T-Mobile, which will report earnings Thursday, announced new pricing plans Tuesday. The Experience More plan “includes all the benefits” of the carrier’s Go5G Plus plan “and adds more hotspot data plus T-Satellite with Starlink included through end of year,” the company said, and “Experience Beyond includes all the benefits of Go5G Next in addition to more data and T-Satellite included, providing over $200 in added value for each line, every month.” The carrier also offered four new Metro by T-Mobile plans. All the new offerings come with a five-year price guarantee. Choosing a wireless plan has become “almost as complicated as a mortgage,” T-Mobile said. “People need easy-to-understand plans, the ability to compare options across providers and the chance to switch providers when they want, rather than being locked into long-term device contracts.”
Changes wrought by President Donald Trump’s return to the White House are already affecting telecom industry financials. Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg noted the risks from tariffs on a call with analysts Tuesday after the company released Q1 results. The nation’s largest wireless provider reported a net loss of 289,000 monthly postpaid phone subscribers in the quarter, after adding 568,000 in Q4 2024.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the FCC's $57 million fine imposed on AT&T, agreeing with the wireless carrier that the agency's in-house adjudication was unconstitutional. In its docket 24-60223 decision Thursday, the three-judge 5th Circuit panel said its analysis is governed by the U.S. Supreme Court's Jarkesy decision. And the court pointed to Jarkesy as it said the FCC was incorrect that its enforcement proceeding against AT&T falls under the "public rights" exception that lets Congress assign some matters to an agency instead of an Article III court. Common law suits presumptively concern "private rights" and must be adjudicated by Article III courts, they said. The judges said an in-house FCC proceeding "amputates the carrier’s ability to challenge the legality of the forfeiture order." "No one denies the Commission’s authority to enforce laws requiring telecommunications companies like AT&T to protect sensitive customer data," the judges said. "But the Commission must do so consistent with our Constitution’s guarantees of an Article III decisionmaker and a jury trial." Hearing the case were Judges Catrina Haynes, Stuart Duncan and Cory Wilson, with Duncan penning the decision. T-Mobile and Verizon are similarly challenging fines brought against them in the same April 2024 enforcement action accusing the three wireless carriers of failing to safeguard data on customers' real-time locations.
Hannah Lepow departs as legal adviser to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks and will join NBCUniversal … Joel Thayer, ex-Digital Progress Institute, joins the office of FTC Commissioner Mark Meador as chief of staff ... Changes at Eutelsat America and OneWeb Technologies: General Counsel Joe Uglialoro adds COO title; Chris Hetmanski named chief technology officer, replacing Rodrigo Gomez, now with Amazon's Project Kuiper … Wireless broadband firm Inseego appoints Ryan Sullivan, formerly Sorenson Communications, as senior vice president-carrier product management ... Senan Mele, formerly Horizon Next, joins BIA as vice-president-forecasting and data analysis, replacing Nicole Ovadia, who is leaving to pursue station ownership.
The U.S. trade war and resulting geopolitical tensions are a short-term not a long-term worry, a trio of satellite executives said Wednesday during a panel discussion. They were also bullish about their prospects in the face of competition from SpaceX and, soon, Amazon's Kuiper.
The FCC’s pressure campaign against corporate diversity initiatives lacks a clear basis in the rules and isn’t likely to fare well if it is tested in the courts, said panelists during a Broadband Breakfast webinar Wednesday.
The U.S. reliance on tariffs should have minimal impact on most fiber broadband equipment pricing and deployments, Dell'Oro Group's Jeff Heynen wrote Monday. Key U.S. fiber broadband equipment providers have onshored most of their manufacturing and assembly so they can qualify for BEAD's Build America Buy America provisions, he said. Most commonly deployed components have already been self-certified by vendors and seen big increases in domestic manufacturing.
Broadcasters called for the FCC to “delete” nearly every reporting and filing obligation the agency imposes on them in scores of comments posted in docket 25-133 Monday, but the agency should roll back ownership rules first, NAB said. Multichannel video programming distribution (MVPD) interests and allies repeatedly argued that the highly competitive video distribution marketplace necessitates doing away with rules they claim tip the competitive scales. The docket also received many comments from space interests and the telecom industry (see 2504140037 and 2504140046).
Given the scope and scale of the reforms the FCC adopted in its 2024 incarcerated people’s communication services order, pushback by facilities and IPCS providers is to be expected, the Brattle Group and Wright petitioners' representatives told FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's office. In a docket 23-62 filing posted Friday recapping the meeting, the Brattle and Wright reps said there's no compelling evidence necessitating a change to the IPCS reforms. They discussed a Brattle analysis of cost data and argued that the price caps in the 2024 order allow a balance of IPCS providers recovering their costs and a reasonable profit while providing "just and reasonable rates" to consumers. Separately, provider NCIC Correctional Services requested an unredacted version of the Brattle analysis.
Comments in Chairman Brendan Carr's “Delete, Delete, Delete” docket (25-133) continue to roll in to the FCC. As of late Friday, the due date, nearly 600 comments have been filed. Also on Friday, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter compared the docket to “spring cleaning.”