The
public has more time to comment on two FCC proceedings to speed
wireless broadband deployment by removing regulatory barriers. CTIA, the
Competitive Carriers Association, and the Wireless Infrastructure
Association asked for the approximately one week extension. The FCC
agreed, so now initial comments for both are due by June 15, and replies
by July 17.
Despite being adopted by the
Commissioners in April, the two items, WT Docket No. 17-79 and WC Docket
No. 17-84 were published on different days in the Federal Register,
giving them separate comment deadlines. CTIA, CCA and WIA asked the
agency to align deadlines for both, saying that would “promote the
filing of uniform comments” benefitting stakeholders and the public. Continue Reading
The
state of Michigan and the FCC reached an agreement about the state’s
Public Safety Communications System and its 800 MHz radio network. The
deal affects nearly 250 tower sites.
Michigan sought a waiver to the
agency’s rules so it could share its 800 MHz statewide radio network
with DTE Energy, a non-profit infrastructure provider. Michigan’s
Public Safety Communications System provides communications for its
state agencies, police, and more than 1,490 county, city, township and
tribal public safety agencies. Some 74,000 radio users are on the network.
The state uses both 800 MHz and 700
MHz narrowband voice frequencies although the great majority of the
system is 800 MHz. DTE wanted access to emergency and proprietary talk
groups on the trunking system and the 800 MHz analog mutual aid
channels.
Continue Reading
The FCC opened a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in order to ease wireless infrastructure siting barriers, Inside Towers reported.
Now, Sprint gives us an inside look at what it paid to deploy small
cells around Houston’s NRG Stadium for the Super Bowl. The company
considers tribal siting costs to be spiraling out of control and
suggests the agency review those.
Sprint paid more than $173,000 to
deploy a total of 23 small cell sites around the stadium to comply with
the National Historic Preservation Act. Filings to the FCC suggest costs
were imposed on carriers by the city of Houston or the Texas Historical
Commission, says Sprint in an FCC filing. But actually, the figures
Sprint referenced were imposed by federal law, not state or local
historic reviews, the carrier clarifies. Continue Reading
The
FCC voted 2-1 to begin the process to roll back the Obama-era Net
Neutrality rules, starting what will likely be a several-months long
fight over the future of internet regulation. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says
the current rules chill broadband investment while opponents dispute
this. The issue is of interest to readers because it gets to the heart
of the further rollout of street furniture such as small cells and
antennas for 4G and eventually 5G.
The rules passed by former Chairman
Tom Wheeler changed the classification of the internet from an
information service, which they had been considered since the
Clinton-era, to a utility in which ISPs must treat all internet traffic
the same, with no fast or slow speed lanes.
Pai said “The internet was not broken
in 2015,” yet the FCC at the time “succumbed to heavy handedness from
the White House and changed course.” Seventy fixed wireless providers
“say their hands are tied” by the regs and 22 of the smallest ISPs have
slowed if not halted new builds.” Continue Reading
According to Information Week Magazine:
“A one (1) millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth
$100 million a year to a major brokerage firm.” In the wireless arena
it is referred to as “latency,” i.e., how much time it takes for a
packet of data to get from one designated point to another.
Traders making millions of transactions a minute recognize the superiority of wireless for sending and receiving data. Jump
Trading LLC recently installed microwave antennas across the street
from the data center operated by CME Group, the world’s biggest futures
exchange located just outside of Chicago. The development was
precipitated by the need to submit trades faster, and the company is not
alone. Many companies are installing microwave equipment around the
facility to stay ahead of other competition. According to ZeroHedge.com,
faster data transfers can make the difference between billions in
profits or losses for traders. Placing microwave towers close to the CME
data center, reduces the amount of time data is transferred by
fiber-optic cable, and allows trading firms to operate faster. Continue Reading
UPDATE
In today’s world, we’re able to pay bills, schedule a ride pickup and
even remotely control the thermostat and lights in our houses using our
phones. But when we most need them—during times of emergency—our devices
might prove useless, according to a recent study by south Florida’s WBBH-TV.
