Samsung joined the O-RAN Alliance, formed last year to promote an open connectivity infrastructure around optical regional advanced network nomenclature, said the company Thursday. The alliance’s aim is to “integrate greater intelligence into the radio access networks of next-generation wireless systems,” said Samsung. Its “open approach” enables the use of artificial intelligence to help service operators “better manage their networks through automation, as they evolve to 5G,” it said.

Zinwave, which provides distributed antenna systems for in-building connectivity, unveiled a system architecture Thursday it said supports 5G networks and open radio access network capability. With it, Zinwave will provide “complete, 5G-ready indoor connectivity networks with minimal deployment time regardless of which spectrum (low, mid or millimeter wave) wireless operators choose to deploy,” said the company.

The cost to Rural Wireless Association members of replacing network equipment from Huawei and ZTE could run as high as $1 billion, RWA General Counsel Carri Bennet said in a call with the Capitol Forum, posted Wednesday. RWA members used equipment in good faith from the Chinese equipment makers because they were able to get it at a lower cost than from other vendors and it has proven to work well, Bennet said. In December, reports surfaced that President Donald Trump would sign an executive order barring on national security grounds U.S. companies from using Huawei and ZTE telecom equipment (see 1902060056). “We've seen speculation” that the ban will be on “Huawei, but we're assuming ZTE as well. … We don't know if that's a going forward ban for 5G technology or if it's going to impact the 3G and 4G technology that's already been deployed,” Bennet said. RWA members are concerned about costs for ripping out and replacing the equipment, she said. “They would need funding,” she said. “We've looked at this from a constitutional standpoint of whether it's a ‘takings’ under the Constitution and whether the government would pay for the replacement for other network gear.”

Qualcomm announced a second-generation 5G New Radio modem, a 7-nanometer single-chip integrated 5G to 2G multimode device. The Snapdragon X55 supports 5G NR mmWave and sub-6 GHz spectrum bands with up to 7 Gbps download speeds and 3 Gbps upload speeds over 5G, along with Category 22 LTE with up to 2.5 Gbps LTE download speeds, it said. The modem is designed for global 5G rollouts with support for all major frequency bands, said the company. Currently sampling to customers, the Snapdragon X55 is expected to be in commercial devices late this year.

The Wireless Infrastructure Association’s Innovation & Technology Council said additional bandwidth and offloading options are needed as 5G is deployed. “Mobile data traffic will continue to increase exponentially, and service providers are seeking solutions to prevent future congestion,” WIA reported Thursday. “Offloading data traffic frees network capacity, while providing a consistently high quality of service. Customers can make and receive calls and texts, in addition to accessing data, over Wi-Fi or other local connections, including new Citizens Broadband Radio Service spectrum.”

AT&T vowed to fight a Sprint lawsuit against the company’s claims it’s now offering 5G evolution, or 5GE, in some markets. Sprint asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for an immediate preliminary injunction against AT&T, preventing the carrier from making the claims. “AT&T has employed numerous deceptive tactics to mislead consumers into believing that it currently offers a coveted and highly anticipated fifth generation wireless network, known as 5G,” Sprint complained, filed Thursday (in Pacer). It called AT&T's 5GE “nothing more than an enhanced fourth generation Long Term Evolution wireless service, known as 4G LTE Advanced, which is offered by all other major wireless carriers.” While Sprint and other competitors are spending billions of dollars on their networks, AT&T “has sought to gain an unfair advantage in the race to 5G by embarking on a nationwide advertising campaign to deceive consumers into believing that its existing 4G LTE Advanced network is now a 5G network,” Sprint said. The case is #1:19-cv-01215-VSB. “We understand why our competitors don’t like what we are doing, but our customers love it,” an AT&T spokesperson emailed. “We introduced 5G Evolution more than two years ago, clearly defining it as an evolutionary step to standards-based 5G. 5G Evolution and the 5GE indicator simply let customers know when their device is in an area where speeds up to twice as fast as standard LTE are available.” AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan defended use of the term at CES in January (see 1901100018).

CTIA made an economic case for allocating more spectrum for licensed use as 5G starts. Tuesday's report focuses on 3.45-3.55 GHz being studied by NTIA for possible reallocation, the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band and the C band. It said carriers will invest more than $154 billion on infrastructure to deliver 5G over mid-band spectrum over seven years. The report and economic model are by Analysis Group. The spectrum studied has “really fantastic propagation characteristics and is really well suited for 5G services,” Scott Bergmann, CTIA senior vice president-regulatory affairs, told us. “It blends the ability to have very high capacity with also broader coverage.” Those bands are also getting the most focus from policymakers, he said. The report is consistent with CTIA’s comments at NTIA on a national spectrum plan (see 1902050054), Bergmann said. “There’s a lot of sense that mid-band spectrum is going to deliver benefits to that next generation of networks, that that’s going to have positive impact for the economy” but policymakers are also looking to better understand “how much that’s the case,” he said.

Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri has “absolutely no doubt" a "fast and meaningful shift to 5G is underway,” he said Thursday on a Q4 call. All signs say 2019 will be "very second-half-loaded” in the 5G transition because of the “staggered nature" of global 5G rollouts from region to region, he said. He expects “a broader ramp-up starting at the tail end of 2019 and in 2020,” he said. The 5G “ecosystem” is “in its early days,” so “development and testing are operating under considerable time pressure,” he said. Though there’s a “massive amount of 5G-ready hardware already deployed,” some of it “is waiting for the availability and acceptance of the key 5G software releases,” he said. “Those releases will come available as the year progresses.”

The National Diversity Coalition and T-Mobile agreed the carrier will boost diversity if its Sprint takeover is approved. “The two entities discussed ways to collaborate, along with other community groups, on a number of initiatives focused on serving low-income communities and expanding the company’s planned diversity initiatives,” NDC said Thursday. A T-Mobile council of non-employees from “African American, Asian, Latino, Native American and LGBTQ communities, as well as persons with disabilities and women,” will advise on a plan. The announcement Friday said T-Mobile “affirmed a commitment to diversity among its board and workforce recruitment” and to increase diverse spending in California to at minimum meet the Public Utilities Commission’s goal of 21.5 percent spending with diverse businesses. T-Mobile said Friday it will release Q4 results Thursday. An analyst call with CEO John Legere and other executives starts at 8:30 a.m. EST. T-Mobile is the last of the four major national wireless carriers to report.

5G's inefficiency as a fixed mobile broadband business, due to capital costs to get close to the home, means it's not a big competitive worry, Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge said during a Q4 call Thursday. "We're going to 10G," he said, citing cable industry plans for 10 gigabit networks (see 1901070048). That would provide better broadband at lower cost, and skyrocketing data consumption should help drive demand, he said. Charter ended 2018 with its national footprint nearly all digital and its 1 GB service available throughout. It said Q4 revenue was $11.2 billion, up 5.9 percent year over year. It ended 2018 with 16.1 million residential video customers, down 1.8 percent; 23.6 million broadband customers, up 4.9 percent; and 10.1 million voice customers, down 2.8 percent. Rutledge said Charter is embracing the video anywhere marketplace but bundled video remains its primary service. Capital expenditures for 2018 were $9.1 billion, and Rutledge said lower capital spending this year -- an estimated $7 billion -- comes as it increasingly employs IP-based and cloud-based services. Analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson called that $7 billion lower than expected to an "eye-popping" degree. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin said the decline in capex is much faster than expected. He said the broadband subscriber growth puts the company "on a strong path for faster growth in 2019." The stock closed at $331.05, up 14 percent.