NTIA Senior Spectrum Adviser Scott Harris assured the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee Friday that work on the long-anticipated national spectrum strategy is starting (see 2301090035). Meanwhile, CSMAC unanimously approved a report by its Ultra-Wideband Subcommittee, which recommends better collaboration between NTIA and the FCC on UWB waivers.
All groups and companies that filed urged the FCC to act on service rules allowing use of the 5030-5091 MHz band by drones. The FCC sought comment in a long-awaited January NPRM (see 2301040046), and comments were due Thursday in docket 22-232. Pilots, public safety agencies, NAB, the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radio Frequencies (CORF) and others raised concerns on how the FCC proceeds.
Tower companies are looking to diversify their revenue streams as 5G unfolds, experts said during a Network Media Group webinar Thursday. The rollout of 5G presents “both challenges and opportunities for tower companies, including the need for infrastructure upgrades, competition in a highly regulated industry and potential for diversifying revenue streams,” said Will Townsend, Moor Insights principal analyst-networking.
The biggest takeaway from the Mobile World Congress for Neville Ray, T-Mobile president-technology, is that fixed wireless access has “arrived,” he said Tuesday during a Morgan Stanley investors conference. In the past 18 months, T-Mobile has added 2.6 million 5G FWA customers. “Many folks are looking at us, and to a slightly lesser extent Verizon” on “how we've driven 5G network capability into new business,” Ray said. Operators globally are “trying to figure out what's that fixed wireless access formula,” he said. T-Mobile is exploring ways to use its millimeter-wave spectrum as part of its home broadband offering, but that will require the development of customer premise equipment and antennas installed outside the home, Ray said. “There's more complexity in the solution -- there's a truck roll and so on,” he said: “But we're getting very confident now we can make those economics work.” Ray noted T-Mobile added 10,000 cellsites to its network from Sprint, but overall has decommissioned 30,000 since the Sprint deal three years ago. T-Mobile doesn’t decommission a cellsite without a lot of thought, he said. “We were looking forward multiple years into what we think we need” and “we believe we have that footprint,” he said. Ray is leaving the carrier in the fall (see 2302130068), to be replaced by Chief Network Officer Ulf Ewaldsson. “We built this network site by site … MHz by MHz, generation at a time, 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G,” he said. The years since the Sprint buy have been “the most rewarding period in my career” and T-Mobile is no longer the “scrappy underdog,” Ray said.
Verizon is in good shape to “manage through" a tough economy and is returning to basics in its consumer offerings, Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis said Tuesday at a Morgan Stanley investor conference. “The view on the macro picture has continued to change … depending on the day of the week,” Ellis said: “The consumer is in good shape overall,” he said. “We continue to see payment patterns that are very much in line with what we saw pre-pandemic.” Ellis, who's leaving Verizon in May, cited the appointment last week of Sowmyanarayan Sampath as CEO of Verizon Consumer Group (see 2303030042) in saying there have been times when “we've got distracted by trying to do too many things at once,” Ellis said. “You'll see Sampath getting very much back to the basics of what made Verizon Wireless the biggest and best performing carrier in the U.S.,” and “we feel good about what we saw in the second half of the year,” he said. Verizon’s lower-cost “Welcome Unlimited Plan” has been helpful in driving growth, Ellis said: The plan “gave us the opportunity to advertise at a lower price point, drive foot traffic into the stores. And then we challenge our store teams to say, ‘Hey, if a customer really wants that plan, we'll absolutely sell that plan for them. But let's tell them about all our other plans.’” Verizon’s C-band spectrum has been turned on in 76 of 406 markets, starting with dense, urban areas, he said. “Our customers are liking what they're seeing” in those markets, he said.
5G is moving closer to maturity, based on what they saw and heard at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, industry executives said during a TelecomTV webinar Tuesday. Questions remain about how to monetize 5G and about the future of open radio access networks, speakers said.
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington questioned the need for the FCC to revisit net neutrality rules, during a keynote interview at the State of the Net conference Monday. Simington asked whether the U.S. doesn't “have de facto net neutrality at this moment.” It’s unclear what to do on net neutrality when it already exists, he said.
The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was a success this year, with large numbers of people returning for the first time since 2019, said GSMA Ltd. CEO John Hoffman during a session Thursday, the conference's final day. GSMA reported attendance of 88,500, from 202 countries and territories. That’s fewer than the 109,000 reported in 2019 but up from 61,000 last year. Hoffman noted MWC canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19, the first major event hit by the pandemic: “We didn’t know what [the virus] was. It wasn’t supposedly in Europe yet, but it was.” Speakers noted the conference honored Marty Cooper, the father of the cellphone, who made the first cellular call 50 years ago next month. “We’re looking at the past because we want to see how far we’ve come, but also we want to see the velocity and speed of going to the future,” said Zina Jarrahi Cinker, director general of Matter, an international think tank. MWC needs to offer more space next year, she said, saying hundreds of people wanted to get into events on quantum computing and frontier technologies, but “they had only capacity for 30 and 40." People “have done more deals, met with more people than ever before,” said Lara Dewar, GSMA chief marketing officer. “As digital technologies continue to develop, there is new excitement in the air that MWC captured so well,” said GSMA Director General Mats Granryd: “The transition to Web 3.0 will trigger a new explosion in network traffic, and it is critical that we work together to prepare.” 5G is "mainstream now; it’s no longer the new boy on the block,” said Adrian Dodd, head-GSMA Services, on a second panel. Sustainability “is on everybody’s lips,” he said: “That means devices are lasting much longer on the networks, which has a set of challenges. … More and more we’re going to see older devices with lower capabilities, younger devices with higher capabilities.” With devices lasting longer, trade-in programs are becoming more important, he said. 5G has “only just started,” despite all the discussion at MWC about 6G, said Barney Stinton, GSMA head-membership.
Alondra Nelson, a former top tech adviser to President Joe Biden, said Thursday she expects continuing administration focus on tech regulation, though she warned that focusing on keeping up with the pace of change is a mistake. Other speakers at an event by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Public Knowledge said the time is ripe to start looking at a new agency to oversee privacy and other technology issues. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler warned that the U.S. in danger of defaulting on leadership in favor of other countries.
The mobile phone will be the entry point for most people to the world of the metaverse, said Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign game designer and president, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Wednesday. Speakers agreed the move to the metaverse will be important to adoption of 5G and the growth of the wireless industry.