The Citizens Broadband Radio Service Alliance is adding members like the Wireless ISP Association, working with ATIS, and released a certification tool developed with Radisys, the CBRS alliance said Monday. “Now with more than 120 members, the Alliance is seeing a new set of organizations beginning to engage in the OnGo ecosystem,” it said. Cisco Wireless Chief Technology Officer Matthew MacPherson joined the alliance’s board, the group said.

The FCC is doing what it can to speed the deployment of 5G in the U.S., FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in taped remarks to the European 5G Conference in Brussels. Carr wasn’t able to travel because of the partial federal government shutdown and sent the taped remarks, which he also posted on YouTube Tuesday. “The question for regulators like me is what can we do to make sure that this transition to 5G happens quickly and happens ubiquitously,” Carr said. “There’s no question that 5G is going to be transformative, both from a technological perspective, but also an economic perspective,” Carr said. While 4G “ushered in this app economy that transformed the way that we live, we work and we play, 5G is going to be even more transformative,” he said. “Everything that you do on your smartphone today is going to be better and faster.” Carr said the FCC has updated its rules on infrastructure for a 5G world and is focused on making “large blocks of contiguous spectrum” available. Currently, the FCC is “finishing” its first auction of high-band spectrum in the 28 GHz band, with the 24 GHz auction set to start "right after that," he said. Carr also emphasized the importance of workforce development. Deploying next-generation networks “is tough work,” he said. “It’s a lot of hardhats and bucket trucks, excavators and harnesses.”

It's estimated $1,500 cost will be a major “stumbling block” for Motorola’s Razr foldable smartphone, expected to debut in the U.S. this year exclusively through Verizon, blogged Strategy Analytics. “The price may end up looking cheap,” as SA speculates Samsung’s first foldable phone “will likely have a retail price of at least $2,000." The Razr “will be entering a crowded field,” SA said Thursday. Besides Samsung, Huawei, LG and others have announced foldable smartphones for 2019, it said. That “actual volumes” available for sale this year “will be extremely small” makes it likely that foldable smartphones will become “the ultimate device status symbol in 2019,” it said.

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association says LTE-unlicensed and LTE-assisted access (LAA) are gaining momentum, consulting engineer Steven Crowley blogged. GMSA says 32 operators are investing in LAA across 21 countries, with six announcing launches. Another 11 operators announced investments in LTE-U networks. And 120 devices support LTE in unlicensed spectrum including the citizens broadband radio service band, Crowley noted. “LTE in unlicensed and shared spectrum remains at an ‘early stage’ worldwide with interest ‘high.’”

Sprint is in the midst of an upgrade, adding capacity to improve customers’ experience, a spokesperson emailed us responding to J.D. Power's report (see 1901170041) that Verizon won in six regions for wireless network reliability, with Sprint the last major carrier: “Our largest investment in years is under way to increase coverage, reliability and speed across the country in order to provide an improved network experience for our customers.” Sprint is rolling out “hundreds of thousands of small cells, upgrading existing cell sites,” and deploying LTE Advanced technologies nationwide, she said, saying recent new roaming agreements boosted its LTE coverage footprint by 30 percent. She cited Nielsen figures from a six-month test completed in November saying average download speeds are up 93 percent year over year, and Ookla found Sprint measured fastest for average download speeds in about 100 cities.

PdvWireless said it’s working with wireless carrier Southern Linc on an alliance of utilities and vendors that will assist the development of private wireless networks owned by and dedicated to utilities. “The alliance will aim to drive scale and innovation for the utility industry by creating a network of utility private broadband networks through centralized initiatives that may include; education and training, device testing and certification, vendor equipment testing and network deployment pilots, security, and integration and operational best practices to name a few,” said a Thursday news release.

Customer shift to unlimited data plans in rural areas is putting additional stress on wireless networks, affecting reliability for carriers that haven’t invested in 4G LTE wireless infrastructure, said a Thursday J.D. Power report. Wireless network problems are rising for customers in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and North Central regions, but problems decreased in the Southeast, it said. Suburban customers experienced fewer problems than rural or urban users. Verizon led the major carriers with the lowest network quality problems per 100 connections (PP100), in call, messaging and data quality in each region, J.D. Power said, and it tied on data with T-Mobile in the Northeast. Overall in the Northeast, Verizon led with a score of 10 PP100, followed by T-Mobile (11), AT&T Wireless (12) and Sprint (15), a pattern similar to that of the Mid-Atlantic states. In the Southeast, Verizon led with 8, followed by AT&T and T-Mobile at 11 and Sprint at 13. U.S. Cellular finished second (10) in rankings in the North Central region behind Verizon (8) and ahead of AT&T (11), T-Mobile (12) and Sprint (15). In the Southwest, AT&T tied with T-Mobile (12), just ahead of Sprint (13). In the West, T-Mobile (11), AT&T (12) and Sprint (13) followed Verizon (10). Verizon crowed Thursday in a news release, saying results showed “we’re doing many things right.” Mike Haberman, Verizon network vice president, credited last year’s rollout of LTE Advanced technologies including carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO and 256 QAM in over 1,500 markets for “faster speeds, better connectivity and more bandwidth for customers.” Other carriers didn’t comment. The study, fielded July-December, was based on responses from 32,159 wireless customers.

Some don't think regulators should or would care where executives with big deals pending spend their nights in Washington, even if it's at a hotel owned by President Donald Trump (see 1901160037). T-Mobile CEO John Legere, whose stays at a Trump property blocks from the White House were criticized Wednesday, tweeted later that day that he respects "this process and am working to get our merger done the right way. I trust regulators will make their decision based on the benefits it will bring to the US, not based on hotel choices." Free State Foundation President Randolph May questioned if anyone should care where executives stay. Though he thinks the FCC public interest standard is too vague, he tweeted Thursday, "I've never imagined it to be so indeterminate as to encompass @FCC considering which hotels applicants' CEOs stayed in!”

Vermont challenged wireless coverage data that carriers sent the FCC for the Mobility Fund Phase-II auction. The FCC is investigating if top wireless carriers submitted incorrect coverage maps in violation of MF-II rules (see 1812070048). Carrier data showed 1,310 out of 25,000 square kilometers in Vermont would be eligible, but at its own expense, the Vermont Department of Public Service tested coverage on major roads, downtowns and village centers, and found it should be eligible in 4,186 square kilometers of the state, the agency said Wednesday. “Anyone who drives Vermont’s roads experiences that the industry’s coverage data is not accurate,” said DPS Telecommunications Director Clay Purvis. “Many of the areas in Vermont shown as served at 5 Mbps on their coverage maps actually lack sufficient coverage to even make a call.” Vermont Public Service Commissioner June Tierney hopes “our challenge will be fully sustained by the FCC” and “companies will seek grants to serve the expanded territory made eligible through our efforts in the forthcoming FCC grant program.” CTIA and the FCC didn’t comment Thursday.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr expressed sympathy over the death of a 23-year-old tower technician from Colorado, who fell to his death last week from a cell tower in South Dakota. “My prayers go out to the family and friends of Andrew Michael Psomas,” Carr tweeted Tuesday. True North Tower, which employed Psomas, didn’t comment. A spokesperson for the Pennington County, South Dakota, Sheriff's Office confirmed the tower death.