Howard Buskirk

Before the launch of early 5G networks, the consensus was that business-to-business (B2B) communications would be a “big opportunity,” Pablo Iacopino, GSMA Intelligence head-research and commercial content, said during a Mobile World Live webcast on Friday. For consumers, 5G adoption has been “very, very fast” compared to the roll-out of 3G and 4G, he said. When carriers think about providing business customers with 5G, they consider connectivity a first step only, he said. “Really, the incremental value comes from services beyond connectivity,” including cloud and edge services and serving IoT networks, he said. Based on a GSMA survey, businesses say they are willing to spend about 9% of their revenue on average globally on digital transformation, he said. That’s “a big number, and it means there are opportunities for many players to catch a piece of this 9%,” he said: “Enterprises are willing to spend on 5G in order to drive digital transformation.” Different businesses have varying needs and providers must “customize” what they offer. After a slow start, there’s growing momentum behind 5G standalone, “which is the real 5G.” In most places, said David Markland, chief product officer at Inseego, 5G began on 4G core networks, “reusing 4G spectrum with a little bit of efficiency gain, and then it built from there, having more and more spectrum.” Inseego provides wireless gear. A lot of people had a 5G icon on their phones years ago but weren’t seeing changes over 4G, and “personal experience, some days it was worse,” Markland said. That has changed as major carriers deploy “a lot more spectrum” on their networks. “We have 10 times more bandwidth now than … back in the 4G era.”

Fixed wireless access isn’t beating fiber, the Fiber Broadband Association told the FCC in a new filing, responding to a recent CTIA report (see 2409230020). Meanwhile, during a webinar iconectiv released Thursday, speakers said all signs indicate the FWA market is taking off, with continued growth likely.

DC BLOX sees a business model for building regional data centers in places like Greenville, South Carolina, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, Alan Poole, general counsel of the Atlanta-based company, said during an Incompas webinar Thursday. As connected devices became more powerful, tech companies realized they needed to move data centers and computing power closer to users, Poole said in a conversation with Incompas CEO Chip Pickering during the session. COVID-19 spurred tech growth, Poole said: “The investment in digital infrastructure around that time to help meet the pace of demand was wild, awe-inspiring, and we’re still going through that,” he said. A key element DC BLOX considers is how welcoming a city will be to investment, as data centers require access to land and electricity. The company also examines potential tax incentives to build. Policymakers must ask what they’ll do if one developer takes all the available power, which is “happening all over the country,” Poole said. One center can require up to one gigawatt of power, which is "eye-popping.” Accordingly, the ability of data centers to generate power onsite, including “green” energy, will become increasingly important, he said. Communities should decide whether they want to compete “because there are many [competing] markets” and they are offering tax and other incentives. “At least at DC BLOX we’re doing everything we reasonably can to head off community concerns as soon as possible, because it makes more sense financially.” The availability of large enough fiber pipelines to handle growing demands is also a concern. “Is there enough fiber on all these routes?” Poole asked. “It was assumed, until very recently, that we were never going to need materially bigger conduits and that has proven absolutely untrue.” Some markets getting high-speed internet for the first time don’t have a nearby internet exchange point yet, allowing ISPs to exchange data with other networks: “That’s where the true internet compute happens and if you’re not close to one of those exchanges, you have problems with things like latency that might make real-time videoconferencing … unworkable.” Pickering said he loves the focus on “Tier 2” markets. “Those are great emerging hubs” and data centers “are a critical component and a critical piece of the infrastructure to make those hubs grow, succeed, prosper.” As communications technology rapidly evolves, “electricity is still kind of in the old world,” Pickering said. As the U.S. competes with China, “electricity and energy really is the supply-chain critical component.”

U.S. ISPs face a bigger cybersecurity threat today because nations representing that threat work together like never before, Wilkinson Barker’s Clete Johnson said Wednesday. Other experts said cybersecurity plans are rightly a requirement of receiving funding under the $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program.

While expectations are that 6G will be commercialized by 2030, large scale deployments will likely come later, Milap Majmundar, AT&T director-advanced radio access network technology, standards and spectrum, said Tuesday at RCR Wireless’ 6G Forum. In addition, other speakers warned that finding new licensed bands for 6G could prove difficult.

