Verizon’s no-contract Visible service is offering prospective customers a free trial so they can compare their existing service to Visible, with no commitment or credit card needed, it said Thursday. The 15-day trial requires an eligible iPhone: SE 2020, XR, XS, and the 11, 12 series and 13 series models. Users can continue to use their current service and phone number, Verizon said. The promotion is part of Visible’s “commitment to eSIM,” launched in February, which it sees as a growth driver. The service plans to become 100% eSIM-centric in the future, it said. Visible’s unlimited plans start at $25 monthly.

T-Mobile released early numbers for Q4 Thursday, reporting 844,000 postpaid phone net adds and 244,000 adds to its new home internet service. Reporting a metric not offered by most carriers, it said it had 315,000 postpaid account net adds. AT&T said Wednesday it added 880,000 postpaid phones in the quarter (see 2201050044). In Q3, AT&T beat T-Mobile in postpaid phone adds, 928,000 to 673,000 (Ref:2111020071). T-Mobile said it had 2.9 million postpaid phone net adds in 2021, up 32% over the previous year.

President Joe Biden’s “intervention” on the C band (see 2201040070) “signals that the several month-old dispute about potential interference with air travel from 5G services … is over, with the carriers now in a position to start services on January 19,” New Street’s Blair Levin told investors Thursday. Investors were concerned a long delay would harm Verizon and AT&T as they compete with T-Mobile, he said: “In settling the matter, the carriers might have had to alter their service (such as with power levels in a broad geography) or pay a cost (such as paying for new equipment for airlines) that would have affected the companies’ financial results. The carriers’ concessions do neither and we don’t think will have any short-term or long-term impact on those results.” Biden’s involvement may also strengthen the FCC’s hand in resolving future spectrum disputes, Levin said. It also alerted “important decision makers, particularly in the White House, to the risk of inter-agency spectrum disputes hurting American economic interests,” he said.

Satellite interests resisted keeping non-terrestrial services out of the 70/80/90 GHz bands or making fixed satellite service (FSS) secondary to terrestrial use there (see 2112030056), in docket 20-133 reply comments this week. The FCC is considering high-altitude platform systems operations in the bands. Amazon Kuiper said it backs a "unified, service-agnostic, light-licensing and link registration framework -- such as the one proposed by SpaceX for 'pencil-beam' antennas" as a way to increase use of the bands while fostering coexistence. It said FSS being secondary in the bands would be inefficient, especially since that spectrum's terrestrial use is limited to high-throughput transmissions over very short distances. Geneva Communications also said it backs SpaceX's proposal. The Satellite Industry Association said there are already co-primary FSS spectrum allocations in the bands and some satellite operators are developing networks that will operate there. SpaceX suggested coexistence in the bands via equivalent isotropically radiated power limits toward the horizon for FSS gateways, creating small coordination areas and eliminating the need for keep-out zones or caps on the number of earth stations. Aeronet Global's study of coexistence between scheduled dynamic data links and FSS in the 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz bands doesn't take a broad-enough look at possible SDDL interference to geostationary and non-geostationary operations in the bands, with GSO earth stations particularly susceptible to interference from SDDL aircraft transmissions, Hughes said. It said the Aeronet study claims that any alignment of SDDL aircraft beams and GSO satellite beams will be brief don't consider the stationary position of GSOs relative to the ground, which contributes to a longer aircraft/GSO beam alignment. Aeronet outside counsel didn't comment. TechFreedom said the FCC should allow use of 70 MHz beyond 5G. “The lone holdouts to broadening the uses of the 70 GHz are some 5G users, who covet the spectrum for wireless backhaul operations, to the exclusion of new uses (and apparently to the exclusion of existing allocations as well),” the group said: “Engineering changes, history changes, and we can’t afford to go ‘all in’ on 5G if it means robbing all other users of spectrum and shutting down technological innovation. Instead, the FCC must balance the need for more 5G spectrum with existing allocations and other spectrum users’ needs.”

Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband network will cover 100 million people in more than 1,700 cities by the end of the month, the carrier announced Tuesday.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, toured a tower in Huffman, Texas, hosted by the National Association of Tower Erectors and member Enertech, NATE said Tuesday. They “surveyed the multi-carrier tenet network equipment that is installed on the tower” and saw how drones are used for safety inspections, the group said. Industry representatives discussed “some of the challenges facing the industry” as the FAA “continues to work on regulations impacting commercial drone usage,” the group said.

Carriers will focus this year on finding ways to maximize the use of their existing infrastructure, as they deploy 5G, blogged CommScope Senior Vice President Farid Firouzbakht Tuesday. “The race to 5G has become as much about civil engineering as it is about technology,” he said: “One of our customers said 5G is the biggest civil engineering program of all Gs. With 5G there are new frequencies, meaning new equipment will have to be deployed on top of already crowded towers. Operators face significant challenges as this combination of heavier 4G and 5G equipment puts phone masts under additional strain.” Firouzbakht said another big focus in 2022 will be on strategies to simplify deployments. “We’ll see the first layer of 5G gain traction mainly in cities,” he said. “In addition to faster mobile speeds, the industry will test new use cases such as customised fan experiences, 5G connected collars on farms and remote-controlled ultrasound scans over public 5G networks. The spectrum used for these new services will require densification and operators will seek technology that enables local coverage.” Expect continued focus on open radio access networks, he said. “There is still plenty of work to be done around interoperability between vendors,” he said: “The focus will be on long term planning with specific emphasis on O-RAN as a concept for 4G as operators consider new strategies on how new standards will play out in 5G rollouts, especially in Europe.”

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved Bosch’s waiver request for its Wallscanner D-Tect 200 frequency-hopped ultra-wideband wall imaging system (see 2008200030). “We find that opening a path for the sale and operation of this next generation equipment will allow Bosch to deploy its system to enhance the through-wall imaging capabilities for construction professionals, in furtherance of the public interest,” OET said Tuesday. The device will be used by builders “for detection and inspection of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, electric cables, wooden beams, plastic pipes, and for identification of structural flaws within construction materials,” the docket 20-268 order said.

APCO said Tuesday it’s considering an appeal of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision last week upholding the FCC’s 6 GHz rules (see 2112280047). The court remanded to the FCC for further work a single, narrow issue, raised by broadcasters. “While federal review courts typically accord the FCC deference, we are of course disappointed because we remain concerned that new unlicensed devices will cause harmful interference to public safety communications,” the group tweeted: “We will consider our additional options in court and continue to actively work directly with the FCC to ensure that public safety operations are protected.”

Results of the 3.45 GHz auction are likely to be made public as early as this week, New Street’s Philip Burnett told investors Monday. Burnett said the consensus seems to be that AT&T spent $9 billion, T-Mobile $6 billion, Dish Network $5 billion and Verizon just over $2 billion. That could be wrong, with Verizon more likely to have taken a pass, he said. “Our conviction that Verizon sat out isn’t especially high, but we’d note that Verizon” management has gone “to serious lengths to point out the deficiencies in 3.45 GHz … when compared to C-Band, which they described as a ‘clean’ band of spectrum,” he said: “We also believe that the equipment initially deployed to towers by Verizon for C-Band isn’t compatible with 3.45 GHz spectrum.”