Howard Buskirk

Verizon took a hit on Wall Street Friday after announcing the loss of 189,000 wireless consumer postpaid phone customers Q3, partially as a result of raising prices. Consumer wireless postpaid churn was 1.1%. Verizon’s share price was down as much as 6% and closed down 4.46% at $35.35. Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis warned that pricing pressure would continue into Q4.

AT&T continues to grow its subscriber base, adding a net 708,000 postpaid phone customers in Q3, the company reported Thursday. AT&T was the first of the big three wireless carriers to report. The company also said its 5G mid-band spectrum now covers 100 million POPs, with 130 million expected year-end. AT&T’s stock price rose 7.72% Thursday to close at $16.74, the company's best day on Wall Street in two years.

Digital twins are already being used and can solve some of the most intractable problems facing cities, said Amen Ra Mashariki, senior principal scientist at tech company Nvidia, during an IEEE conference Tuesday. “You would be shocked what leaders of cities don’t know about their cities,” said Mashariki, former chief analytics officer in New York City. Digital twinsand the metaverse are “solving some of our greatest challenges,” including wildfire prevention, 5G signal propagation, and energy and traffic management, he said. “How do we replicate a city in such a way that we can better understand the city, learn more about the city and then apply solutions that have an impact on the residents?” he asked. A digital twin has to offer “a high level of reality,” he said. Working for New York was difficult because when anything bad happened “it happened big,” he said, citing the cascading problems when COVID-19 hit in 2020. “What digital twins allow you to do is look at the full city,” Mashariki said: “You don’t go in and solve one thing. … You have to solve at least nine, 10, 15 other things in concert.” Digital twins are never “simple to build” and have to be built using “real data,” often crowdsourced, he said. “If I build low-income housing here, how does that affect traffic, how does that affect public safety?” he said. New York City has a right-to-housing law, but people never want homeless shelters in their neighborhoods, Mashariki said. “With simulation, if you have real data, you can actually begin to simulate what opening up shelters in which neighborhoods actually looks like,” he said: “Once you build that shelter you have to then track that data and bring it back into your digital twin. This is the hardest part about a digital twin.” One often-cited example is Ericsson’s construction of digital-twin cities in Sweden, accurate in minute details from the locations of trees to the height and composition of buildings (see 2203150078).

Carriers are deploying stand-alone 5G, but there are challenges carriers are struggling with in early deployments, speakers said Wednesday during a TelecomTV virtual summit. So far, there have been only about 30 deployments of stand-alone 5G worldwide, said Robert Curran, Appledore consulting analyst. That’s “not that large of a number, but it is a start,” he said.

Open fronthaul, a telecom concept that started with 4G, is becoming key as carriers launch 5G, speakers said during a Light Reading open radio access network virtual seminar Tuesday. Questions remain about ORAN, and when it will launch at scale (see 2209070052), but experts said growth is undeniable. The fronthaul is the connection between the baseband unit and the remote radio head, which became more important under LTE networks as operators moved their radios closer to the antennas.

The FCC appears close to releasing a public notice on testing and public trials prior to certifying automated frequency coordination providers in the 6 GHz band, industry officials said. The PN is reportedly in Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s office, though it could be sent back to the Office of Engineering and Technology for further work. A decision on rules for very-low-power devices in the 6 GHz band appears further off.

Edge computing is one of the hottest concepts in wireless, but what the edge will look like and even where it’s located is evolving, speakers said Friday during a Mobile World Live webinar. Speakers predicted edge will be a key feature of 5G.

5G for 12 GHz Coalition leaders told reporters Thursday they still expect the FCC to act soon on changing the rules for the 12.2-12.7 band to allow two-way use for 5G. The officials hope the FCC will also soon approve a grant of special temporary authority allowing real-world tests. They noted the coalition now includes 38 companies and organizations.

The FCC is expected to approve soon a recent draft order circulated by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel that would further clamp down on gear from Chinese companies, preventing the sale of yet-to-be authorized equipment in the U.S. The order, circulated by Rosenworcel Oct. 5 (see 2210070083), would ban the FCC authorization of gear from companies including Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications, Hikvision and Dahua Technology, FCC officials said. Industry officials believe the coming restrictions could increase lawmakers' interest in approving additional funding for the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program as part of an end-of-year legislative package (see 2210130074).

GSMA expects eight more 5G launches this year, with 5G networks hitting 420 worldwide by 2025, said Julie Ssali, senior analyst at GSMA Intelligence, during a Mobile World Live webinar Monday. Ssali warned that most of the networks are built on top of an older-generation core. There are 218 operators offering 5G in 81 markets, but GSMA counts only 27 5G stand-alone networks, she said. “The one key value to growth in this market is the deployment of 5G stand-alone networks,” she said. The biggest shift GSMA sees is toward edge computing, which does require 5G stand-alone to really see the benefits for business customers, including “advantage functionalities,” she said. Most stand-alone networks are being built in the Asia-Pacific region, she said. Rising inflation and lower expected growth are having an big effect, with some carriers holding back on 5G deployments “until there’s more stability within the economy,” she said.