Extreme Market Segmentation

Linda Hardesty of Fierce Network recently quoted Verizon’s new CEO Dan Shulman as saying that the company is looking at market segmentation. He said that instead of pricing for a few market segments that Verizon might be considering hundreds of thousands of segments. ‘

Hardesty said this stunned her, because nobody has ever talked seriously about market segmentation to that extent before. What Verizon is thinking about doing is to develop multitudes of products and prices to fit small market niches, or even individuals.

This is not entirely a new idea. A few years ago, the public advocate from the California Public Service Commission conducted a detailed study and looked at broadband rates offered by Charter and other big ISPS across Los Angeles and a few other larger markets. They found that Charter prices varied by neighborhood, and surprisingly, the highest prices were in the poorest neighborhoods. Charter mostly did this through promotional and special rates, but there was a clear delineation of rates by the incomes of neighborhoods.

When Verizon talks about segmenting into hundreds of thousands of segments, they are talking about going far beyond what Charter was doing in California. Verizon is talking about profiling customers and making pricing offers specific to each customer.

You might wonder how they can do this. It’s well known that there are companies like Acxiom, Experian, and Epsilon that have created a detailed profile on families and individuals. These profiles are highly detailed and combine information about earnings and financial status, lifestyle, and buying habits. Verizon can combine this with what they know about every customer to be able to offer them the price or package they think will sell. This doesn’t just mean defining low rates, and ISPs might us the profiling to charge more to people they think will pay it.

It’s likely that any attempt to do this is going to be aided by AI. One of the axioms of the telecom industry over the years has been to keep pricing simple to make life easier for the customer service and billing process. But with AI tied to billing systems and customer service that may no longer be needed.

Shulman is oversimplifying when he says that Verizon will be expanding from four segments today, because the company surely has more than that. They company has offered varying special prices to land new customers and negotiates rates to keep existing customers, and probably has dozens of slightly different rates, if not more. But that’s a far cry from separating the market into hundreds of thousands of market segments.

There can only be two reasons why Verizon would do this. Hardesty suggests it’s to make more money by creating multiple tiers of customers, including a tier for those willing to pay premium rates for concierge service.

But I think there is an alternate possibility, which is to reduce churn. Cellular competition, in particular, has gotten fierce and the three big cellular carriers see about 1% of postpaid customers churn each month and 3-4% of prepaid customers. This high level of churn is what drives the gigantic advertising budget of each carrier, and perhaps tailoring custom plans to match the individual customer preference might increase loyalty, reduce churn, and reduce costs.

If Verizon implements this, I’m sure the rest of the industry will be watching closely. If extreme market segmentation is successful, then AT&T and T-Mobile will have to follow to keep even in the competition game. But if it’s unsuccessful, the other carriers will gleefully watch Verizon struggle. It’s going to be an interesting experiment to watch if the company really goes for it.

Walking Away from BEAD

NTIA has released all but four states to begin signing BEAD contracts with grant winners. Mississippi and Oklahoma have gotten final approval by NTIA but are waiting for approval from NIST. NTIA has still not approved the grant proposals from California and Illinois.

Now that the process of negotiating contracts for grant winners has started, news is seeping out of some grant winners backing out and refusing to accept the BEAD grant awards.

The largest BEAD award being rejected is by Astound in Texas, which is walking away from $166 million in grants. The company explained this by saying that it had only won five of the thirty-three project areas it had applied for, and that the remote geographic areas of the awards made no sense without winning more awards. I have to wonder if the company’s pending merger with Google Fiber also played a role in the company walking away. While it isn’t official, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Astound is also going to walk away from $112 million of BEAD grants in Oregon. The company has also tentatively won $100 million in Washington.

Another ISP walking away from a lot of awards is Resound Networks. Resound is walking away from $60.2 million in New Mexico, $23.1 million in Texas, $8 million in Kansas, $5.2 million in Arkansas, and $3.9 million in Colorado. The company also has relatively small grants in Arizona and Oklahoma. Resound is tentatively slated to win $34.4 million in California, which still has not been approved by NTIA.

There are three ISPs that haven’t signed grant contracts in Nebraska: Amazon, Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company, and Pinpoint Communications. I have to wonder what it means for a satellite company to not accept a grant, since the company has grant awards across the country.

There are bound to be other ISPs who will walk away that we haven’t yet heard about, since States have six months to get contracts from grant winners after the State signed a contract with NTIA for the BEAD money. I’ve been hearing about a lot of smaller ISPs that are still thinking about walking away from BEAD. Some will do so because the too-low grant funding means they can’t get a letter of credit.

