Verizon signed deals with tower companies Crown Castle and SBA Communications to rapidly deploy equipment as it launches 5G and fixed wireless broadband in C-band spectrum. “Deploying 5G Ultra Wideband on this spectrum requires new network equipment including basebands and antennas to be placed on existing towers,” Verizon said Monday. The terms weren’t announced. The carrier secured an average of 161 MHz of C-band spectrum nationwide in the recent FCC auction (see 2103110034).

T-Mobile defended its plans to close its legacy CDMA network at the end of this year, against criticism from Dish Network (see 2104010044), which said doing so will harm Boost subscribers. “All CDMA customers, including DISH’s Boost-branded customers, will receive enormous benefits by migrating as planned onto T-Mobile’s new network, and it is absolutely in their best interest to do so,” said a letter to acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, posted Monday in docket 19-348. Under T-Mobile’s agreement to sell Boost to Dish, “it is unambiguously DISH’s financial responsibility to migrate customers to the new technology in a timely manner, and if they live up to those obligations, no consumers will be negatively affected by the sunset and in fact will receive substantial benefits,” the filing said: The move from CDMA to the new network will provide Dish's Boost-branded customers and T-Mobile’s CDMA customers “a far better experience than that on CDMA.” Dish didn't comment.

T-Mobile announced Wednesday it's beefing up its outreach to rural America, hiring 7,500 new employees in small towns and rural communities and offering $25 million in grants for rural development projects. The carrier also offered free upgrades to a Samsung Galaxy A32 5G smartphone for consumers who trade in any mobile phone. T-Mobile took a swipe at Verizon and AT&T, offering customers with limited data plans unlimited 5G plans, at the same price or lower. “Over the past few years, billions of dollars have been spent to build 5G networks,” T-Mobile said: “Billions more have gone for breathless ads touting the promise of a 5G-powered future. But for most people, 5G has been a total nonevent.” T-Mobile also bowed a home broadband offering at $60 a month. “T-Mobile is just starting to press its advantage,” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors. He sees the broadband offer as mostly attractive to consumers “in the parts of the country not served by upgraded fixed technology.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., ranking member Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and 13 other senators urged President Joe Biden Tuesday to seek at least $3 billion in his FY 2022 budget proposal for the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund and the Multilateral Telecommunications Security Fund. Each program would get $1.5 billion, the senators said. Congress enacted the two programs, which aim to encourage adoption of open radio access network technology, in the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (see 2101030002). "As wireless networks adapt to the growing demands for 5G connectivity," ORAN "architecture will allow telecommunications providers to migrate from the current hardware-centric approach into a software-centric model that relies heavily on cloud-based services," the senators wrote Biden. "This architecture will break down the current end-to-end proprietary stack of hardware; lower barriers to entry and prompt innovation; diversify the supply chain and decrease dependence on foreign suppliers; and spur" ORAN "deployments throughout the United States, particularly in rural America."

T-Mobile has the fastest 5G network nationwide, reported independent research firm umlaut Tuesday. Umlaut focused on 10 major markets and took 35.2 million samples. “T-Mobile shows clearly faster average 5G download and upload speeds in all measured cities than the other operators,” umlaut said: The carrier’s “5G ‘Ultra Capacity’ download speed exceeds 170 Mbps in average, and goes up to 260 Mbps per market.”

Lumen and T-Mobile said Tuesday they’re working together, combining T-Mobile’s 5G network with Lumen’s Edge Computing platform, to serve business customers. “Enterprises would have the ability to extend applications across a range of environments, including hundreds of thousands of on-net enterprise locations on the Lumen fiber network, with T-Mobile’s industry leading 5G network,” they said.

Dish Network slammed T-Mobile Thursday, telling the FCC the carrier’s opposition to higher power levels in the citizens broadband radio service band shows that after buying Sprint, the “Un-Carrier” became anti-consumer. “It is ironic that T-Mobile, with the largest spectrum trove in the United States, is against increasing the utility of CBRS licenses held by other competitors,” Dish said in docket 19-348. “No doubt they would take a different approach if they had real ownership of CBRS spectrum.” Dish slammed T-Mobile for its plans to shutter its legacy CDMA network from Sprint at year-end. “Unfortunately, a majority of our 9 million Boost subscribers (many of whom face economic challenges) have devices that rely on Sprint’s CDMA network and will be harmed if T-Mobile prematurely shuts down that network,” Dish said. T-Mobile didn’t comment.

Ericsson launched an open lab aimed at driving the move to virtualized 5G radio access network technologies, the company said Wednesday. It's located at Ericsson’s R&D site in Ottawa, Canada. Ericsson Open Lab “aims to help service providers pursue and realize new deployment and 5G use case scenarios, as well as create opportunities to increase automation and reduce manual intervention,” Ericsson said.

Chinese 5G subscriptions are expected to reach 739 million by 2025, enough for 40% global share, reported ABI Research Tuesday. It forecasts 5G annual data traffic in China reaching 782 exabytes by 2025, for nearly 60% share of 5G. Unlike in other early adopter 5G countries like the U.S., Japan and South Korea, mobile network operators in China are government-owned, enabling them to get “extensive support” for developing networks, “especially in the consumer market," said analyst Jiancao Hou. The U.S-China trade war and Commerce Department export restrictions on Huawei and other Chinese vendors aren't "slowing down 5G deployment in China,” said Hou.

Verizon said Tuesday it will shutter its 3G CDMA network at the end of next year. Verizon noted it has said it would shut the network down since 2016, with an original target of 2019. “We worked for the past several years to help those who still have 3G devices transfer to devices capable of accessing the 4G LTE or 5G networks and continue to actively work with remaining 3G customers to migrate them to new devices and technology,” the carrier said: Fewer than 1% of its customers use 3G.