Monica Alleven

Instead of sailing balloons around the world to deliver internet access, engineers at Alphabet's Project Loon will send small teams of balloons to form a cluster over specific regions where people need internet access—a discovery that will help reduce the costs of operating a Loon-powered network. In a post on its Google+ page, the Loon team explained that when they started a pilot test in 2013, they thought they’d need a continuous stream of balloons around the world such that, as one balloon drifted away, another would be ready to take its place. Their main task would be to manage the balloons’ paths during their round-the-world journeys just enough to get them to drift over their internet test locations in roughly equal intervals—so as one balloon moved out of range, another would move in its place.

Things are looking up for Globalstar these days, with several former critics now supporting its revised proposal for providing Terrestrial Low Power Service (TLPS) and the Federal Communications Commission circulating a new proposed order among commissioners. After years in the making, Globalstar reversed course and on Nov 9 submitted a revised plan, asking for permission to use its 11.5 megahertz of satellite spectrum at 2483.5-2495 MHz to offer low-power terrestrial broadband services, dropping plans for a 22 MHz Wi-Fi Channel 14. Nearby 2.5 GHz spectrum holder Sprint was among those who expressed support for the revisions. Since then, the Wi-Fi Alliance, NCTA, CableLabs and Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have said Globalstar’s latest revisions appear to satisfy their objections.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) is calling on global industry leaders, policymakers and academia to coalesce in a neutral forum to move 5G forward. The purpose of the IEEE 5G Initiative is to engage professionals worldwide to work to solve the challenges associated with 5G and lay the foundation to realize its many opportunities, according to the organization. Volunteers from both industry and academia are being sought as several working groups are being established.

“5G is not only evolutionary, providing higher bandwidth and lower latency than current-generation technology; more importantly, 5G is revolutionary, in that it is expected to enable fundamentally new applications with much more stringent requirements in latency and bandwidth," said Ashutosh Dutta, co-chair of the 5G initiative and lead member of the technical staff at AT&T. “5G should help solve the last-mile/last-kilometer problem and provide broadband access to the next billion users on earth at much lower cost because of its use of new spectrum and its improvements in spectral efficiency.”

[Commentary] AT&T is likely going to win the right to provide the nation’s first broadband network dedicated to public safety. FirstNet hasn’t officially announced anything yet, and no doubt it needs to let court proceedings run their course. But ultimately, it means AT&T could win a 25-year contract to use 20 megahertz of 700 MHz beachfront spectrum and $6.5 billion for designing and operating the nationwide network for federal, state and local authorities, with the right to sell excess capacity on the system.

It’s anybody’s guess what the incoming administration in Washington, D.C., will mean for the organization and its lofty goals. FirstNet has come a long way, and it’s still got a long way to go. But finally hearing a likely winner emerging is encouraging after FirstNet’s long-fought battle.

A new report published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), in partnership with Maravedis-Rethink, makes no mistake about it: 5G will require unlicensed technologies working in conjunction with licensed networks to enable the kinds of services that are envisioned. “There is increasingly consensus around certain elements of the 5G framework, even if the precise standards are not yet specified, and many of these will be evolutions from current work on the licensed and unlicensed sides of the wireless fence,” the report states. “The licensed and unlicensed spectrum worlds will make significant contributions to the broad architecture that 5G must be, if it is to achieve its goals and not be merely a faster, more efficient version of what has gone before.”

The WBA—whose members read like a who’s who in the licensed and unlicensed industries, including AT&T, Boingo Wireless, Comcast, Sprint, T-Mobile, Google, Cisco and Microsoft, but no Verizon—conducts an industrywide survey each year and puts its findings into a report to update the industry. 2016’s report focuses on next-generation Wi-Fi, the need for convergence and coexistence between licensed and unlicensed technologies, as well as connected cities and city services.

If there was any doubt, FirstNet CEO Michael Poth made it official: FirstNet won’t be announcing the contractor for the nation’s first Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network on Nov. 1, leaving it up in the air as to whether it will be awarded during the month of November. Earlier in 2016, Poth said FirstNet remained on track to announce a contract by Nov. 1, but in recent months, FirstNet officials have been using the term “November timeframe” in reference to awarding the 25-year contract, IWCE’s Urgent Communications notes. It's a process that is widely expected to involve at least one nationwide wireless carrier.

AT&T, for one, has described the bidding process as a “rare” event and one it intends to aggressively pursue. “FirstNet will continue to execute the acquisition process outlined in the RFP beyond the November 1st target date for the award,” Poth said in an Oct. 27 blog post. “We will continue to work diligently with our Federal partners to complete the RFP process in line with the FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation] while being as transparent as allowable.” There are signs the list of candidates is narrowing, however. pdvWireless stated in an SEC filing that on Oct. 17, it received written notice from the contracting officer of the U.S. Department of the Interior that its proposal for the FirstNet public safety network was no longer being considered for the award. pdvWireless is headed by Brian McAuley and Morgan O'Brien, wireless industry veterans involved in the launch of the first nationwide all-digital network known as Nextel Communications, a pioneer in push-to-talk communications. That leaves bidding teams led by AT&T and Rivada Mercury. Rivada Mercury is the entity composed of Nokia, Ericsson, Intel Security, Harris Corporation, Fujitsu Network Communications and Black & Veatch and led by former Sprint executive Joe Euteneuer.

Citing continued frustration with the process of developing a coexistence plan for Wi-Fi and LTE-U devices, T-Mobile US executives are keeping the pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to begin approving devices that incorporate LTE-U technology no later than September. "The delay in approving LTE-U devices is stifling innovation and investment in the communications ecosystem – one of the most vibrant segments of our economy that directly affects all Americans. There is no reason, therefore, to wait beyond September 2016 to permit use of this innovative new technology," wrote Steve Sharkey, T-Mobile VP of government affairs, technology and engineering policy, in an ex parte filing.

T-Mobile also brought Nokia experts to the conversation, who said they're prepared today to test devices for coexistence based on the current version of the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) test plan. The Wi-Fi Alliance has said it expects to finalize the test plan by late September. It was delayed after stakeholders were unable to reach consensus on certain signal level tests. T-Mobile said in its most recent filing that while the test plan is nearly complete, it has seen numerous deadlines come and go without finalization of the procedure. Therefore, it's saying that it wants the commission to move forward with a process that doesn't allow delays to extend past September 2016.