Howard Buskirk

Verizon is in good shape to “manage through" a tough economy and is returning to basics in its consumer offerings, Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis said Tuesday at a Morgan Stanley investor conference. “The view on the macro picture has continued to change … depending on the day of the week,” Ellis said: “The consumer is in good shape overall,” he said. “We continue to see payment patterns that are very much in line with what we saw pre-pandemic.” Ellis, who's leaving Verizon in May, cited the appointment last week of Sowmyanarayan Sampath as CEO of Verizon Consumer Group (see 2303030042) in saying there have been times when “we've got distracted by trying to do too many things at once,” Ellis said. “You'll see Sampath getting very much back to the basics of what made Verizon Wireless the biggest and best performing carrier in the U.S.,” and “we feel good about what we saw in the second half of the year,” he said. Verizon’s lower-cost “Welcome Unlimited Plan” has been helpful in driving growth, Ellis said: The plan “gave us the opportunity to advertise at a lower price point, drive foot traffic into the stores. And then we challenge our store teams to say, ‘Hey, if a customer really wants that plan, we'll absolutely sell that plan for them. But let's tell them about all our other plans.’” Verizon’s C-band spectrum has been turned on in 76 of 406 markets, starting with dense, urban areas, he said. “Our customers are liking what they're seeing” in those markets, he said.

5G is moving closer to maturity, based on what they saw and heard at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, industry executives said during a TelecomTV webinar Tuesday. Questions remain about how to monetize 5G and about the future of open radio access networks, speakers said.

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington questioned the need for the FCC to revisit net neutrality rules, during a keynote interview at the State of the Net conference Monday. Simington asked whether the U.S. doesn't “have de facto net neutrality at this moment.” It’s unclear what to do on net neutrality when it already exists, he said.

Alondra Nelson, a former top tech adviser to President Joe Biden, said Thursday she expects continuing administration focus on tech regulation, though she warned that focusing on keeping up with the pace of change is a mistake. Other speakers at an event by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Public Knowledge said the time is ripe to start looking at a new agency to oversee privacy and other technology issues. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler warned that the U.S. in danger of defaulting on leadership in favor of other countries.

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was a success this year, with large numbers of people returning for the first time since 2019, said GSMA Ltd. CEO John Hoffman during a session Thursday, the conference's final day. GSMA reported attendance of 88,500, from 202 countries and territories. That’s fewer than the 109,000 reported in 2019 but up from 61,000 last year. Hoffman noted MWC canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19, the first major event hit by the pandemic: “We didn’t know what [the virus] was. It wasn’t supposedly in Europe yet, but it was.” Speakers noted the conference honored Marty Cooper, the father of the cellphone, who made the first cellular call 50 years ago next month. “We’re looking at the past because we want to see how far we’ve come, but also we want to see the velocity and speed of going to the future,” said Zina Jarrahi Cinker, director general of Matter, an international think tank. MWC needs to offer more space next year, she said, saying hundreds of people wanted to get into events on quantum computing and frontier technologies, but “they had only capacity for 30 and 40." People “have done more deals, met with more people than ever before,” said Lara Dewar, GSMA chief marketing officer. “As digital technologies continue to develop, there is new excitement in the air that MWC captured so well,” said GSMA Director General Mats Granryd: “The transition to Web 3.0 will trigger a new explosion in network traffic, and it is critical that we work together to prepare.” 5G is "mainstream now; it’s no longer the new boy on the block,” said Adrian Dodd, head-GSMA Services, on a second panel. Sustainability “is on everybody’s lips,” he said: “That means devices are lasting much longer on the networks, which has a set of challenges. … More and more we’re going to see older devices with lower capabilities, younger devices with higher capabilities.” With devices lasting longer, trade-in programs are becoming more important, he said. 5G has “only just started,” despite all the discussion at MWC about 6G, said Barney Stinton, GSMA head-membership.

