Howard Buskirk

AT&T provided some of the first subscriber projections for Q2 Tuesday, putting postpaid phone net adds in the range of about 300,000, below the 476,000 forecast by Wall Street analysts. AT&T Chief Financial Officer Pascal Desroches cited the numbers in a Bank of America conference. AT&T expects a “normalization of overall industry growth” in 2023, compared with the “elevated levels of growth” in the past two years, he said. AT&T reported 424,000 postpaid phone net adds in Q1 (see 2304200059). The AT&T wireless team is performing well. Desroches said: “We went from a place where we weren't growing. We were losing share. … Now we have added share. We're growing wireless service revenues. We're growing [average revenue per user]. We're growing profits.” AT&T isn’t losing wireless subscribers to cable, he said. Desroches dismissed rumors earlier this month that Amazon may work with other major wireless carriers, but not AT&T, to offer free or low-cost wireless service (see 2306020055). “This was a rumor about nothing,” he said. Amazon already has a penetration “north of 80% of US households,” he said. “Would they really enter into a variable pricing construct for an incremental 5%, 10%?” Desroches asked. AT&T is on track to meet or exceed a goal of generating $16 billion in free cash flow this year, he said. Cash flow has been an analyst concern for AT&T in several recent quarters. T-Mobile CFO Peter Osvaldik told the conference T-Mobile remains optimistic about postpaid growth in Q2. “We do see slight industry normalization from what we saw in elevated 2022 levels,” he said. T-Mobile growth will come because the company offers “the best product at the best price, combined,” he said. T-Mobile is picking up enterprise and government customers, markets where its share was historically below 10%, he said. Osvaldik said customers are reporting higher satisfaction levels with T-Mobile’s Home Internet product than they had with cable and fiber broadband. Fixed wireless remains “an amazing opportunity,” he said. T-Mobile expects Dish Network to emerge as a postpaid competitor, he said. “I would never put anything past” Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen, he said: “I think he's a fierce competitor. We certainly have a good working relationship and we're here to support them.” Osvaldik also downplayed the Amazon rumors, noting Dish Wireless uses T-Mobile’s network and “our arrangement with Dish doesn't allow for resale of our network to a different brand -- under a different branding construct.”

The FCC is getting more aggressive on data and cybersecurity, with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Friday announcing a July 31 hearing on improving the security of the border gateway protocol (BGP). Rosenworcel also said she circulated a notice of inquiry for a commissioner vote about how broadband providers use data caps as part of subscriber plans. Earlier in the week, Rosenworcel said the FCC was taking a closer look at data privacy, launching a Privacy and Data Protection Task Force (see 230615004).

The Biden administration announced $930 million in grants Friday to expand middle-mile high-speed internet infrastructure as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (see 2111120050). NTIA said 260 applicants submitted funding requests of more than $7.47 billion.

The reaction has been muted to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's speech Wednesday launching a Privacy and Data Protection Task Force and urging a more aggressive approach by the agency on data privacy (see 2306140075). But some observers questioned how far the FCC can go under its legal authority to regulate privacy. Rosenworcel said Wednesday sections 222 and 631 of the Communication Act provide the grounding for FCC action. Congress rejected ISP privacy rules approved under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, through a Congressional Review Act resolution (see 1704040059).

Fixed wireless access is accelerating and shows no signs of slowing down, experts said during a Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) FWA Forum webinar Wednesday. GSA identified announced FWA service offers using LTE or 5G from 535 operators in 186 countries and territories and launched service from 455 operators in 173, per a new report.

The FCC is extending the deadlines for filings made in the universal licensing system and antenna structure registration system (ASR) and warned that, like those systems, the tower construction notification system (TCNS) and E-106 System also went down last Friday at about 6:30 p.m. EDT, said a notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest.

The FCC is launching a Privacy and Data Protection Task Force, made up of technical and legal experts from across the agency, with a focus on enforcement, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Wednesday in a speech at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Rosenworcel said Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal will chair the task force. “Right out of the gate, we are showing that this task force means business,” Rosenworcel said.

NTIA heard a variety of comments, positive and negative, on the viability of the citizens broadband radio service as a model for future spectrum sharing. Comments, posted by the agency Tuesday, were due May 31 on an NTIA report on dynamic sharing and the three-tier sharing model offered by CBRS (see 2305010063). The report was by the agency’s Colorado lab, the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS).

Use of the 6 GHz band will make Wi-Fi more efficient and means Wi-Fi devices won’t have to also work in legacy bands, said Rolf De Vegt, Qualcomm Technologies vice president-technical standards, on a Qualcomm webinar Tuesday. De Vegt said 6 GHz is the right band to meet today's needs. Wi-Fi started out with only about 90 MHz of spectrum in the 4.2 GHz band before the 5 GHz and then 6 GHz bands were added, he said. The addition of 6 GHz in 2020 (see 2004240011) more than doubled the amount of spectrum available for unlicensed, he said. “When devices operate in 6 GHz there is no need to support all the legacy modes,” which are “slower modes and less efficient,” De Vegt said. “What we can really focus on when we deploy networks in the 6 GHz band” is using “the most modern and the latest techniques for those particular Wi-Fi networks,” he said. The opening of 6 GHz is “extremely timely” as fiber is built out worldwide, he said. Without the 6 GHz band, Wi-Fi would become “the bottleneck” in the network, he said. The amount of the band opened for Wi-Fi varies around the world, but “leading tech nations” like the U.S., South Korea, Canada and Brazil are making the full band available, and not just the lower 500 MHz, recognizing “this is going to spur a lot of growth and innovation in all kinds of industries,” De Vegt said. “Wi-Fi connects the world” and now carries most wireless data network traffic, he said. Currently, an estimated 19 billion Wi-Fi devices are in use worldwide, he said. Wi-Fi networks are growing in every home, “it’s not just about your laptop or phone,” said Alap Modi, principal solutions architect at Wi-Fi equipment company Eero. The types of use cases that are growing require fast speed and low latency and that’s what 6 GHz offers, he said. ISPs are offering faster and faster connections to the home, but “inside your home you are still relying on Wi-Fi,” he said. Eero offers devices that use 160 MHz channels, and that offer multi-GB speeds in the home, he said.

The FCC’s final 42 GHz NPRM, released Friday, got few changes from the draft proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, as expected (see 2306020048). Commissioners approved the 42 GHz item 4-0 Thursday (see 2306080042). The final version of the next-generation 911 NPRM adds numerous questions to the draft and got the most tweaks among the items approved Thursday. No major changes were made to the final NPRM on robocalls and robotexts, which were also approved unanimously (see 2306080043).