Moving Beyond Hype, Carriers Now Feel Pressure to Deliver on 5G

Carriers large and small are feeling pressure to offer 5G to their customers, executives said at a Competitive Carriers Association conference, streamed from Tampa Tuesday. “All broadband is local,” said CCA President Steve Berry: “Broadband deployment, broadband build, is local.”

Wisconsin-based Cellcom has been preparing to roll out 5G for a long time, said Brighid Riordan, CEO of Cellcom parent company Nsight, said during a carrier panel. “We’re in a good position to do that early this year,” she said. “Primarily we’re thinking about rural areas, so when we launch 5G we launch it in places like my hometown of Pulaski, which is 3,000 people,” she said.

Cellcom's competitors “have done a fantastic job of advertising 5G -- thanks you guys,” Riordan said. “Everybody feels that they need to have it, even though they don’t necessarily know exactly what that means to them,” she said. About half of Cellcom customers either thinks they already have 5G or aren’t sure, she said: “Again thank you for helping us with that.”

“Anything we can do to help,” deadpanned Steve Sharkey, T-Mobile vice president-government affairs-technology and engineering policy.

5G is also important to Cellcom’s using its spectrum efficiently, Riordan said. “It’s kind of a puzzle for rural carrier like us to be extremely creative in how we utilize spectrum,” she said: “Being able to refarm spectrum is really important to us.”

Appalachian Wireless will start deploying 5G in its low-band spectrum “and we have a good amount of spectrum there,” said CEO Allen Gillum. Gillum said the mountains of eastern Kentucky where the carrier is based “are the most challenging" area in the U.S. in terms of terrain. The goal is to deploy over three years starting this year, in markets where Appalachian already has 4G, he said.

“If we don’t do 5G in another five to 10 years, we won’t have anything that our subscribers desire to have,” Gillum said. “We’ll be looking for some way to exit the industry,” he said. “We have a great desire to serve the people in the mountains of East Kentucky.” A lot of Americans think the people of Appalachia “aren’t capable of doing anything worthwhile,” he said: “We’d like to see some of you folks in the city come and try to get by with the things that we get by with. We say that kind of in jest, but it’s also very true.”

T-Mobile launched 5G three years ago using its 600 MHz spectrum “as a broad coverage layer” and started adding mid-band in April 2020 after completing its buy of Sprint, Sharkey said. Currently, the carrier covers 310 million POPs with low-band 5G and 210 million with its mid-band offering, he said. That's expected to grow to 260 million POPs by the end of the year, 300 million by the end of 2023, he said.

UScellular has been deploying 5G for three years, said Grant Spellmeyer, vice president-government affairs: “We’ve stood up 5G on a number of towers across each of our operating markets” in 21 states “and are continuing to roll that out to additional sites. We have a very robust spectrum portfolio, including low-, mid- and high-band spectrum and are in the process of deploying all of that to the degree it’s cleared and available.”

“There’s a lot of marketing hype about 5G,” Spellmeyer said: “We’ve yet to see the arrival of that single killer application that would drive customers to the stores in order to get it, but we continue to believe it's coming.” Network efficiencies that come with 5G are driving UScellular “to move there as quickly as possible” regardless, he said.

“There is a lot of hype,” Sharkey said: “There is network efficiency, and it does open up a lot of other business models.”

Closing the digital divide is NTIA’s top priority, Administrator Alan Davidson told CCA in recorded remarks. NTIA will distribute about $48 billion of the $65 billion in broadband support from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, he noted. “We have been talking about the digital divide in this country for over 20 years; now we finally have the resources to do something serious about it,” he said.

NTIA will ensure states have flexibility as they spend broadband funds, Davidson said. “In many cases, the most extensible, future-proof solution may be fiber,” he said: “We also know that in the hardest to reach areas wireless technology will help ensure that no one is left behind. … We hope you’ll be part of it.”

NTIA is also focused on secure networks, including “accelerating the adoption” of open radio access networks, Davidson said. Security is more important than ever since Russia’s “brutal, sustained attacks on Ukraine, and other moves by authoritarian governments to restrict information access online,” he said. Davidson said Doreen Bogdan-Martin’s election as ITU secretary-general would help address security concerns (see 2203020068). “Her historic election would be a key to promoting an open and industry-driven approach that has been a hallmark of the online ecosystem,” he said.

NTIA is working with the FCC on a national spectrum strategy, Davidson said. The goal is “building a common vision for spectrum management that enhances competition and creates new opportunities for providers and spectrum users,” he said.

CCA Notebook

CCA members are looking forward to the auction of the “very valuable” 2.5 GHz band, in a sale that starts in July, Berry said. He stressed the importance of Congress reauthorizing the FCC’s auction authority and said unspent Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase II money should be used to establish a $20 billion 5G fund. “Competitive carriers must have access to low-, medium- and high-band spectrum to provide robust services to the customers,” Berry said. “CCA has long advocated for equitable access to spectrum through the use of reasonable aggregation limits, smaller licensing areas and reasonable power levels, appropriate reserve prices, bidding credits and other tools specifically designed to help competitive carriers access spectrum,” he said.