Getting to "plug-and-play" for 5G and its open radio access network ecosystem requires multi-vendor interoperability, which the U.S. government can help accelerate by encouraging industry-led interoperability organizations or agreements, Samsung representatives told FCC Wireless Bureau, Office of Economics and Analytics and Office of Engineering and Technology staffers, per a docket 21-63 ex parte post Wednesday.

T-Mobile plans to appeal Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division rulings about ads for its 5G network, NAD said Tuesday. It said Verizon and AT&T challenged the ads' reliability claims. NAD said while T-Mobile's reliability claims were based on an audit of data collected from mobile phones, that audit looked at speed and coverage and those traits alone can't support a reliability claim. A T-Mobile spokesperson emailed us that the company "is America’s 5G Leader with the nation’s largest 5G network delivering the fastest average and overall combined 5G speeds. It is also the nation’s most reliable 5G network according to neutral criteria internationally recognized expert umlaut uses to evaluate network performance around the world. NAD’s decision not to recognize umlaut’s assessment is disappointing and we strongly disagree with its recommendation to not advertise this independent award."

About 90% of 5G cellsites in emerging markets will operate using sub-6 GHz bands by 2026, ABI Research projected Thursday. Mid-band will dominate deployments, ABI said. “Sub-6 GHz bands will provide the best-in-class coverage while catering for sufficient capacity in emerging markets,” the firm said: “While millimeter-wave, with its larger amount of bandwidth, can meet very high-capacity demand use cases, its poor propagation characteristics and cost of deployment puts it in a disadvantage compared to sub-6 GHz bands for 5G.” Low-band will be allocated for 5G in 50% of countries, compared with mid-band in 87%, ABI said.

Equinix said Thursday it reached an agreement with Dish Network to provide digital infrastructure services as the provider launches a cloud-native, open radio access network-based 5G network (see here).

5G fixed wireless could serve 8.4 million rural households, about half the rural homes in the U.S., with a “'future-proof,’ rapidly deployable, and cost-effective high-speed broadband option,” said a CTIA-commissioned study by Accenture. “These findings underscore the value of U.S. infrastructure policy embracing both wired and 5G fixed wireless home broadband solutions to help connect the unconnected as fast as possible,” said CTIA President Meredith Baker Thursday.

Boost Mobile, Dish Network's prepaid wireless brand, unveiled an annual plan offering customers unlimited talk and text, plus 1 GB monthly, for $100 per year. “This is the first of many Carrier Crusher plans that Boost will launch throughout the holiday season,” said a Thursday news release. Boost said it’s targeting “the 85% of Americans who use under 10 GB of data per month and have finite unlimited data plans options.”

All 5G smartphones for 2022 using Qualcomm chips will be based on the 3rd Generation Partnership Project’s Release 16 spec, Qualcomm Technologies Chief Technology Officer James Thompson told the company’s investor day event Tuesday. Standards work on Release 17 is “pretty much baked,” and products based on that spec will be available commercially in about two years, he said. “Lots and lots of features associated with smartphones” are contained in releases 16 and 17, including “enhancements” for mobility, signal coverage and network capacity, he said. “We are a company that supports the entire world” on 5G, said Thompson. “5G is not the same everywhere,” he said. “There are about 10,000 different band combinations that we have to design for.” About 180 network operators have launched 5G, he said. “Everybody’s got a little bit different bands. They’ve got different infrastructure providers. Their feature sets are different, so there are a lot of idiosyncracies associated with the global nature of mobile.” In handsets, Qualcomm is “very focused on the opportunity available to us in the market right now,” said CEO Cristiano Amon. “Android is one of the fastest-growing revenue and margin-expansion opportunities for us in handsets.” Snapdragon is “the platform of choice in premium and high-tier Android smartphones,” he said. The company is bullish about global millimeter-wave adoption for 5G, said Amon. MmWave is deployed in the U.S. and Japan and is coming soon to South Korea, he said. “We remain optimistic” about mmWave’s deployment in China, he said. “If mmWave gets traction, and it will get traction and it will expand, it’s an incredible upside opportunity for our RF front-end business.”

American Tower agreed to buy data center manager CoreSite for $10.1 billion, the tower company said Monday. It's expected to “create a differentiated, comprehensive and interconnected communications real estate platform optimally positioned to benefit from the convergence of wireline and wireless networks amid accelerating global 5G deployments,” the company said. CoreSite has 25 data centers and more than 32,000 interconnections in eight major U.S. markets, American Tower said. “We are in the early stages of a cloud-based, connected and globally distributed digital transformation that will evolve over the next decade and beyond,” said American Tower CEO Tom Bartlett. The deal is expected to close this year "or shortly thereafter."

T-Mobile reached its 2021 goal of covering 200 million people in the U.S. with Ultra Capacity 5G, said the carrier Monday. The offering uses T-Mobile’s extensive 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings.

The extra cost to ensure access to ubiquitous 5G for all in the U.S., “and not just those who will be covered by currently planned private investment,” would be $36 billion, said a CostQuest Associates study, commissioned by the Competitive Carriers Association and released Friday. The FCC 2020 5G Fund order (see 2010270034) dedicates up to $9 billion to deploy in rural and hard-to-reach areas, the paper said. “While an important step and a welcomed increase in resources allocated specifically for mobile service, this figure was not supported with evidence that this amount would be enough to provide truly comparable wireless services to rural areas as those enjoyed in urban locations,” it said: “The Commission did not point to any data to support the budget amount, and indeed the 5G Fund Order was adopted before mobile coverage maps were updated, so reliable data to identify the total needed budget was unavailable.” Closing the digital divide isn’t “complete without access to mobile connectivity,” said CCA President Steve Berry: “I encourage policymakers to build on lessons learned from previous generations of wireless deployment and take immediate steps to allocate a sufficient budget for 5G support.”