Verizon said Monday it has reached agreements for early clearance of the C band, allowing it to deploy 5G Ultra Wideband this year in “at least 30 additional major markets” including Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver and Washington, D.C. “The guts of the network must manage the additional capacity, support the additional speeds, and support the additional intelligence and programmability needed for customers to take advantage of the advanced performance of 5G,” said Kyle Malady, Verizon president-global network and technology: “In my career with Verizon, I have never experienced a network deployment move so quickly.” Verizon will pay SES up to $170 million to accelerate the clearing of C-band spectrum, SES said Monday. The agreement “will see SES expand Verizon’s access to the 3700-3800 MHz block in certain markets beyond the 46 Partial Economic Areas cleared in Phase I and earlier than the Phase II accelerated relocation deadline,” the company said. SES will install filters and other equipment at about 500 sites this year, “comparable to the activities executed during Phase I,” and receive an extra payment from Verizon “subject to delivering the clearing on a timeline agreed to by the parties.” Verizon is the first national carrier to rapidly deploy in the C-band, an important part of its 5G strategy (see 2201310061).

Qualcomm representatives urged action on the company’s push for sharing the 37 GHz band (see 2104280038), in meetings with staff from FCC Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology. Qualcomm’s proposal would support: “(1) fixed point-to-point and point-to-multipoint links; (2) mobile operations; (3) private networks; (4) device to device (peer to peer) operations; and (5) mobile hotspots, and open all 600 MHz to licensed sharing by multiple licensees, each of whom would have priority rights to a given channel in the Lower 37 GHz band to provide a guaranteed Quality of Service,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 14-177. Qualcomm recommends auctioning priority license channels of 100 or 200 MHz: “Each priority license holder of a particular channel would have primary rights to that channel and secondary rights to the other Lower 37 GHz band channels.”

U.S. wireless carriers are performing well during a period of global turmoil and inflation, but tougher times loom, MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett said in a Thursday research note. “U.S. wireless carriers are entirely domestic, with no exposure to European energy shocks or Eurozone recession risks,” he said. “They have no Eurozone earnings and no export exposure to an excessively strong dollar. If there is a U.S. recession, their services are, by and large, indispensable.” But they also face challenges, especially keeping up subscriber growth, he said. Recent growth is “unsustainable” and “far in excess of population growth, and is seemingly poised for a fall,” he said. “A drop in subscriber growth would probably only increase the pressure on carriers to compete on the basis of price and promotions, making matters worse.” Moffett sees T-Mobile as the major player best positioned to “weather” the storm ahead. “The company is growing share of gross additions and is poised to see declines in churn rate,” he said. “With the industry’s best pricing and the industry’s best network, and with still many growth opportunities ahead (not least in rural America), we believe T-Mobile’s share gains are poised to accelerate,” he said.

Dish Network will offer “a real-world example” of the benefits of building an open radio access network as it rolls out 5G, the company said in a call with FCC staff. “Because DISH is building a greenfield network, we have the flexibility to choose the best technology to enter the market,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 21-63. “While legacy carriers built closed end-to-end networks, DISH chose O-RAN because, among other reasons, it offers lower capital and operating costs, and is more resilient, secure, and energy efficient,” the company said: “If more American carriers see the benefits of O-RAN and are able to adopt it as their networks evolve, the United States will be a stronger competitor in the global market. O-RAN is a game changer.”

T-Mobile is “absolutely on track” to shutter its 3G network starting March 31, Chief Financial Officer Peter Osvaldik said at a Deutsche Bank investment conference Tuesday. Osvaldik said AT&T and Verizon won’t be able to catch up soon with T-Mobile’s 5G deployment. “We're the only ones with a 5G stand-alone core, and you really need a 5G stand-alone core to enable a lot of these use cases that you're hearing about -- network slicing, creating private networks, things like that,” he said: That's why business customers “are tremendously excited to work with us because they know we have the network capabilities before you even talk about the actual coverage differentiation that we have on the mid-band layer and the low-band layer of the network,” he said. 5G won’t be built based on millimeter wave spectrum or small cells, he said: “That's not a way you can generate ubiquitous coverage. The way we approached it is a macro-tower-focused network.” T-Mobile had to deploy 5G on three times as many towers to get from 100 million covered POPs to 200 million, he said. That's what other carriers “have ahead of them to get from 100 million to 200 million, and it's going to take them a while to get to 200 million,” he said.