It won’t be surprising if there are more rejections of BEAD. When NTIA initiated the Benefit of the Bargain rules, it significantly sliced the amount of grant funding per location. Many ISPs had said before Benefit of the Bargain that the long-term math for taking BEAD grants was marginal. That math took a big turn for the worse when NTIA forced the States to further lower the amount of grant awards. Any ISP that stays after the Benefit of the Bargain is accepting a smaller margin than they originally had hoped for.

At the same time that the amount of grant awards has been squeezed downward, ISPs are seeing inflation in the cost of fiber construction – inflation much higher than the rate of increase for the whole economy. The Fiber Broadband Association conducted a survey with members at the end of 2025 and asked about expected increases in construction costs for 2026. 88% of the respondents expected a cost increase for construction in 2026. 62% of respondents expected a ‘slight’ cost increase of less than 10%. 26% expect a cost increase of more than 10%. 9% expect costs to stay the same, and 3% expect costs to decrease by less than 10%.

It will be interesting to see how ISPs respond to this same question at the end of 2026. The industry is being pounded by increases in chip costs due to shortages as chip manufacturers have pivoted to building AI chips. Higher oil prices have affected the cost of shipping and operating work vehicles, and oil is a raw material component of things like fiber sheathing, conduit, and electronics housings. There is a lot of pressure this year from wage increases. The Federal Reserve made it clear last week that it will not be lowering interest rates this year and may have to instead increase them by year’s end.

We’re still seeing defaults six years after the initial RDOF awards, and I expect there will be ISPs that accept BEAD now but realize in a few years that they can’t make the math work.

I feel sorry for State Broadband Offices that are being asked to find replacements for ISPs that reject BEAD awards. It feels unlikely that NTIA will allow States to increase the size of the grant awards after a rejection. Every default could become a windfall for satellite companies, while a lot of communities are losing the chance to get fiber.

Satellite News June 2026

FCC Approves AST SpaceMobile Constellation. The FCC approved an application from AST SpaceMobile to launch an additional 248 low-orbit satellites to deliver mobile service using 700 MHz and 800 MHz spectrum. These is a premium spectrum for this use since it carries further and penetrates clouds and storms better than higher frequencies. A year ago, the FCC gave the company permission to test direct-to-device connectivity using Band 14 spectrum, which is 700 MHz spectrum that had previously been reserved for public safety and first responder emergency use.

AT&T is Looking for Multiple Partners for D2D. AT&T Chairman and CEO John Stankey said recently that the company is looking at additional partners other than its current partnership with AST SpaceMobile for offering direct-to-device cellular services. He noted that SpaceX should have better capacity after it purchased spectrum from EchoStar. He also noted that Amazon will be a player when it completes the acquisition of Globalstar in 2027. Stankey noted that he is not interested in helping the D2D satellite companies disrupt the terrestrial satellite business, and that he believes that D2D is an alternate service that makes the most sense where cell networks don’t reach.

UK Launches D2D Service. The UK became the first country in Europe where a cellular company is offering D2D service for smartphones that is integrated into normal cellular service without the need for a special phone or a separate app. Virgin Media O2 uses the Starlink constellation and licensed 1800 MHz spectrum to offer an add-on service. Virgin customers can add satellite cellular service for £3 per month or can get the service for free with premium cellular packages. The initial service offers messaging and data, and works automatically in areas where Virgin doesn’t have good cell coverage.

This action in the UK is prompting the European Union to accelerate its effort to finalize spectrum for D2D service. The EU’s current spectrum plans include using 2 GHz spectrum, which is prized by LEO satellite companies, but Starlink and Amazon Leo are worried about current EU plans to allocate most of this spectrum to European satellite companies.

SpaceX IPO. In preparation for the SpaceX IPO on Nasdaq, the company announced that it had $13 billion in losses since the beginning of 2023. In 2025, the company had almost $18.7 billion in revenue but had an overall loss of $4.9 billion. The recent losses were driven by xAI, the company’s artificial intelligence venture that was founded in 2023.

The SpaceX IPO (SPCX) sold 556 million shares at a price of $135 on June 12. On the day when trading opened, the price started at $150 per share and closed at $160.95 at the end of the first trading session. The stock climbed to as much as $216 per share before ending around $190 per share yesterday.

Blue Origin Disaster. Amazon’s space ventures suffered a setback when the heavy-duty New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad in late May at the Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This will likely slow the launch of Amazon Leo, as this rocket was scheduled to carry 48 satellites into space. This also probably delays the company’s planned moon mission. The FCC had recently granted Amazon a requested delay in meeting the dates for activating the broadband satellite constellation.

100 Million Starlink Subscribers? New Street Research predicted that Starlink could reach 100 million subscribers by 2034. The prediction is based on the increasing number of satellites in the Starlink constellation and the technical improvements that will be introduced with the next generation of V3 satellites. For Starlink to reach that many subscribers will likely require the company to compete in urban or suburban areas with lower prices.

