Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton is urging the federal government to tax the money that EchoStar makes from its AT&T and SpaceX spectrum deals. "Fund a new [Affordable Connectivity Plan] for those who really need help," Adderton posted Wednesday on X. "Stop spectrum hoarding. It's only fair." Adderton tagged FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Gail Slater in the post, saying they "must make sure consumers don't lose while EchoStar profits from failing to build the 4th network." Boost Mobile parent EchoStar has dropped plans for its own terrestrial mobile network and plans to sell much of its spectrum holdings to SpaceX and AT&T (see 2509150003).
Innovation in wireless and 6G is dependent on whether carriers deploy open, cloud-based, disaggregated networks, said Milap Majmundar, director of advanced radio access network technology, standards and spectrum at AT&T Labs, at an RCR Wireless 6G conference Wednesday. Open radio access networks (ORAN) “are here to stay,” he said.
Verizon's direct-to-device (D2D) arrangement with AST SpaceMobile is a competitive win for AST over SpaceX, William Blair's Louie DiPalma wrote investors Wednesday after the deal was announced. SpaceX "was likely aggressive" in courting Verizon, and that might have hurt AST in its own negotiations, DiPalma said. It's still possible that Verizon and AT&T, which also has a D2D arrangement with AST, will multisource their satellite partners, he said.
CTIA endorses an FAA initiative to support the U.S. drone industry by streamlining the approval process for beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operations, said a filing posted Tuesday in response to an FAA NPRM. As President Donald Trump has argued, “American UAS leadership can enhance productivity, create high-skilled jobs, and ‘reduc[e] reliance on foreign sources, strengthening critical supply chains, and ensuring that the benefits of this technology are delivered to the American people,” CTIA said.
Petitioners Maurine and Matthew Molak asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court on Friday to dismiss their challenge to an FCC decision that let schools use E-rate support for Wi-Fi on school buses (case 23-60641), since the agency voted to end the program. The 5th Circuit earlier agreed to hold the challenge in abeyance, with further FCC action expected. Last week, over dissents from Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez, the FCC’s Republican majority eliminated two Biden-era programs designed to make broadband connections more readily available to students and their families (see 2509300051).
Airbus and Ericsson have deployed a private 5G solution at an Airbus production site in Hamburg, Germany, with another deployment underway in Toulouse, France, Ericsson said Monday. The deployment allows Airbus “to scale connectivity quickly and securely across multiple sites,” Ericsson said. It also “accelerates projects involving 3D simulation, augmented reality, improved traceability for parts, and predictive maintenance for assets.” Ericsson said it hopes to expand its private 5G offering across the U.S., the U.K., Spain and more.
Networking equipment manufacturer TP-Link Systems may be aiding the Chinese government in accessing and abusing American consumers’ data, said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) Monday as he announced an investigation into the company.
CTIA, wireless carriers and representatives of the airline industry briefed aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and other agency staff about their work on opening the upper C band to licensed use while protecting air safety systems, said a filing posted Friday by CTIA. They updated the commission “on the efforts of the wireless and aviation industries to work together to define a consensus analytical framework for evaluating potential coexistence parameters between wireless operations above 3.98 GHz and altimeters operating in the 4.2-4.4 GHz band.”
The citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band has moved beyond the experimental stage and demonstrated its effectiveness, Salt Point Strategies’ Dave Wright said last week during a webinar hosted by consulting firm Senza Fili. CBRS “works,” said Wright, former president of the OnGo Alliance, which promotes the CBRS. “We’ve been doing it for five years. We’ve got 420,000 base station radios operating in the band,” and “we’ve had zero reports of interference” to the military systems that share the spectrum.
EchoStar said Friday that it had completed the ITU's Bringing Back Into Use process for its 2 GHz spectrum rights in non-geostationary orbit, meaning all other operators in overlapping frequencies must coordinate with EchoStar. The company called it "a critical step in powering next-generation direct-to-device services."