DISH Seeks FCC OK for Bluewater Wireless Spectrum in Denver, Vegas

 DISH Network asked the FCC for a temporary license to use 600 MHz spectrum band licenses owned by another licensee for 5G tests in Las Vegas and Denver. The company said in an STA filing the owner of the spectrum, Bluewater Wireless II, agreed to allow DISH to use it.  
 
DISH said it needs Bluewater’s spectrum licenses in the two cities to test and validate equipment for its 5G broadband network, using open radio access network (O-RAN) technologies. It needs two non-contiguous spectrum blocks to test carrier aggregation, according to Broadband Breakfast. Continue Reading

For Some, the Tragedy on 9/11 Has a Personal Connection

 By Jim Fryer, Inside Towers Managing Editor For George Kerstetter, National Solutions Engineer for PerfectVision, this time each year has caused a lot of emotion to come through, and has for the past two decades, as the world remembers the events on 9/11/2001.
 
Kerstetter was an Operations Manager at Verizon in Upstate New York on that fateful and infamous day. One of his peers, whose office was in one of the Towers, was attempting to clear some issues with an employee's workers comp case when Kerstetter called her to check on her progress. 
 
“That’s when the woman said ‘…the fire alarm was going off’, and she would need to call him back,” Kerstetter told Inside Towers. “Minutes later someone ran into my office and said a plane hit The World Trade Center, which I had just flown over less than a week before, and remembered how majestic it looked. As we watched the day's events unfold, and eventually in horror as each tower came down it became clear to me that I had to go and be a part in whatever capacity they’d let me.” Continue Reading

CCA, Ligado Hope to Collaborate to Bring Broadband to Rural Areas

 By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief Ligado President/CEO Doug Smith says his company is “focused on spectrum we can use to build private networks for companies. Our vision is to bring the power of 5G commercial networks to 5G private networks” by integrating satellite and terrestrial technology.

He spoke during a webinar Wednesday held by Broadband Breakfast for a discussion on the importance of driving competition and innovation in the wireless ecosystem. Asked how soon compatible smartphones would be ready, Smith said in the first half of next year, the company will begin to test its technology and services.

He referenced the 3GPP standard-setting body’s approval of Ligado’s technical spec to enable Ligado, formerly called LightSquared, to deploy 5G networks on L-band. It aims to service enterprise customers in the transportation, agriculture, utilities, and energy sectors. He said the company has authorization to deploy its L-band system on C-band, CBRS and 2.5 GHz. Continue Reading

Old Tech Left 911 Calls Unanswered in Louisiana After Ida

 In the years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the 911 system has undergone a major overhaul. The aging telephone system was replaced. Separate centers for medical, police and fire calls were consolidated under one roof. And new call-routing technology to prevent communications from going down during a disaster was scheduled to be installed early next year.

Then Hurricane Ida hit, and the 911 call center crashed, failing its first major test, according to The Washington Post. Calls for help didn’t go through. The center was offline for 13 hours last Monday. The Orleans Parish Communication District, which runs the dispatch center, had to use Facebook to tell people that if they had an emergency, they should walk to a nearby fire station or flag down a police officer to report it.

“Our technology is antiquated,” Tyrell Morris, the district’s executive director, told The Washington Post. Continue Reading

AT&T Asks FCC to Gauge How Much Spectrum Each Telecom Gets

 By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief AT&T asked the FCC to apply a screen on mid-band spectrum holdings. If adopted, the concept could have significant consequences for chief rivals T-Mobile and Verizon, notes CNBC.

That’s because those carriers have amassed significant mid-band spectrum holdings considered to be the “sweet spot” for 5G networks, according to industry experts. T-Mobile gained significant spectrum through its highly-contested acquisition of Sprint, and Verizon won more than 3,500 C-band licenses in Auction 107 in February, Inside Towers reported.

AT&T has made some spectrum gains, but “significant debt” has weighed down the company, according to the account. The carrier believes a screen would be useful so it doesn’t get locked out of prime 5G spectrum. Continue Reading

Louisiana Cell Sites Hardest Hit by Ida

  

More than a million customers were without power after Ida made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Louisiana on Sunday, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. By Monday, the storm was downgraded to a tropical storm, but still posed a major threat of flooding and high winds to the inland Southeast and the mid-Atlantic, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Entergy, which provides power to New Orleans, reported "catastrophic damage" to its transmission and that all 400,000 of its customers in Orleans Parish were powerless, noted U.S. News & World Report. Ida moved farther inland over southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi early Monday. The National Hurricane Center projected Ida would move across the Tennessee Valley today.   

The White House said yesterday more than 3,600 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees were deployed and 17 urban search and rescue teams, along with hundreds of air and ground ambulances, had been staged. FEMA also deployed more than 3.4 million meals. Continue Reading

Verizon Response Teams Get Ready to Support First Responders

 As Hurricane Ida makes its way to the Gulf, Verizon announced on Friday its teams are preparing once again to provide critical communications before, during and after the storm. With the high likelihood of potential flooding and accompanying commercial outages expected, Verizon said its engineers are topping off generators and pre-staging trucks with fuel and readying mobile network assets for rapid deployment. In addition, the carrier is preparing satellite and microwave equipment as redundancy connections if fiber is impacted, and activating response teams to keep customers and first-responders connected. 

“We are actively preparing for Ida and our Verizon team is ready to support the community as yet another major storm impacts this area,” said Kyle Malady, Chief Technology Officer at Verizon. “We know our customers count on us, especially during tough times, and we will be there with them every step of the way to provide reliable connections to critical resources, colleagues, friends and family.” Continue Reading