Rural America Won't Be 'Last' to 5G 'Race': Ericsson

Rural America is used to being “last to the race” when new wireless generations are released, but that won’t be the case with 5G, said Anand Akundi, interim head of Ericsson North America’s regional carrier unit. “5G changes the paradigm,” he told the Competitive Carriers Association Wednesday.

Rural areas will benefit from lessons learned during this pandemic, Akundi said. It made clear “having connectivity is not something that’s a want, but it’s a need,” he said. “Every industry is touched by 5G." Rural carriers will be able to offer new products to small- and medium-sized businesses not possible with 4G and could offer a new market that hasn’t been a small carrier focus, he said.

TNS CEO Mike Keegan told CCA carriers are making progress on Stir/Shaken rules. The largest carriers have met FCC requirements to deploy the technology and “tokens” have been authorized for 318 providers, he said. At least 375 carriers said they fully implemented Stir/Shaken, and 760 say they’re partway, he said. Another 3,200 service providers registered with the FCC robocall mitigation database, though some still haven’t, he said.

Carriers may not accept call traffic directly from a voice service provider that isn't listed in the database starting Tuesday, Keegan noted. Major carriers “have really been pushing” foreign operators to register by then, he said. “When you look at telephone traffic across the U.S., 50% of calls were signed at the end of June,” compared with 35% around Jan. 1, he said. “I look forward to the day when I don’t have to talk about robocalls and I don’t have to wear a mask,” he joked: “I’m not sure which one of those will end sooner.”

T-Mobile’s home internet service isn’t going to be available everywhere but will be “for the vast majority” of consumers, said Dow Draper, executive vice president-T-Mobile’s Emerging Products Group. "Cable does not like what we’re doing in this industry, because we’re showing how to do it right."

T-Mobile targets rural markets, but suburban and urban areas are a significant part of sales, Draper said. “We have broadband gaps all across this country, across all markets” with “very dissatisfied and unhappy customers,” he said. T-Mobile is on track to hit 500,000 home internet subscribers by Dec. 31, he said. “Americans need solutions now,” he said. A “staggering” number have access to no broadband or from one company, he said.

Draper noted that when he worked at Sprint, “there was no money for anything,” but T-Mobile is focused on launching new products. “We need products outside of our core business to significantly grow and … take up all of this capacity that we’re going to be creating,” he said. T-Mobile is also focused on small markets, he said: “T-Mobile and Sprint had very low penetration in those markets before, but together we’re deploying our long-range 5G capacity, and even our ultra capacity 5G,” he said.

Open radio access networks can be built at prices comparable to what small carriers were getting from Huawei and ZTE, which can no longer be part of U.S. networks under FCC supply chain rules, said Loris Zaia, Mavenir vice president-major accounts. “It really isn’t new technology, it’s just a new way to do it with different and open interfaces by completely disaggregating the hardware and the software,” Zaia said. “It’s fundamentally not a lot different than what you do today, it’s just we open the interfaces to give you choice.”