Mike Dano

Broadband vendors continue to speculate on when network operators will resume spending on equipment. According to the latest data points, that might happen in 2024 but could take until 2025. For example, Calix's newest 2024 financial outlook "was significantly weaker than expected," wrote the financial analysts at Rosenblatt Securities.

Two top executives in the 5G industry renewed calls for more spectrum for commercial uses just weeks after the Biden administration released a 26-page national spectrum strategy. AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon's top networking chief, Joe Russo, both said that companies need access to more spectrum in order to innovate and grow the industry. Critics of President Joe Biden, including Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, argue that his administration hasn't done enough to support the 5G industry.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is looking to offer Internet services to low-income New Yorkers through a cutting-edge mix of fixed wireless access (FWA) and fiber. Garfield Swaby, VP of IT for NYPL, sees the organization as potentially offering a layer of telecommunications services alongside the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides subsidies to low-income Americans to help them pay for telecommunications services. The COVID-19 pandemic, and its resulting shutdowns across New York City, sparked the project.

T-Mobile expanded its fiber ambitions to a handful of new markets via partnerships with several open access fiber network operators including Tillman FiberCo and SiFi Networks, among others. The developments reflect T-Mobile's growing interest in partnering with fiber network operators to offer T-Mobile-branded fiber services running over another company's network. It is a model that T-Mobile knows well as companies like Dish Network, Altice and Google Fiber pursue a similar strategy using T-Mobile's own wireless network.

T-Mobile is hoping to significantly improve the depth and reach of its lowband 5G network. But Dish Network is looking to block that move. A 2019 agreement among Dish, T-Mobile, and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) ultimately paved the way for T-Mobile to close its $26 billion purchase of Sprint.

Just days before Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced plans to reinstate some net neutrality guidelines, the FCC also opened a proceeding into the spectrum screen. The move could reflect the fact that Rosenworcel now believes she has enough political clout to impose limits on 5G spectrum ownership via the agency's spectrum screen. After all, Democratic commissioners now outnumber Republicans after the Senate finally approved Democrat Anna Gomez as the fifth commissioner on the FCC.

A wide range of telecommunication companies and trade associations in the US oppose a new Federal Communications Commission proposal that would require regular reassessments of a foreign carrier's authorization to provide service in the US.

T-Mobile won thousands of 2.5GHz spectrum licenses around the US in a Federal Communications Commission auction that ended in 2022. But the FCC would face "criminal penalties" if it gave T-Mobile its 2.5GHz license winnings. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel explained that the FCC's "auction authority" expired in March and so far has not been renewed by Congress, which means the agency no longer has the regulatory authority to issue spectrum licenses.

AT&T appears to be in the early stages of improving its 5G network across parts of Oklahoma, based on the company's latest filings with the Federal Communications Commission. AT&T told the FCC that it reached an agreement with Pioneer Telephone Cooperative to acquire some of that company's 700MHz and PCS spectrum licenses in Oklahoma. "By acquiring control of the ...

The Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) recently published perhaps the most definitive look at the wireless infrastructure landscape in the US, showing 142,100 cell towers and 452,200 outdoor small cell nodes across the country at the end of 2022. Because WIA's report segments infrastructure by type, it offers a clearer picture of the 5G marketplace than recent findings from CTIA, the primary trade association for the US wireless industry. CTIA counted a total of 419,000 cell sites across the US at the end of 2021.