New Telecom Security Alliance

Eight major communications companies have created a new non-profit, the Communications Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (C2 ISAC), that is going to coordinate cybersecurity issues across the sector. The original founders include AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, Lumen, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Zayo.

This effort expands on a long-time public-private cybersecurity efforts between carriers and government agencies through the National Coordinating Center for Communications (ISAC). The existing ISAC effort includes a lot of non-communications companies like Apple, Boeing, Cloudflare, Hughes, Juniper, and Qualcomm.

There are several reasons for the creation of the new entity. The industry and networks are facing threats from hackers like China’s Salt Typhoon, and the severity of cyberattacks is increasing. Hackers are trying to disrupt and shut down networks, are trying to steal customer information, and are trying to steal trade secrets from telecom companies. Nation-state hackers have breached critical infrastructure in healthcare, energy, water, and telecommunications companies. For example, it’s been documented that Salt Typhoon targeted companies like Charter, Consolidated Communications, Windstream, Cisco, and Viasat in 2025.

There is also an increasing sentiment in the cybersecurity world that major cutbacks in the federal government have decreased any reliance on the federal government to police major cybersecurity threats. This means that hospitals, electric utilities, water treatment plants, energy companies, and telecommunication companies are more on their own to tackle security threats for their sectors. There are stories circulating that government officials have stopped attending cybersecurity events, have stopped working with some of the key commercial players, and have put coordination efforts on hold. I’ve seen articles that describe the current cybersecurity situation between the government and private companies as being in suspended animation.

Even before this latest distancing from government, there were issues in the larger ISAC effort, which included fourteen government agencies like the FCC, NTIA, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and others.  Many telecom companies have been leery for years about sharing sensitive data with government agencies. The hope is that a new group composed of only telecom companies will make it easier for members to be candid with each other.

One of the reasons I wrote the blog is to recognize that the cybersecurity efforts by the largest companies in the sector tend to help everybody else. These are the companies that push hardware and software vendors to stay current with cybersecurity measures that benefit everybody else.

AT&T v. California

AT&T filed several petitions at the FCC asking the Commission to override regulations from the State of California. The State is forcing AT&T to maintain copper networks until such time that AT&T can offer the same services to customers using some alternate technology.

The FCC reacted by issuing two requests for public comments related to the AT&T petitions. In the first, the FCC asks for comments related to its ability to preempt California’s regulations related to copper networks. The second asks for public comments related to AT&T being able to walk away from carrier-of-last-resort responsibilities in California as it tears down copper networks.

These proceedings ask some interesting questions, although my hunch is that the FCC already plans to preempt California on these issues and is only going through the formalities first.

One interesting issue raised is whether the FCC can grab regulatory authority from a State. The historic framework for telecom regulation has always been that States are free to regulate anything that the FCC elects not to directly regulate. Back when AT&T was the primary telephone company, every state had numerous regulations related to telephone companies. The FCC established the big nationwide rules, often dictated by Congress, but the States were free to regulate anything the FCC didn’t directly regulate. This usually meant issues like consumer rates and customer service practices. As competition was introduced into the telecom market, AT&T and the various Bell companies were successful in convincing most states to relax regulations, and in some case telcos became almost totally unregulated. California eased some regulations, but still maintains a lot of regulation of telcos. It will be interesting to see how hard California will fight back if the FCC overrides the state’s regulatory authority.

Another interesting request is for AT&T to get out of carrier-of-last resort (COLR) obligations. The petition describes this as AT&T being relieved of ETC status (Eligible Communications Carrier), which is the formal process where states certified companies with COLR status. COLR is an obligation originally created by the Communications Act of 1934, and expanded by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which said that regulated telcos are required to serve customers located inside their regulated service areas, with only a few exceptions related to customers in remote locations. Telcos have been obligated to connect new customers to the existing networks and to build new networks to meet new homes and businesses. This feels like a quaint concept today, and it’s one of the first things that disappeared as states deregulated telephone companies. I find it interesting that many telcos still have ETC designations and use that status to receive various kinds of universal service funding while only playing lip service, at best, to carrier-of-last-resort obligations. The real question being asked in the FCC proceeding is whether the agency has the authority to override any COLR obligation required by California.

I have to think that AT&T has already been ignoring this obligation for years in California. I recall news stories of AT&T discontinuing rural copper services in rural California with little or no notification to customers. I have to think that it’s been a long time since AT&T has built any new copper infrastructure to reach newly constructed homes and neighborhoods. But there are other obligations related to COLR and ETC status that AT&T would like to have preempted.

