Wireless Telecommunications

The first 100 days of a new Administration and new Congress are critical to charting a clear, bipartisan course for our nation’s policy agenda. From COVID relief to budget decisions, take bold and decisive action to finish the job of connecting every American home, business and anchor institution to U.S. broadband infrastructure. Particularly amid a global pandemic, the fact that an estimated 18 million American homes do not have broadband access is unacceptable.

Technological innovation has long been and will continue to be critically important to per-capita income growth, economic competitiveness, and national security. So it is important to examine President-elect Joe Biden’s policy agenda through that lens. This report compiles information from the president-elect’s campaign website and policy documents, from the Democratic Party platform, and from media accounts of statements he has made.

Recently, T-Mobile expanded the company’s home broadband pilot to more than 20 million households. Nov 9, T-Mobile is expanding Home Internet to more than 130 additional cities and towns across Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. T-Mobile Home Internet is just $50/month all-in and features many of the same benefits that have made T-Mobile the fastest growing wireless provider for the past seven years.

Broadband expansion is at the top of Biden’s telecom to-do list.

Players large and small are now building specially designed private 5G networks. In contrast with the 5G networks celebrated during the launch of the latest iPhone, these are intended as much for machines as people. Private networks are geographically constrained areas of coverage, intended to keep a local set of sensors, machines and computers in sync, and allow communications with the rest of the world as needed.

The Federal Communications Commission announced that T-Mobile will pay a $200 million penalty to the US Treasury to resolve an investigation of its subsidiary Sprint’s compliance with the FCC’s rules regarding waste, fraud, and abuse in the Lifeline program for low-income consumers. The payment is the largest fixed-amount settlement the FCC has ever secured to resolve an investigation.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), the nation’s spectrum and communications lab, released a new official code base for the Irregular Terrain Model (ITM) for use by experts and non-experts alike. ITM is the fifth propagation model code base that ITS has released on GitHub. In addition to the C++ propagation model source code, ITS published packages that target the .NET development environment. ITS also code signs its propagation software.

The telecom industry turned out in force to oppose a recent Pentagon proposal to build a shared fifth-generation wireless network, with a familiar pot-stirrer making an exception: Dish Network. The satellite-TV company submitted a list of suggestions for the Department of Defense, which is exploring 5G technology for its own operations.

Top Senate Democrats are calling on electric, gas, water and telecommunications giants to voluntarily halt all utility shutoffs for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. The request - sent in a letter to 21 of the largest utility companies including AT&T and Verizon - illustrates the country’s lingering economic needs even as Washington fails to coalesce around a new coronavirus relief package, which congressional Democrats say should include a disconnection ban and other aid to help fa