EchoStar faces litigation from two tower companies over lease agreements from the now-ended nationwide wireless network buildout by its Dish Wireless subsidiary, but few if any other tower company suits are likely, said Ken Schmidt, president of Steel in the Air cell tower lease consultancy. American Tower and Crown Castle represented the vast bulk of Dish's wireless network deployment, and have substantially more to lose than other tower companies, Schmidt added.
Media spending globally on sports rights is expected to top $78 billion in 2030, up from $65 billion this year, Ampere Analysis said Tuesday. Driving that growth will be major renewals in the U.S. and rising competition from streaming platforms taking part in premium live sports rights auctions, it said.
NextNav said a new technical analysis demonstrates that 5G-based 3D positioning, navigation and timing operations can coexist with RAIN systems in the lower 900 MHz band, with “no operational impact … in typical real-world deployments.” For any measurable change to happen, “an implausibly strong 5G signal would need to align with multiple additional simultaneous conditions that rarely align in the real world,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 24-240.
The cost of residential broadband plans with speeds of 100-940 Mbps has gone down, on average, 43.1% over the past decade, while plans for 940 Mbps-1Gbps speeds are down 22.5% since 2017, USTelecom said in its latest annual Broadband Pricing Index report. The overall cost of consumer goods and services is up 35.8% during the past decade, it said. Over the past year, the 100-940 Mbps plans saw a price drop of 3.6% on average, while prices for the faster set of plans were down 1.4%.
Charter Communications' proposed acquisition of Cox Communications would mean more gatekeeper power over internet distribution, less competition, higher prices and unequal treatment of underserved communities, according to a petition to deny filed Tuesday (docket 25-233) with the FCC. Petitioners Public Knowledge, the Communications Workers of America, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and the Center for Accessible Technology laid out an array of criticisms of the deal, including over plans to cut Cox employees and their prediction of price hikes on consumers enabled by market concentration.
Four major public safety groups on Wednesday opposed a NextNav proposal for the FCC to reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band to enable a “terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).
USTelecom and other commenters warned the FCC against abruptly detariffing legacy business data services (BDS), as is proposed in an NPRM that commissioners approved ahead of their August meeting (see 2508050056). Unlike most deregulatory proposals from the FCC, industry groups mostly aren’t on board with the BDS changes. Comments were posted Tuesday and Wednesday in docket 21-17.
New research by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) found that by the end of October, a total of 647 operators in 191 countries were investing in 5G, GSA analyst Joe Gardiner said Tuesday during the group's webinar. Some have launched, while others have purchased spectrum for 5G or otherwise are planning to offer the service, he said. GSA also found that 358 operators in 140 countries have launched or soft launched mobile 5G services, and 175 providers in 78 countries have launched fixed wireless access service that's compliant with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project.
Only about 10% of the locations being passed through projects funded by New York's Municipal Infrastructure Program are unserved or underserved, meaning the state is financing overbuilding almost 90% of the time, according to an analysis from the New York Law School's Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute. In a blog post Thursday, ACLP Director Michael Santorelli and Senior Fellow Alex Karras said that kind of overbuilding diverts funds from the 61,000 remaining unserved and underserved locations in the state.
Nations worldwide are working on individual regulatory frameworks for direct-to-device (D2D) service, with satellite operators facing some challenges in dealing with the varied approaches, said Lynk Chief Global Affairs Officer Amy Mehlman at an FCBA continuing education seminar Monday. Some countries might have to revisit their rules, she said, depending on what the ITU does at its 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference and the outcomes of Agenda Item 1.13, which deals with D2D service.