NTIA will release a report “later this fall” on the agency’s May request for comment about the state of 6G development (see 2405230010), Lauriston Hardin, NTIA chief technical adviser, said during RCR Wireless’ 6G Forum on Tuesday (see 2410010033). Comments were filed at NTIA in August (see 2409040032). “We’re working through it now,” he said. “I’m not allowed to give any more comment than that at the moment.” NTIA’s Office of International Affairs issued the request, so some of the focus will be international, he noted. “Our job, in part, is to stay ahead and talk about the policies that will be put in place, or possibly regulations that will be put in place, to help foster as well as maintain new developments in the marketplace,” Hardin said: “We’ve asked the marketplace, ‘Tell us about 6G. Tell us about your use cases. Tell us about when new things will happen. Tell us about the policies you think should be in place that would promote things.’” Hardin stressed the importance of focusing on what 6G can do for consumers. “Engineers like to engineer and think technology is in and of itself a great thing.” We’re still dealing with “the unfulfilled promises of 5G.” Hardin said one of the big questions NTIA is addressing is whether a way can be found to “effectively share” the lower 3 GHz band with DOD (see 2409050032). “One of the things there is airborne radar.” Dynamic spectrum sharing isn’t “a silver bullet,” he said. “Most of the spectrum that we look at, especially sub-6 [GHz], is going to have to be shared.” Anton Monk, senior vice president-strategy at Cohere Technologies, said people view 5G as early in its deployment because carriers have been unable to identify many new use cases. “The consumer hasn’t really seen any significant changes, certainly not enough to pay an extra $10 a month for,” Monk said. “There is a lot of valid concern” that we’re just “following the 10-year cycle” and trying to keep up with other countries that “have huge government-funded initiatives to keep pushing the nest generation,” he said: “Regardless, this is the pace that we’re on, and we just need to make sure that we set expectations correctly” and that we pick use cases “that are really valuable and have paying customers.” Marketing for 5G started early and made too many promises, said Michele Polese, research assistant professor at Northeastern University.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected most claims against AT&T by cryptocurrency investor Michael Terpin but instructed a lower court to consider a claim that the carrier had failed to adequately protect Terpin’s customer proprietary network information (CPNI) under Section 222 of the Communications Act. The 9th Circuit considered a case Terpin brought after a teenage perpetrator, Ellis Pinsky, allegedly bribed an employee at an AT&T authorized retailer to bypass the carrier’s security measures and “swap” Terpin’s phone number for a SIM Pinsky controlled. Pinsky was then able to find a document that contained Terpin’s cryptocurrency access credentials and use them to steal $24 million in cryptocurrency in 2017, the court said (docket 23-55375). “AT&T maintains that Section 222 protects only CPNI, not a broader category of customers’ ‘proprietary information,’” said the opinion by Judge Roopali Desai. Terpin “created a triable issue over whether, through the fraudulent SIM swap, AT&T gave hackers access to information protected” under the Communications Act, she wrote. Adopting AT&T’s “constrained view of CPNI would lead to absurd results,” the court found. “If Pinsky had walked into the AT&T affiliate store, asked" Jahmil Smith, an employee at an AT&T authorized retailer, "to print Terpin’s recent call log, and looked at the call log, AT&T would not dispute that Pinsky had access to CPNI,” Desai wrote: “Yet under AT&T’s view, Pinsky had no access to CPNI when he walked into the store, updated Terpin’s account to change the SIM associated with Terpin’s phone number, gained control over all incoming communications with Terpin’s phone number, and received confidential password reset messages sent to Terpin’s phone number.” Judges Richard Clifton and Holly Thomas also heard the case.

T-Mobile agreed it will make extensive changes in its business practices to bolster its customers' security and it will pay a nearly $15.8 million fine, the FCC said Monday. The company will spend at least that same amount strengthening its cybersecurity practices, though the carrier's costs will likely be significantly higher, the FCC said. Elements of the announced consent decree resolve separate incidents in 2021, 2022 and 2023, which the FCC Enforcement Bureau was investigating.

Verizon Communications will sell tower company Vertical Bridge “exclusive rights” to lease, operate and manage 6,339 Verizon towers for approximately $3.3 billion, including an upfront payment of $2.8 billion, the companies said Monday. The towers are located in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Verizon agreed to lease back capacity on the towers for 10 years, serving as the anchor tenant, with options for extending the lease term up to 50 years, the companies said: “Verizon will also have access to certain additional space on the towers for its future use, subject to certain restrictions.” Reports that Verizon was seeking to sell towers emerged in July (see 2407160026). In 2015, Verizon sold the rights to lease and operate 11,000 towers to American Tower for an upfront payment of $5 billion (see 1502050059). “This transaction builds on our existing relationship with Vertical Bridge while realizing substantial value for this unique set of assets and allows us to be agile in optimizing the network with one of the best operating partners,” said CEO Hans Vestberg. "We are pleased to have been selected by Verizon as the counterparty in the largest US tower transaction in almost a decade," said Ron Bizick, CEO of Vertical Bridge. In March, Vertical Bridge agreed to pay $310.3 million in cash to buy more than 200 towers from Shentel. Vestberg said during Verizon’s last earnings call in July that while he wouldn’t comment on rumors of a tower sale, the company was seeking additional cash flow. “The focus on cash flow is extremely important because it goes straight into our capital priorities,” he said.

The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council on Friday heard initial reports from its three working groups, which are just starting. Speakers warned that the assigned topics are challenging. Focusing on AI and 6G, CSRIC held its initial meeting in June (see 2406280050). Friday's was the first meeting of substance under the new cycle.