AT&T is in the market for more spectrum, Chief Financial Officer Pascal Desroches told a Deutsche Bank conference Monday, not elaborating on what bands the company may pursue. “Whenever something comes to the market, we’re going to evaluate it because we think this is a core asset that we will need in order to deliver the quality of services that we aspire to deliver,” he said. AT&T led bidding in the 3.45 GHz auction and was second after Verizon in the C-band auction (see 2201260055). Desroches noted AT&T’s recent uptick in post-paid phone adds, outpacing T-Mobile and Verizon. “For several years, we had been under-investing” in wireless and “hadn’t been investing in keeping our customers,” he said: “That changed in 2020, and we really stepped up our investment to a point where we are matching our competitors and the results have been very clear. We have, during that time, led the industry in share. We are growing both top line and bottom line for our largest business, and we expect that to continue.” Desroches said AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile each has “a really good 5G network and they’re going to continue to get better” as more spectrum comes online. AT&T expects to lose some customers following its ongoing 3G sunset (see 2202240002) but not to take a major hit. “We expect to see some 3G subscribers churning off, and so that’s going to impact us some,” he said. On its fiber build, AT&T isn’t “immune” to supply-chain problems, Desroches said. “We have first priority on supplies,” he said: “We are in great position on access to labor relative to others, and what we’re seeing is while there were issues in the summer of last year, those issues have been largely resolved and we exited 2021 with good momentum, and that continues in 2022.” Desroches also said its fixed-wireless offering is well suited to less-densely populated areas, but in other markets it doesn’t make sense because the operating costs are higher. “Why not just simply go and do it right the first time … build fiber and bet on the long term that the trends are in your favor,” he said.

Mavenir representatives said they held a call with FCC staff on a February filing urging the commission to adopt open and interoperable interfaces for radio access networks, disputing claims that agency action isn’t ripe (see 2202090039). “Consider incumbent Radio Access Network (RAN) manufacturer dominance on an individual network and geographical basis, consistent with customer purchasing decisions,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 21-63. If the FCC does so, “Mavenir believes the facts will show that the Commission should require interoperability and the development of open interfaces for RAN equipment,” the filing said.

AT&T will deploy 120 MHz of mid-band spectrum for 5G, covering 200 million people by the end of 2023, said the carrier Friday as it updated analysts. “Enabling faster speeds, increased capacity and lower latency, this valuable mid-band spectrum complements the company’s existing 5G footprint, which covers more than 255 million people in more than 16,000 cities and towns,” the company said. AT&T also plans to double its fiber footprint to 30-plus million locations, adding 3.5 million to 4 million customer locations each year. “Today we are at the dawn of a new age of connectivity, and AT&T is positioned to take advantage of a strong and unique market opportunity that plays into the DNA of our company,” said CEO John Stankey. AT&T's new plan is “to become Verizon (Holding to the adage that you should always be yourself unless you can be Batman … then always be Batman),” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin said in a note to investors: “AT&T’s narrative for the business is remarkably similar to what we think of as Verizon’s, though slightly less well articulated, and the incremental revenue opportunities that they describe seem remarkably similar to Verizon’s.”

Nearly 50% of T-Mobile’s network traffic is now 5G, compared with 10% a year ago, President-Technology Neville Ray, told a Morgan Stanley conference Wednesday. The company’s 5G offering uses its 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz holdings. “As we go through the balance of this year, the intent is to have pretty much all of that [2.5 GHz] spectrum dedicated to the 5G game,” he said: “We've made great progress on that as we move through '20 and '21.” Ray said more than 40% of postpaid smartphones are 5G capable. About 80% of Sprint cellsites will be decommissioned by the middle of 2022, he said. “There are tens of thousands of sites that we're in a position” to take offline, he said. “We have to upgrade the sites that we’re keeping,” Ray said: “That work is already progressing well. Over the two years, we’ve spent a lot of time really understanding information and data about Sprint customer usage on the network we didn’t have access to previously. Now we’re able to, on a site-by-site basis, measure and quantify customer impact.” T-Mobile said Thursday it’s making its 5G Home Internet service available through 7,000 Metro by T-Mobile stores across the U.S. “This move makes the Un-carrier first to launch a fixed wireless home broadband service for prepaid customers, with no credit check and no annual contracts,” the carrier said. The service costs $50 monthly with "a one-time gateway purchase."

Ericsson petitioned the FCC for a waiver to manufacture and market multiband radios that wireless providers can use on 3.45 and 3.7 GHz bands. “The multiband radio will serve the public interest by allowing Ericsson to introduce an innovative radio design, including more flexibility to operate in mid-band frequencies, with smaller, more energy-efficient, and more economical base stations, and with no adverse effects on nearby band operations,” said a filing posted Monday at the FCC: “With this radio, wireless providers that hold licenses in both bands will be able to deploy … in a cost- and energy-efficient manner.” The waiver would allow 3.45 GHz out-of-band emission levels at 3.7-4.0 GHz “at the 3.7 GHz Service OOBE levels,” Ericsson said.