U.S. Cellular added three 5G Samsung devices to its lineup, set for Sept. 18 availability. The Galaxy Z Fold2 5G and Galaxy Z Flip 5G smartphones will be available online only at uscellular.com. The Galaxy Tab S7 5G tablet will be available online and in stores, the carrier said. Its 5G network will soon add service in parts of California, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, joining Iowa, Maine and Wisconsin.

Qualcomm, Casa Systems and Ericsson completed the first extended-range 5G new radio data call over a millimeter wave network in Victoria, Australia, June 20, they said Monday. Distance was 2.36 miles, showing suitability for fixed wireless access services and opportunities to use 5G infrastructure in urban, suburban and rural environments, said the companies: With the reach and performance to offer fixed wireless as a widespread “last mile” broadband option, network operators will be able to use existing mobile networks to deliver fixed wireless services and expand service to new areas at multi-gigabit speeds, with low latency.

“Ongoing” 5G deployments in China drove Marvell Technology’s networking business to 23% year-over-year revenue growth in fiscal Q2 ended Aug. 1, said CEO Matt Murphy on a Thursday investor call. Revenue in the sector jumped 3% from fiscal Q1, Marvell’s fourth straight quarter of sequential revenue growth from the wireless infrastructure market “as we benefited from the start of the 5G transition,” through design wins at four of the world’s top five tier 1 base station OEMs, he said. Marvell is “on track” to start shipping 5G basebands to Nokia and processors “customized” for massive multiple-input and multiple-output applications to Samsung later this year, said Murphy. “We a lot of wind at our back in terms of the 5G business.”

NTIA scheduled a virtual symposium Sept. 22 on spectrum policy and the evolution of technologies for federal spectrum management and sharing, said Friday's Federal Register. The symposium “will focus on developing, implementing and maintaining sustainable, national spectrum policies and spectrum management techniques,” NTIA said. Speakers from the Commerce Department and other agencies, plus the White House, Congress and the private sector are expected. The session is 8:30 a.m. to noon EDT.

T-Mobile is hoping to take the bite out of 5G smartphone pricing with the Revvl 5G, tagged at $399. The 5G phone is $200, after 24 monthly bill credits, for consumers switching or adding a line, said the carrier Thursday. Nearly six in 10 consumers familiar with 5G are worried about the high cost, it said. The Android phone has a 6.5-inch Full HD+ display, triple rear camera with a 48-megapixel main camera, plus super-wide and macro cameras and a 16-megapixel selfie camera. The phone will operate on T-Mobile’s 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz 5G spectrum. The wireless carrier said this month it was expanding 5G coverage by 30%, making it the first to launch a commercial nationwide standalone 5G network, covering 250 million people (see 2008040036). T-Mobile also launched the Revvl 4 ($120) and Revvl4+ ($192) on the LTE network. Availability is Sept. 4.

U.S. wireless providers invested $29.1 billion in their networks last year, a four-year high, as they built out 5G, said CTIA in its annual survey, released Tuesday. “This significant investment helped prepare U.S. wireless networks for the traffic spikes and shifts from COVID-19 this year and to handle last year’s 37 trillion MBs of mobile data, which represents a 30% increase from the year prior and is 96 times the amount of mobile data used in 2010,” CTIA said: Mobile traffic increased by 30% over the previous year and industry added more than 46,000 more cellsites. Wireless connections increased by more than 20 million to 442.5 million, CTIA said.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance supported having 5G in the 12 GHz band (see 2007140001). Adopt an NPRM to “modernize the service rules governing use of the highly valuable but grossly underutilized spectrum between 12.2 and 12.7 GHz,” DSA said in a filing posted Friday in docket RM-11768. “The 12 GHz band presents an opportunity to adopt a sharing framework that greatly expands the availability of a contiguous 500 megahertz of spectrum with favorable propagation characteristics for both fixed and mobile broadband deployments,” DSA said.

Though most of the media and entertainment industry is focused on using the 5G network for content distribution and delivery, the technology’s “superior capacity” makes it tailor-made for content production, reported ABI Research Wednesday. It’s forecasting 5G network coverage will support more than 35% of the global mobile user base in 2024, and video is “a key application that will drive mobile data consumption.” Video production trials over the 5G network have started in some markets in Asia, Europe and North America, said ABI. The 5G network can support the higher bandwidth and lower latency capability for video production, but network performance “can be challenging when it is shared by multiple users and applications,” it said. That’s why 5G networking slicing is expected to play a “critically important” role to deliver better bandwidth and latency performance, “which is required for high-value content production such as sports,” it said.

MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett said wireless industry trends all tie back to a charging T-Mobile. “Whether it is Verizon buying spectrum, or the Cable operators attempting to reduce costs in order to (eventually) lower price, everyone is chasing T-Mobile,” Moffett told investors Wednesday: “Only three months into the merger, it is already becoming clear that T-Mobile is poised to pull away from an otherwise uninspiring wireless sector.” Moffett said cable operators, eager to cut their costs, are likely among the biggest bidders in the citizens broadband radio service auction. Based on numbers from BitPath, prices are as high as 91 cents MHz/POP in Orange, California, and 68 cents in San Diego, he said. “Cable needs CBRS to bring their costs down, particularly if they are to eventually have the ability to price competitively versus T-Mobile,” he said: “Verizon wants CBRS to augment their LTE network.”

The FCC said a forum on 5G open radio access networks, postponed in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will happen virtually Sept. 14. Chairman Ajit Pai and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are scheduled to speak. Pai will moderate an industry panel on virtualized networks. “Open and virtualized radio access networks may help operators deploy more secure, cost-effective 5G networks,” Pai said Tuesday. The U.S. must “lead the way in researching and developing innovative approaches to mobile network deployment,” he said. The session starts at 10:30 a.m. EDT. "Open RAN networks enable providers to bring together best-in-class vendors, including from the U.S., unleashing innovation and unlocking the economic potential enabled by 5G,” emailed Stephen Bye, Dish Network executive vice president-chief commercial officer, saying Dish is building "the nation's first cloud native Open RAN based 5G network.”