The U.S. wireless industry invested $39 billion in infrastructure, and “America leads the world in 5G availability,” but leadership is in doubt unless more spectrum is allocated for industry to keep up with demand, CTIA President Meredith Baker said Tuesday at the start of the Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas. The U.S. is falling behind many other countries on mid-band for 5G, she said. Baker urged special focus on reallocating the lower 3 GHz, 4 GHz and 7 GHz bands for 5G.
Exports to China
5G is growing in Europe, but the region is falling behind parts of the Americas and Asia, a GSMA official said during a Mobile World Live webinar Monday. Europe is “lagging in terms of customers willing to upgrade to 5G,” said Radhika Gupta, GSMA Intelligence head-data acquisition.
Telecom-focused congressional leaders are voicing interest in including a temporary restoration of the FCC’s auction authority in a continuing resolution to extend federal appropriations past the end of FY 2023 Sept. 30. Lobbyists and observers told us they remain doubtful about Capitol Hill’s appetite for such a move due to the factors that hindered talks on a broader spectrum legislative package (see 2308070001). Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee members sounded alarms about the remit’s lapse during a Tuesday hearing on the FCC’s FY 2024 funding request. House Communications Subcommittee member Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, also raised concerns during a Punchbowl News event the same day.
Republicans asked the Biden administration to strengthen export controls against Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., after Huawei unveiled a new smartphone this month that may have been made through means that violated U.S. export restrictions. In a letter sent to the Bureau of Industry and Security last week, 10 House Republicans, including Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul of Texas, said they're “extremely troubled and perplexed” about BIS’ “inability to effectively write and enforce export control rules against violators, especially China.” They said BIS has continued to grant licenses to SMIC and other Chinese companies despite “continued Congressional pressure to adopt stricter policies.” They said both technology companies should be subject to “full blocking sanctions” and their executives should face criminal investigations, and the Commerce Department should revoke all of their existing license applications, add all their subsidiaries to the Entity List and take other measures to cut off a broad range of shipments to both firms. The lawmakers asked for a briefing with BIS and other agencies that oversee export controls by Sept. 28 and listed several recommendations for the administration to further limit sensitive technology exports to China, including by creating a new sanctions authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act specifically focused on China. The new sanctions authority should be used to target companies that “flout” export controls and should be leveraged to “designate SMIC and Huawei with full blocking sanctions.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Thursday that they have the ears of Republican leadership on AI efforts, despite Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., becoming the latest to criticize Schumer’s Wednesday forum on AI regulation (see 2309130061).
The FCC’s Public Safety Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology are forwarding concerns House China Committee leaders raised about the extent to which Chinese equipment manufacturers like Fibocom and Quectel are spying via U.S. IoT-connected devices via connectivity modules “to each of the authorities enumerated in” the 2019 Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act to probe the status of those companies, commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in letters to panel leaders released Tuesday. House China Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Calif., asked Rosenworcel in August about Fibocom and Quectel, citing concerns about the threat to U.S. IoT devices (see 2308080059). “The issues you raise with respect to connectivity modules merit continued attention,” she wrote the House China leaders. The commission “is examining additional steps it should take to protect U.S. networks. In addition to our efforts to prevent equipment on the Covered List from being approved through our equipment authorization process, the agency sought comment on the extent to which certain ‘component parts’ associated with equipment authorized by the agency, if produced by entities identified on the Covered List, should be precluded from authorization because they might also pose an unacceptable risk to national security.” The FCC “also sought comment on whether the Commission should revoke authorizations of specific Covered List equipment that was issued prior to the date any prohibition on authorization went into effect, what the process would be for doing so, and how this would work in the marketplace,” she said: “At present, the agency is examining the record in this proceeding and considering what steps will further protect communications networks and equipment supply chains.” Fibocom and Quectel “are among those that have obtained authorizations of modules,” Rosenworcel said. “The agency does not have information about whether authorized equipment may have been or is currently used in U.S. networks, and, if so, where precisely it is deployed,” but “we coordinate closely and regularly with our federal partners and executive branch bodies that have the responsibility for making determinations regarding equipment and services that pose an unacceptable risk and have written to them to ensure that this matter receives appropriate review.”
A year after the FCC adopted a five-year deorbit rule for low earth orbit (LEO) satellites (see 2209290017), space regulatory experts see the rule becoming a norm for many space operators, but it's less clear if many other countries will codify it into their own rules. Getting U.S. market access means agreeing to the five-year deorbit, which makes the U.S. rule a de facto international standard in many cases, they said.
The Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL) meeting last week endorsed the U.S. position for the upper 6 GHz band, approving “no change” to allow international mobile telecommunications (IMT) in the band at the upcoming World Radio Communication conference, industry officials said. But a few nations sided with China's position of China, which the U.S. opposes, to approve a future agenda item on the topic at the WRC in 2027.
Clearly Android "will achieve complete dominance" over RDK globally in the video device operating system landscape, with Huawei's HarmonyOS confined to China, Rethink Research said Wednesday. It said competition from Huawei has been "thoroughly beaten down" by sanctions, and RDK's hopes of entering the European set-top marketplace fell apart when Vodafone opted to go with Android TV. Rethink also said to expect a continual decline of connected TV devices as their functions are replaced by smart TVs that directly integrate their features.
The optical network market continues to grow after a “slight hiccup” in 2020 when providers hesitated briefly after the COVID-19 pandemic started, said Jimmy Yu, Dell'Oro Group analyst for optical transport, during the Fierce Telecom Optical Summit Tuesday. But Yu predicts challenges ahead. Other speakers predicted growth as providers look to cut operating costs and make their networks more efficient.