Wireless Internet

The Federal Communications Commission approved its 20th Annual Mobile Wireless Competition Report. For the first time since 2009, the FCC makes an affirmative finding that the metrics assessed in the Report indicate that there is effective competition in the marketplace for mobile wireless services. The 20th Report concludes that competition continues to play an essential role in the mobile wireless marketplace, driving innovation and investment to the benefit of the American people and economy.

Margarita Aponte and her relatives cleared the road in front of her house with two oxen Sept 24, then drove an hour from her devastated hometown in central Puerto Rico to the old telegraph building in the capital of San Juan. There, thousands of Puerto Ricans gathered for a chance at a resource nearly as precious as power and water in the wake of Hurricane Maria — communication. “It’s ringing, it’s ringing, it’s ringing!”

Aponte, a janitor, screamed as her phone connected to free Wi-Fi and her Facetime call went through to the mainland. Her eyes filled with tears as she talked with nephews, uncles, brothers and sisters in Florida and Massachusetts for the first time since Maria destroyed nearly every cellphone and fiber optic connection on this US territory of 3.4 million people. The low murmur at one of two free Wi-Fi hotspots is occasionally interrupted by the cheering of someone getting through the largely jammed network. Most spend hours frowning at their phones, unable to connect. “There’s no communication. We’re in God’s hands,” Yesenia Gomez, a kitchen worker, said as she left a message for her mother in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Dozens of other Puerto Ricans opted to pull over to the side of the road along various highways where cellphone signals were strongest.

Future 5G networks aim at providing new high-quality wireless services to meet stringent and case-specific needs of various vertical sectors beyond traditional mobile broadband offerings. 5G is expected to disrupt the mobile communication business ecosystem and open the market to drastically new sharing based network operational models. 5G technical features of network slicing and small cell deployments in higher carrier frequencies will lower the investment barrier for new entrants to deploy local radio access networks and offer vertical specific services in specific areas and allow them lease the remaining required infrastructure on demand from mobile network operators (MNO) or infrastructure vendors.

To realize the full vision of 5G to benefit the society and promote competition, innovation and emergence of new services when the 5G end-to-end network spans across different stakeholders administrative domains, the existing regulations governing the mobile communication business ecosystem are being refined. This paper provides a tutorial overview on how 5G innovations impact mobile communications and reviews the regulatory elements relevant to 5G development for locally deployed networks. This paper expands the recent micro licensing model for local spectrum authorization in future 5G systems and provides guidelines for the development of the key micro licensing elements. This local micro licensing model can open the mobile market by allowing different stakeholders to deploy local small cell networks with locally issued spectrum licenses ensuring pre-defined quality guarantees for the vertical sectors’ case specific needs.

Indigenous peoples living on tribal lands are some of the most underserved people in the US when it comes to broadband. Many tribes share similar barriers no matter where they are in the country. But one group of tribes in southern California is using every tool it can think of, including using television spectrum to broadcast internet wirelessly. Unfortunately, they've run into one totally unique hurdle: TV channels are bleeding over the border from Mexico, and eating up their spectrum.

In filings about the Federal Communications Commission’s forthcoming wireless-competition report, Free Press called out FCC Chairman Ajit Pai for misrepresenting the state of broadband investment following the agency’s 2015 network neutrality ruling.

The FCC is required by statute to compile this annual report to Congress on the state of the wireless industry. The 20th annual report is the first edition to come due during Pai’s chairmanship. The report is on the docket for the FCC’s next monthly meeting, which will take place on Sept. 26. During that meeting, the commissioners will consider and then vote on adoption of the final report. Chairman Pai released the draft of this annual report earlier this month. In a recent speech at an industry conference, Chairman Pai claimed that this draft contains evidence that wireless-industry capital investment declined from 2015 to 2016. He suggested that this decline is due to the FCC’s February 2015 Title II reclassification decision and adoption of open-internet rules.

Free Press sent a letter to Pai condemning the chairman for misusing this report and “once again misleading the public” to advance his “irrational vendetta” against the Net Neutrality rules the FCC put in place during the Obama administration. “The easily verifiable truth is that wireless-industry investments peaked in 2013, as carriers completed the bulk of 4G LTE deployments,” the Free Press letter reads. “Both that peak, and the ongoing decline from it, predate the entire proceeding that led to the 2015 reclassification of broadband as a lightly regulated Title II service. What’s more, this is by no means the only years-long downturn for the wireless sector: Such periods of slower spending are natural — and, in the recent past, have likewise occurred outside of recessions.” The Free Press letter includes detailed analysis that proves that this fluctuating trend is part of a larger pattern of investment that has nothing to do with the rules the FCC adopted to prevent internet-access providers from blocking, throttling or otherwise discriminating against the online communications of internet users. The letter also notes that many previous agency reports on wireless competition specifically caution against misinterpretation of short-term investment data. Yet the draft of Pai’s report provides no such historical context — and no warnings about investment patterns.