The mobile phone will be the entry point for most people to the world of the metaverse, said Nicole Lazzaro, XEODesign game designer and president, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Wednesday. Speakers agreed the move to the metaverse will be important to adoption of 5G and the growth of the wireless industry.

Providers signaled a note of caution in response to letters from FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel asking the nation’s nine largest providers of wireless emergency alerts about sending alerts in languages beyond English and Spanish (see 2302140059). “If alert originators and FEMA originate and hand off multilingual alert information in a format consistent with Commission rules and relevant technical standards, Verizon could support them,” the carrier said, posted Tuesday in docket 15-91. Revisions in the alerting process “will require collaboration and consensus among stakeholders responsible for originating, delivering and presenting alerts to consumers, and a feasible period of time to incorporate the new capability into networks and handsets,” Verizon said. “Any modifications to the current, broadcast-based model of WEA must be made under structured conditions and rigorously hashed out through technical standards bodies, otherwise the FCC risks fragmenting a well-functioning international alerting system,” AT&T said: “Further, the more significant the modification, the less likely that current and legacy handsets will be able to support it.” T-Mobile urged the FCC to work with its Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) and the ATIS Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee (WTSC) on any changes. “With regard to potential modifications to the WEA system and WEA-capable wireless devices referenced in your letter, T-Mobile supports CSRIC and WTSC evaluating whether these solutions are compatible with the cell-broadcast technology that underpins the successful WEA system,” the company said. “While technical evaluations about the issues raised in your letter are on-going” the FCC and FEMA “should encourage alert originators to use the embedded link capabilities of WEA to ensure that emergency information is accessible to as many language communities as possible,” T-Mobile said. The FCC must “engage device manufacturers to effectively enhance WEA messaging,” C Spire said. The company “is not aware of existing machine translation technologies that are sufficiently reliable for use in emergency situations,” it said: “To make such functionality a reality, C Spire believes that the FCC must initiate a proceeding prompting a designated standards body, … vendors, and device manufacturers to develop standards for such technologies.” Google Fi said as an mobile virtual network operator it “relies upon underlying network partners to provide WEA capabilities. The network partners push WEA notifications directly to Fi users without any modification by Google Fi.”

A big theme of the Mobile World Congress Tuesday was the potential for what 5G can do, and how new networks are bringing diverse companies together. Industry executives said carriers need to fundamentally change their mindset to refocus on collaboration with other companies and helping customers use all the data 5G makes possible.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel highlighted the FCC’s proposal for the commissioners' March 16 open meeting to approve a mobile satellite service allocation to some terrestrial flexible-use bands (see 2302230059). Speaking Monday to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Rosenworcel also noted the FCC’s work on the 12.7 GHz band, the topic of an October NPRM (see 2210270046).

The kind of “digital cooperation” facilitated by the ITU is “needed now more than ever before,” new ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin’s told Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday. “I strongly believe that we can’t separate people from technology,” she said. Bogdan-Martin said it remains unclear whether the world will meet the U.N.’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) (see 1702280042): Under the worst-case scenario, “we fail to rescue the SDGs, development is stalled, or it’s going backwards, the climate crisis has overwhelmed us, and mistrust is rampant in terms of technology. Gender equality is a distant dream, and more and more people actually question the very value of connectivity.” What can we do to challenge the status quo? she asked. Finite resources like spectrum and associated satellite orbits “are the building blocks of our advanced global communications system, for all humanity,” she said. They need to be shared “equitably, responsibly, while avoiding harmful interference.” The world needs to “speak the same language” and “reach consensus on global technology standards,” she said. The ITU vision for 6G for 2030 and beyond will be completed later this year and will make energy efficiency and environmental sustainability part of the technical specifications for the first time, she said. She also supports more partnerships to bring down the cost of connectivity. Bogdan-Martin urged the wireless industry to unite behind the SDGs “because failure is not an option.” She said when she spoke with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres a few weeks ago “he stressed the importance of digital technologies and how ITU can be a pioneer.” There “are risks, and those risks are growing, but I ask, what are the risks if we do nothing?” Bogdan-Martin asked.