Investigators from the station placed phone calls using the four major carriers from inside a local 911 dispatch center.
Each time, dispatchers could only pinpoint the caller’s location within
three to four miles, as they were relying on pings from the nearest
cell tower.
Charlotte County’s E911 coordinator
Laurie Anderson explained that the technology dispatcher centers used
were designed for landline devices, not cell phones. Current 911 technology dates to the 1960s and 1970s, Inside Towers reported. Furthermore, Anderson said dispatchers rely on the carriers for the location accuracy of wireless 911 callers. Continue Reading
CTIA released its Annual Wireless Industry Survey,
which found Americans used a record 13.72 trillion megabytes (MBs) of
mobile data in 2016, an increase of over 4 trillion MBs over 2015, and
35 times the volume of traffic in 2010. The amount of data traffic sent
over wireless networks in 2016 -13.72 trillion MBs – is the equivalent
of 1.58 million years of streaming HD videos.
“Americans are using more wireless
data than ever. As wireless becomes central to our lives and the U.S.
economy, it’s no surprise that Americans’ mobile data usage continues to
skyrocket,” said CTIA President/CEO Meredith Attwell Baker. “This
continued growth underscores the need to free up more spectrum and
modernize infrastructure processes at all levels of government to make
way for next-generation 5G networks – and hundreds of billions of
industry investment.” Continue Reading
NATE will unveil this morning a
commemoration declaring today, Thursday, May 11, 2017, Tower Technician
Appreciation Day. This day has been set aside by NATE to coincide with
OSHA’s National Safety Stand-Down Week in order to pay tribute to the
important work that tower technicians conduct on a daily basis to enable
a mobile society.
NATE was joined by U.S. Senator John
Thune (R-SD), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation in honoring the work of the men and women who deploy and
maintain America’s communications infrastructure.
“It’s a privilege to join NATE to
congratulate and thank the dedicated men and women who work in South
Dakota and around the country to build, upgrade, and maintain our
nation’s communication towers and infrastructure,” said Sen. Thune.
“Tower erectors and technicians put in long hours and hard work, and
they possess a unique set of skills that is essential to effectively
deploy today’s wireless broadband network and lay the groundwork for the
5G network of the future.” Continue Reading
USTelecom
says its early data “strongly suggests” that investment in broadband
dropped in 2016, for the second year in a row. That raises a red flag
for the association.
“Closing the digital divide and
bringing more Americans access to the benefits of high-speed internet
service won’t happen if new investment in broadband infrastructure
continues to fall,” writes Patrick Brogan, vice president of Industry
Analysis for USTelecom in a blog post.
In 2016, capital expenditures for ISPs was $71 billion, down from $73
billion in 2015, and $74 billion in 2014, USTelecom’s current estimate
shows. That’s $2.5 billion to $3 billion lower in 2016 than it was in
2014, the year before the FCC reclassified the internet as a utility –
known as Title II.
Claims by some interest groups that
broadband provider capex actually may have increased in 2015 and 2016,
depend on figures that ignore accounting adjustments for certain
non-material items like leased cell phones and acquisitions, such as
AT&T’s merger with DirecTV and a Mexican wireless operation,
according to Brogan. Continue Reading
Comcast and Charter announced an
agreement on a wireless partnership yesterday morning although it isn’t
the first time they’ve done so. In 1994, TCI, Comcast and Cox partnered
with Sprint creating the Personal Communication Services (PCS) band
(1900 MHz). The service was discontinued four years later due to poor
demand. The cable providers united with
Sprint again in 2005, launching a wireless service called Pivot.
Eventually that created the present MVNO agreement with VZ, which has
allowed Comcast and Charter to look at entering wireless again,
according to the Wall Street Journal.
Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson said the announcement would only have been surprising if it hadn’t happened. “Still,” Moffett said, ‘there are surprises in the language of the 8-K. The announcement pours cold water on all of the various M&A scenarios about which people have so incessantly speculated,” he said. Continue Reading
While
wireless broadband providers race to close the digital divide and
service more hard-to-reach areas, they may face a new competitor —
satellite-delivered broadband internet. Launch services provider SpaceX
plans to deploy more than 4,000 non-geostationary satellites in a low
orbit within five years to deliver affordable broadband service; the
company, founded in 2002, by entrepreneur Elon Musk who remains CEO, hopes to begin testing a satellite by the end of the year and launching a prototype next year.
“Satellites will substantially alter access and competition,” SpaceX VP of Satellite Government Affairs Patricia Cooper told members of the Senate Commerce Committee at a broadband infrastructure hearing this week. “Our plan is to build fiber-like services at much lower cost.”
The incremental cost of adding a rural customer to a satellite network
is much lower than adding that rural customer to a ground-based cellular
network, she testified. Continue Reading
Some
localities are worried they would get less say in how broadband is
deployed in their areas based on legislation that Congress is preparing
and rules the FCC has proposed to streamline such deployment nationwide.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman
John Thune (R-S.D.) said during a hearing on reducing barriers to
broadband infrastructure deployment on Wednesday regulators are working
to reduce digital disparity between rural and urban areas, and with good
reason. “In places like South Dakota, you are lucky if you have a
six-month window to lay fiber,” noting companies need to begin the
permitting process one to two years ahead of time.
Yet regulators must be cognizant of the roles localities play in the infrastructure permitting process. Wilton Manors, FL Mayor Gary Resnick told lawmakers when
localities deny installs in public rights-of-way it’s for a good
reason. “We pay a price in Florida to live in paradise. Because of
hurricanes, it makes sense to construct utilities underground,” so
residents can drive away quickly after a storm. “The only safe way to
pull off a road and not get submerged is to not have anything in the
way.” Continue Reading
Just over a month after beginning its public-private partnership with AT&T,
FirstNet is achieving milestones ahead of its planned timeframe. All of
AT&T’s LTE bands are planned to be available for the nation’s first
public safety wireless broadband network as soon as the end of this
year, according to FirstNet CEO Mike Poth.
That can happen as soon as a state governor accepts the FirstNet State Plan (“opt in”), writes Poth in a blog. Preemption services will be available on existing AT&T LTE bands nationwide while FirstNet
deploys Band 14 for public safety, increasing the available public
safety capacity “without having to wait for the availability of Band
14,” according to Poe. Continue Reading
While
NAB was holding its largest convention of the year in Las Vegas,
telecom associations and companies were busy filing their opposition to
changes broadcasters would like the FCC to make to its repack plan. NAB
believes broadcasters will need about twice the amount of the $1.75B
Congress has allocated to reimburse stations to relocate to different
channels as the TV spectrum is repacked into a smaller portion of the
band; the broadcast trade lobby has also consistently said 39 months is
not enough time for everyone to move, given the limited number of tower
crews that can handle tall TV towers and new, heavy antennas.
“The
current 39-month deadline should not be the driver of the entire
process,” NAB representatives recently emphasized to the Commission. NAB earlier petitioned the FCC to modify its repack plan, Inside Towers reported, saying if
the agency doesn’t make the proposed changes, the repack will take
longer, cost more and cause more disruption than it has to. Continue Reading
On
April 26, Senate Bill 649, removing a city’s ability to control where
technology is placed and transferring power to the state, was
unanimously approved by the Senate Government and Finance Committee. The
bill will make it easier for wireless telecom to distribute 5G
technology via small cells. SB 649 “would provide that a small cell is a
permitted use, not subject to a city or county discretionary permit, if
the small cell meets specified requirements,” reported KCRA-TV.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Ben
Hueso, D-San Diego, has caused cities like Roseville, Rocklin and San
Francisco, plus the League of California Cities to fight back. A letter
sent from the League to Sen. Hueso details the complaint about
“limiting local discretionary review” of small cell sites and calls out
the “unconstitutionality” of the bill by requiring cities to cooperate. Continue Reading
