Verizon got the highest marks among U.S. wireless carriers for achieving the fewest quality problems per 100 connections in call quality, messaging quality and data quality, J.D. Power reported Thursday. That’s based on data from the Mid-Atlantic, North Central, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and West regions. “The performance of wireless network operators has set expectations high,” said Ian Greenblatt, J.D. Power managing director-technology, media and telecom. “Today’s wireless customers expect their phones to work perfectly every time,” he said.

Privately held StratCap said Thursday it acquired 13 cell towers and a 127,000 square-foot data center in Toronto during Q2. The towers are in Missouri, Wisconsin, Florida, Tennessee and New York, and they provide service to all major U.S. carriers, StratCap said. “StratCap remains bullish on digital infrastructure given demand drivers like the increasing number of connected devices, growing mobile data usage, the essential role of connectivity in our lives, and new technologies like 5G, autonomous cars, artificial intelligence, and more,” the company said.

The radio access network market faces a contraction worldwide, Dell’Oro Group warned Thursday. The RAN market “is done expanding for now,” the report said: “Following the 40 percent to 50 percent ascent between 2017 and 2021, RAN revenues flattened out in 2022 and these trends extended to 1Q 2023.” Global RAN is projected to decline at a 1% compound annual growth rate over the next five years, Dell’Oro said. “Even if it is early days in the broader 5G journey, the challenge now is the comparisons are becoming more challenging in the more mature 5G markets and the upside with the slower-to-adopt 5G regions is not enough to extend the growth streak,” said Stefan Pongratz, Dell’Oro vice president: “Meanwhile, growth from new revenue streams including Fixed Wireless Access and enterprise LTE/5G is not ramping fast enough to change the trajectory. With 5G-Advanced not expected to trigger a new capex cycle, the question now is no longer whether RAN will grow. The question now is, rather, how much will the RAN market decline before 6G comes along?”

Ericsson launched a smart, sustainable 5G site “showcasing its complete energy-smart network solution” in Plano, Texas. The site has the potential to be fully powered by solar energy, complemented by lithium-ion batteries, for up to a 24-hour period, said a Tuesday news release. “Phase two of the project will explore additional green energy sources as alternatives to diesel, such as hydrogen-based generators,” Ericsson said: “This phase will also explore interoperability with power grid vendors, optimizing local energy generation and consumption to sell back to the grid with net metering.”

Verizon told the FCC it doesn’t oppose T-Mobile’s proposed buy of Mint Mobile (see 2303150032), a low-cost prepaid wireless brand, and other assets from Ka’ena, but it took exception to a June presentation on the deal by T-Mobile (see 2306060033). T-Mobile suggested in a presentation to the FCC the transaction is “a much easier case” to approve than Verizon/Tracfone. “Contrary to T-Mobile’s suggestion, handset unlocking was never at issue in the Verizon/TracFone proceeding,” Verizon said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 23-171: “No commenter in that proceeding raised handset unlocking as a concern. The matter came up solely because Verizon, as a licensee of 700 MHz Upper C Block frequencies, is subject to the Commission’s ‘open platform’ requirements applicable to that spectrum block, including a limited ability to lock handsets.”

HWG’s Paul Margie, who represents tech companies on 6 GHz issues, spoke with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and a staffer from the Office of Engineering and Technology to urge further FCC action on the band. Margie discussed “the importance of adopting rules to permit portable operations in the 6 GHz band that both protect incumbent microwave links and permit commercially viable unlicensed operations, including considerations of product design and power consumption,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-295: “Any consideration of potential interference should account for propagation loss, polarization loss, feeder loss, far-field/body loss, antenna mismatch loss, transmit power control, and terrain.” Margie represents Apple, Broadcom, Google, Meta Platforms and Microsoft, and was joined on the OET call by a Qualcomm representative.

The FCC can help promote 5G deployment by issuing to T-Mobile the 7,156 spectrum licenses it bought last year in the FCC’s 2.5 GHz auction, said Public Knowledge Government Affairs Director Greg Guice and Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer Wednesday in a Broadband Breakfast opinion piece. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has taken a firm stand the FCC can't legally issue the licenses since the March expiration of the agency’s auction authority (see 2307070042). “That’s a strange conclusion because the 2.5 gigahertz auction occurred before its authority expired -- and T-Mobile has already paid for the licenses,” Guice and Thayer said: “And the FCC issued spectrum licenses for six decades without auction authority.”

Keysight Technologies and Skylo Technologies agreed to work together on extending Keysight’s cellular testing expertise to non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), said a Wednesday news release. The goal is a certification program for 3rd Generation Partnership Project 5G Release 17 NTN chipsets, modules and devices using narrowband (NB) IoT protocol over NTN. “The use of 5G satellite-to-ground connections is rapidly gaining traction as mobile operators and their customers look to extend secure, reliable, and high-bandwidth connectivity across their entire geographical footprint and surrounding waters,” the companies said: “Widespread NTN deployments can enable industries such as agriculture, energy, healthcare, and transportation by using low-cost and low-powered NB-IoT devices for applications including remote sensing, asset tracking, and surveillance.”

The FCC is closing P.O. Box 979097, a lockbox for manual payment of filing fees for site-based license applications, personal license applications and geographic-based license applications, effective Aug. 14, said a notice for Thursday’s Federal Register. The FCC is discontinuing the option to make manual fee payments, and instead requiring “the use of an electronic payment for each listing in this rule, and make conforming changes to other related provisions,” the notice said. Closing the lockbox will cut the agency’s costs, “including eliminating the annual fee for the bank’s services … and the cost of manually processing each transaction, with little or no inconvenience to the Commission’s regulatees, applicants, and the public,” the FCC said.

The Texas Department of Transportation said it would be willing to accept conditions approved as part of the joint waiver allowing early cellular-vehicle-to-everything use of the 5.9 GHz band, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-138. The FCC approved the joint waiver request in April (see 2304240066). The Texas DOT sought the waiver a year ago.