T-Mobile likely won’t use its 3.45 GHz licenses until next year and plans to deploy them the same time as it does the C-band spectrum bought last year, using a single radio, said Neville Ray, T-Mobile president-technology, on a call with analysts Wednesday (see 2202020072). Ray said 3.45 GHz is “a new band … and it does have some complexity with coordination with the DOD to navigate.” Working through problems will take time, he said. “The radio infrastructure is new” and radios still aren't available, which could be complicated by supply chain issues, he said. Ray expects consumer devices to be available at year's end, or early in 2023. CEO Mike Sievert said the C-band fight (see 2202030081) seems mostly settled.“The studies have been completed,” he said: “We think the wireless industry, AT&T, Verizon, the FCC positions, will be validated. And we think they're right.” A “properly functioning radio altimeter” won’t be compromised by C-band interference, he said.
Howard Buskirk
Howard Buskirk, Executive Senior Editor, joined Warren Communications News in 2004, after covering Capitol Hill for Telecommunications Reports. He has covered Washington since 1993 and was formerly executive editor at Energy Business Watch, editor at Gas Daily and managing editor at Natural Gas Week. Previous to that, he was a staff reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Greenville News. Follow Buskirk on Twitter: @hbuskirk
T-Mobile got the licenses it needed in the 3.45 GHz auction, CEO Mike Sievert said on a call with analysts Wednesday as the company reported Q4 results. “We continue to add to our mid-band portfolio,” he said. “We concentrated on supplementing our mid-band spectrum holdings in major urban and suburban areas, mostly aligned with our C-band purchases, and … in places where these frequencies are well suited to the density of our network grid,” he said. T-Mobile will have limited capital expenditures to deploy the new bands and will mostly use existing towers, he said. T-Mobile bid $2.9 billion in the 3.45 GHz auction, which was below expectations (see 2201140065). The carrier reported service revenue of $15 billion in Q4 and net income of $422 million. It earlier reported 844,000 postpaid phone net adds and 244,000 adds to its new home internet service in Q4 (see 2201060063). “AT&T and Verizon have finally started rolling out mid-band 5G and hope to soon be where we were almost two years ago,” Sievert said: “Two years from now, we’ll still be two years ahead.”
The Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC), concerned about AT&T’s Feb. 22 shutdown of its 3G network, is asking the White House for help, hoping for a delay or other concessions. Members of the group asked the National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council to get involved, officials said.
Increasing network efficiency is critical to keeping up with 5G, with a need for more sensitive receivers in base stations and user equipment, said Rob Maunder, chief technology officer of semiconductor company AccelerComm, during a Mobile World Live webinar Tuesday. Installing more-efficient equipment is often cheaper than buying spectrum licenses or installing towers or small cells, he said. “By building better receivers, more sensitive receivers, we can get more bang for our buck in the wireless network … and this creates more capacity.” Maunder predicted “exponential growth” of 5G traffic worldwide, to 178 billion GB monthly by 2027, at which point 5G will be 62% of mobile traffic. “No longer is a one size-fits-all solution suitable,” he said: “What’s needed in the industry is an ecosystem around available [technology] that addresses these challenges so that the whole industry can build solutions.” With 5G, the biggest efficiency gains compared with 4G will come through more use of multiple-input, multiple-output technologies, he said. Anastasios Karousos, Real Wireless managing consultant, said the savings will vary by carrier, but even a slight increase in spectrum efficiency means lower cell utilization and reduced capital costs.
American Doreen Bogdan-Martin likely faces a tough election to become ITU secretary-general, facing a formidable challenger in Russian nominee Rashid Ismailov, a former Russian deputy telecommunications minister and former Huawei executive. ITU watchers told us Bogdan-Martin is in a strong position and has been consolidating support from around the world, but Ismailov is also mounting a robust campaign. Gerald Gross was the last American to hold that job, from 1960 to 1965. Bogdan-Martin would be first woman to be elected to the top spot at the ITU.
The FCC is seeking comment on rules for how often narrowband white spaces devices must check a database to operate, as expected (see 2201260016). The order, approved before Thursday’s commissioners' meeting, requires other devices operating in the TV bands to check the database at least once hourly. The main changes to the draft item come in a new Further NPRM exploring an issue on which Microsoft and NAB took opposing sides (see 2201210069). “Microsoft argues that requiring narrowband fixed white space devices used for IoT applications to comply with an hourly database recheck would negatively impact battery life, limit potential form factors, and increase the costs of those devices,” the FNPRM said. It asked how often check-ins should be required and the impact on licensed wireless mics that use the spectrum. “Should we require mobile devices to comply with the same hourly re-check interval as fixed devices operating in the TV bands, or would a different interval be more appropriate?” the FNPRM asked: “If so, what is the appropriate re-check interval?” Comment deadlines will follow in a Federal Register notice. No commissioners commented. The item rejected NAB’s reconsideration petition of 2018 approval of Nominet UK as a white space database administrator.
AT&T plans to deploy much of its C-band spectrum at the same time it deploys the 3.45 GHz licenses it bought in a recent FCC auction, CEO John Stankey told analysts on the company’s Q4 call Wednesday. Stankey said the radios needed for 3.45 GHz should become available in late spring or early summer. Installing the bands “together at one time with one tower climb … allows us to start really going what I would call good guns on this in scaling up,” he said. AT&T has followed a similar one-touch strategy in building out FirstNet spectrum.
An NPRM seeking comment on whether to adopt four new or updated standards for equipment authorization and the certification of the telecommunication certification bodies that review new RF devices had few changes while it was before FCC commissioners, based on a side-by-side comparison with the draft. The changes were mostly cosmetic. For example, open field sites became open area test sites in the final version. The final updates a summary of standard C63.25.1:2018 to say it “Consolidates qualification and validation procedures for radiated test sites intended for use over various frequency ranges.” None of the commissioners had statements. Comment deadlines in docket 21-363 will be set by a Federal Register notice. Commissioners OK'd two wireless items before Thursday's meeting (see 2201260016).
The Biden administration is fully behind the push to open radio access networks, which it considers critical to making networks more secure and maintaining U.S. leadership in 5G, said Amit Mital, special assistant to the president, during an Open RAN Policy Coalition webcast Wednesday. The move to ORAN is “inevitable,” he said: We've seen software-defined networking “already transforming the storage and networking industries, respectively. Open RAN is simply software-defined telecommunications.”
Judges appeared sympathetic to the FCC Tuesday during oral argument on whether the agency overstepped in reallocating the 5.9 GHz band, with the lawyer for ITS America and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials facing tough questions from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The FCC’s 2020 5.9 GHz order allocated 45 MHz of the band for Wi-Fi and 30 MHz for cellular vehicle-to-everything technology.