fi, while allocating 30 MHz for cellular vehicle-to-everything technology. Follow-up work remains.
Martin Cooper, known as the inventor of the cellphone as a Motorola technologist, is a skeptic of wireless industry arguments about a pending spectrum crisis. The world “is just at the beginning of the cellular revolution,” he said on a Cooley webinar Thursday, interviewed by former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. The standard story is that spectrum “is like beachfront property -- when you use it all up, there isn’t anymore,” Cooper said. “How can that be true?” When Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated the first radio, he used all the available spectrum for most of the world, Cooper said. Fifty years later “we had a million times more capacity, and believe it or not, another 50 years” later “and we did another million times,” he said: “Somehow or other, technology has stayed ahead of the game forever, and we have never had a scarcity of spectrum.” The technology already exists to make much more efficient use of spectrum, he said. The challenge “is to change our perception of spectrum, to get people to understand that we’ve got to … share the spectrum,” he said. McDowell noted Cooper developed what some call “Cooper’s Law,” that spectral efficiency doubles every 30 months and becomes exponential over time. Cooper’s wife, Arlene Harris, who co-founded wireless technology company Dyna with him in 1986, said on the webinar the expiration of the FCC’s auction authority in March could be a good thing for the wireless industry. “Good for Congress -- let’s starve the carriers,” Harris said. The carriers will then have to put pressure on their suppliers to develop technological solutions to capacity issues, she said. The technology Cooper developed in the 1990s “would have improved [network] capacity a ton, and yet the commission goes off and sells more spectrum -- the carriers had no reason to implement that technology,” Harris said: “They were buying spectrum and parking it.” Cooper envisions a world without exclusive licenses for spectrum. Allocations would be done “on the fly,” he said. Someone who wants to make a call would ask for a channel “and that channel is created instantaneously over the optimum frequency, the optimum amount of power,” he said: “We reconfigure as things change. That is the way systems should work. We are a long way away from that today, but that is how we’re going to get another million times capacity in spectrum capacity, and it’s all doable” with the right processing, smart antennas and other technology. The government is going to have to convince carriers to share spectrum, which won’t be easy, he said. “Carriers today think they own the spectrum -- they don’t own the spectrum, they have a license to use it,” Cooper said.
With earnings season getting underway and the major wireless carriers set to report results starting with Verizon July 25, AT&T was down 4.10% Friday to $14.50/share after J.P. Morgan analyst Philip Cusick downgraded the company. "Based on recent commentary from management lowering estimates for wireless (in May and again in June) and broadband (in June), we believe AT&T is facing marginally more pressure in Mobility (from Verizon, T-Mobile, and cable) and Consumer Wireline (from cable, [fixed wireless access]) as well as ongoing pressures in Business Wireline," Cusick told investors. He predicted AT&T will grow its postpaid subscriber base by 2.5% this year, compared with 4.7% in 2021 and 3.5% in 2022. Cusick lowered his rating on AT&T to neutral from overweight and cut his per-share price target to $17 from $22. AT&T Chief Financial Officer Pascal Desroches warned last month the carrier expects net postpaid phone adds in the 300,000 range this quarter, compared with 424,000 in Q1 (see 2306200026). Meanwhile, Finland's Nokia cut its annual outlook Friday, and Sweden’s Ericsson reported lower quarterly profits due to a slowdown in consumer spending. Nokia now projects $26 billion-$27.6 billion in sales this year, down from $27.6 billion-$29.4 billion. “The weaker demand outlook in the second half is due to both the macro-economic environment and customers’ inventory digestion,” Nokia said: “Customer spending plans are increasingly impacted by high inflation and rising interest rates along with some projects now slipping to 2024 -- notably in North America. There is also inventory normalization happening at customers after the supply chain challenges of the past two years.” Ericsson reported overall sales dropped 9% year-over-year as it lost $67.2 million, primarily due to restructuring charges. The company cited a “sharp decline in sales in North America … partly offset by strong sales" in India, which is now deploying 5G. “As we've said before, 2023 is a choppy year and Q2 developed much in line with our expectations and what we have said to the market,” CEO Borje Ekholm told analysts. India “continued its strong development and network rollout, and by delivering a record build-out, we now have the leading market share” there, he said: “As expected, we saw a softening in other markets, primarily front-running 5G markets and that includes, of course, North America.” Ekholm noted world data traffic continues to grow. “In addition, we see that 3/4ths of all base station sites outside of China are not yet updated with 5G mid-band, so this, in combination with the migration to 5G stand-alone, will basically continue to drive the need for investments in 5G networks,” he said. Ericsson expects a “gradual recovery” in late 2023, with improvements next year.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel opened a Thursday FCC workshop on AI saying she sees more reason to be hopeful about what the technology can do than pessimistic about potential threats. Commissioner Nathan Simington warned against reactive regulation of AI. The National Science Foundation co-sponsored the forum.
The use of AI and other technologies in managing how spectrum is used tops the agenda for the FCC’s Aug. 3 meeting, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Thursday (see 2307130025). The FCC also released the draft items. Commissioners will vote on proposals on power levels for digital FM radio. Also on the agenda, a draft order establishing an up to $75 monthly broadband subsidy for eligible households in high-cost areas through the affordable connectivity program.
The House Communications Subcommittee unanimously approved the NTIA Reauthorization Act (HR-4510), the Spectrum Relocation Enhancement Act (HR-3430) and two other telecom bills in a show of bipartisan cooperation Wednesday, promoting the authority of the NTIA (see 2307110079).
The FCC was in the hot seat Tuesday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral argument in League of California Cities v. FCC (case 20-71765) on a challenge to a wireless siting declaratory ruling approved in June 2020 under former Chairman Ajit Pai (see 2006090060).
Industry observers expect the FCC's Thursday forum on AI to be mostly an information gathering session as the agency focuses on one of the hot topics of the year but said questions remain about how large a role, or even what role, the FCC could play in rapidly emerging field. The AI forum is the agency's first since 2018 (see 1811300051).
The FCC appears unlikely to grant T-Mobile special temporary authority to launch service in the markets where it won licenses in last year’s 2.5 GHz auction, which ended almost a year ago. The agency declined to award the licenses, or grant a STA, after its auction authority expired earlier this year (see 2304260058).
Industry groups supported a March petition by the Competitive Carriers Association seeking tweaks to the FCC’s 911 outage reporting rules, approved 4-0 by commissioners last year (see 2211170051). APCO and the Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority (BRETSA) opposed the petition in the initial comment round (see 2306270045). But most groups waited for the reply round to weigh in.