At first glance, Freeway looks like a good app. Through partnerships with content providers and mobile networks, Freeway can let users on limited wireless rate plans use services like YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify without eating into their precious data allowance. In return, Freeway charges a couple bucks per month through a mobile app, and also leverages sponsorships. In theory, it’s a neat way to help consumers access services without paying for an unlimited data plan or massive overage fees. But in practice, it creates the exact kind of anti-competitive environment net neutrality advocates are so afraid of.

Freeway has a couple different packages and tiers, all with different pricing that varies by carrier:

• Basic Bundle: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify
• “Headphones In”: Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, Pandora, Spotify, and SoundCloud
• “Data Defense”: Sports bundle with ESPN, Facebook, LiveScore, MLB.com Ballpark, MLS, NBA, NBC Sports, Twitter, and Yahoo! Fantasy Sports
• “Study Break”: Bumble, HBO Now, Instagram, Lyft, Spotify, Starbucks, Tinder, Twitter, Venmo, and YouTube
• “Backseat Drivers”: “Cut the Rope: Magic,” Disney Junior, Nick Junior, PBS Kids Video, YouTube Kids

Two things stand out about the packages: they sound a lot like cable bundles; and they’re comprised only of brands you’ve heard of. That’s because Freeway is essentially pay-to-play: only the big companies are worth partnering with (or can afford to sponsor data), so you’re only going to see big names on there.

[Commentary] For 23.4 million rural Americans – roughly the population of New York City and Los Angeles and Chicago and Houston and Philadelphia and Phoenix and San Antonio and San Diego, combined –access to quality broadband internet remains out of reach. We need innovative solutions to bridge this gap and bring broadband access to rural America.

Until now, the biggest hurdle to expanding rural broadband access has been the cost- and resource- prohibitive nature of building out wired connectivity in remote areas with small populations. However, attention has shifted to an innovative new concept that leverages a resource that we already have. A resource that has been patiently waiting to be used: TV white spaces (TVWS). These so-called white spaces are large blocks of spectrum that were designed as buffer spaces between television channels. Today, these spaces remain available and unused by traditional broadcast TV stations. Innovation and infrastructure are expensive. But innovation for the sake of rural broadband - through an available, unused resource that helps talented Americans fulfill their potential - is worth every penny.

[Yack is the Chief Operations Officer at Colorado Technology Consultants]

Ten years ago, the world population was 6.6 billion; 3 billion of those people lacked access to broadband internet connectivity. Fast forward a decade to 2017, and the global population has risen by 1 billion, but so has the number of disconnected people. The Broadband Commission was set up by the United Nations and the International Telecommunications Union in 2010 in an effort to expand internet access to meet the Millennium Development Goals; the Sustainable Development Goals replaced the MDGs in 2015 and set out a target of reaching universal broadband access by 2020.

Each year, the Broadband Commission releases a report detailing the state of broadband; 2017's report, which came out on September 15, finds that the growth of connectivity around the word has stalled. But another report, released several days after by the Broadband Commission, lays out a way to re-energize the effort toward global connectivity: supporting advancements in high-altitude and satellite communications technologies.

[Commentary] Rural areas don’t need to wait on expensive and hard-to-build fiber-to-the-home networks to start using broadband. In many cases, fixed wireless can provide a fast and affordable last-mile connection in underserved areas. And some communities are building the system themselves.

WISPs – Wireless Internet Service Providers – are the un-song heroes closing the digital divide in rural communities. New technology makes WISPs faster than ever, much more affordable than fiber, and a great option in areas where terrain and population density make wired systems problematic.

[Craig Settles is a broadband industry analyst and consultant]

[Commentary] Twelve senators wrote to the Federal Communications Commission expressing concern regarding the agency’s latest Notice of Inquiry. The senators’ letter echoes many arguments pressed by various interest groups which seem misguided, or at least premature, given that the agency is simply asking questions to get better information about the state of the industry. But congressional opposition to the Notice of Inquiry is especially odd, given that the proceeding is, well, required by Congress. They are concerned that the agency might conclude that some Americans access internet-based services on mobile networks rather than fixed broadband networks. And while this would give the agency a more complete view of how Americans access “advanced telecommunications capability,” their unstated concern is that it might also show that fewer of us are internet-impoverished, which undermines the case for regulation.