Steve Blum's Blog
It’s a lot like spring training. Mobile 5G service is moving into the “proof of concept” stage, according to a joint press release from Samsung and Verizon. They trotted out a design they intend to offer to consumers “in the first half of 2019” at a Qualcomm meeting this week.
Both Verizon and AT&T plan to light up very limited 5G (or in Verizon’s case, near–5G) networks in several U.S. cities by the end of the month.… More
Verizon is waving the Federal Communications Commission’s pole ownership preemption order like a chainsaw as it tries to shred existing lease contracts it signed, but doesn’t like. In a request to put that order on hold, the City of North Little Rock included a copy of a letter it received from Verizon, in response to a wireless ordinance it adopted in July.
In it, Verizon told the city…
… MoreWe’ve also compared our existing Master Lease Agreement (“MLA”) with the City to the FCC Order.
The easiest way to win the race to 5G is to simply declare victory. It’s what mobile carriers did a decade ago with 4G, and what they’re doing now. That’s causing confusion, as an editorial by FierceWireless’ Monica Alleven describes…
… MoreOne of the problems with defining 5G is, practically speaking, there’s no single judge currently determining what is or isn’t 5G. Is it ITU’s job, or 3GPP’s? Mostly, it’s the individual marketing departments at carriers and vendors, or “all of the above"…
Verizon is probably the most justified to date to actually call its 5G Home service a 5G service.
Verizon grabbed what media spotlight was shining yesterday at the opening of the second Mobile World Congress Americas show in Los Angeles. Its announcement that it would be first to market with 5G fixed wireless service wasn’t a surprise – it’s been talking about it for months – but putting a price tag and a launch date on it makes it much more real. Whether it’s really a big deal or not is a matter of how you look at it.… More
Fiber-to-the-home broadband service can effectively compete against cable company offerings, but copper-based DSL service can’t. That’s a lesson that’s coming into sharp focus as telcos report 2017 financial results.
Verizon backed away from legacy telephone service, selling its California systems to Frontier among other things, but hung on to its FiOS business, which is concentrated in the northeastern U.S. As a result, Frontier is bleeding DSL subscribers (although it’s doing better where it offers FTTH service), while Verizon’s share of broadband subscribers in its FiOS territory is climbing.… More
The City of Sacramento’s 5G deployment deal with Verizon will expand the broadband service choices consumers have by a little bit, and pave the way for faster mobile service in the future.
The deal allows Verizon to use city assets to install what will initially be an experimental 5G network that’ll provide fixed service, presumably into homes and businesses, in competition with AT&T and Comcast. But it’s immediate value is as a development project, with technical and political benefits.… More
Verizon doesn’t like it when states pass laws that affect its business, and now it wants the Federal Communications Commission to simply sweep those annoying rules away with a single, blanket preemption.
In a white paper filed with the FCC, Verizon points to ongoing efforts in California, and several other states, to re-impose Internet privacy rules that were overturned earlier this year by the federal government. It also fears that states will try to reinstate net neutrality requirements, and other common carrier obligations that the FCC is likely to scrap in the coming months.… More
G.fast technology, which in theory allows telcos to push gigabit speeds over existing copper wire, isn’t a good substitute for fiber upgrades, according to Verizon’s director of network planning. Vincent O’Byrne, quoted in an article by Sean Buckley in FierceTelecom, said that even in multi-tenant office buildings or apartments, it’s more cost effective to install fiber all the way to the customer, than it is to bring fiber in or near a building and then use G.fast… More
Verizon is pumping up the volume about its three year deal with Corning to spend $1.05 billion on “fiber optic cable and associated hardware”. It even got a congratulatory (and self-congratulatory) press release from Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai. As it should It’s a big commitment and will add a considerable amount of potential bandwidth to the U.S. supply.
Verizon also claims that it will be buying “up to” 20 million kilometers (12.4 million miles, it helpfully adds) of “optical fiber” each year, from 2018 through 2020.… More
Making good on a promise, Verizon says it is rolling out wireless Internet of things (IoT) service nationally. During the CTIA show in Las Vegas last year, a Verizon representative said that the LTE M1 standard would be deployed throughout its U.S. network by April. Verizon beat that deadline by a day, saying in a press release that as of yesterday, it was launching…
… MoreThe first nationwide commercial 4G LTE Category M1 (or Cat M1) network, which spans 2.4 million square miles.