It’s going to be interesting to see who, other than regulators in California, responds to these dockets. These particular issues are largely already dead in most of the rest of the country, although some states still maintain greater levels of regulation over telcos than others.

These dockets don’t address the even bigger question, which is whether the state or federal government should be regulating telephone service at all. I think everybody is in favor of the FCC’s efforts to tamp down on robocalls and texts, but how much other regulation of traditional telephone companies is still needed?

What Happened to Spectrum Policy Debate?

There is something that has been nagging at the back of my mind for the last year. In the One Big Beautiful Bill, Congress ordered the FCC to auction 800 MHz of midrange spectrum. This is spectrum that is expected to mostly go to cellular carriers, although at least some will go to others. Since Congress’s stated goal is to raise $85 billion for the U.S Treasury with these auctions, it’s not likely that this spectrum will be priced low enough to be attractive to many users other than large cellular companies, and perhaps large cable companies and satellite companies.

The question that has been nagging me is whether the cellular industry really needs that much new spectrum. I acknowledge there is growth in cellphone data usage, but it is not growing at a rate that justifies the need for this much additional spectrum.

Instead, the new spectrum is needed to support FWA home broadband. At the end of 2025, OpenVault says the average home and small business broadband customer uses an average of 767 gigabytes of data per month. By contrast, the average cellular customer uses perhaps 25 gigabytes per month on the cellular network (most cellphone usage is on WiFi). This means that one FWA home broadband customer uses as much cellular network bandwidth resources as 31 cellphone customers. That may not sound significant, but consider that by the end of the first quarter of this year that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon had collectively added 15.5 million customers to FWA, and have been steadily adding around 1 million more FWA customers every quarter.

All three carriers have plans to continue to add FWA customers. Verizon says its goal by 2030 is 8-9 million FWA customers, and T-Mobile’s goal is 15 million. AT&T hasn’t stated a goal, but it clearly is growing.

If we go back just ten years, there was absolutely zero conversation in the industry about using cellular spectrum to create a major broadband competitor. There was no discussion at any proceeding at the FCC of the need to enable new broadband competition using cellular spectrum. The cellular carriers have offered cellular broadband for many years through the use of hotspots, but hotspot plans were generally capped at a tiny levels of monthly usage, which differs significantly from FWA, which offers unlimited broadband.

The question that has been nagging me is whether FWA is really the right priority use of spectrum. Spectrum is not an unlimited resource. Cities all have cable company broadband, and an increasing percentage of competition with fiber. The federal government just spent billions on grants to get better broadband to rural areas. At the same time, Starlink has demonstrated that satellites can provide at least one broadband option to almost every rural location.

I’m not saying that the competition brought about by FWA isn’t beneficial, because it is. The FWA industry is probably the biggest reason why cable companies have stopped their annual rate increases and are now offering lower-cost packages.

My nagging concern is that a decade from now, we’ll find there isn’t enough spectrum available for the many other uses of wireless technology. I keep wondering how we found ourselves supporting FWA through the One Big Beautiful bill with no national discussion about whether this is the right policy. Congress has unilaterally decided that FWA is the big winner.

I would have thought that cable companies would be distraught by this, and perhaps they are behind the scenes. This decision must drive WISPs crazy, because the three big cellular companies are being given nearly unlimited spectrum to compete against them, while WISPs are limited to a handful of spectrum bands – which might be shrinking if the FCC finds it necessary to raid 6 GHz spectrum to meet the Congressional directive.

I can’t recall any major policy decision in our industry that was implemented with almost no dialogue or discussion. In the past, we decided spectrum issues through massive amounts of discussion from the industry in the FCC comment process. FWA leaped to become a priority through a few paragraphs in the One Big Beautiful Bill. That’s not how sensible spectrum policy should work.

Proposed Changes to E-Rate

The FCC announced in April it would be taking a fresh look at all aspects of the Universal Service Fund (USF). The agency recently kicked off this process for the E-Rate program by issuing a combined Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

E-Rate is the Universal Service Fund program that subsidizes broadband for schools that have the highest percentage of students who qualify for the federal school lunch program. E-Rate also brings broadband to libraries. The program has been in effect since 1997. In recent years, E-Rate has disbursed around $2.5 billion annually to subsidize broadband bills. There are over 101,500 schools and 11,600 libraries served by the program.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking asks for public feedback on some fundamental questions about the existing program. The FCC asks if E-Rate is still meeting the original intent and asks if the program should be narrowed in scope or even ended. The FCC notes that when E-Rate was created, most schools did not have broadband access, but virtually all schools are connected to fiber broadband today. As an aside, I wrote a blog last year that noted that a large percentage of schools now need a lot more than one gigabit of broadband, with many schools now needing 5- to 10-gigabit service.

Most of the NPRM asks questions related to students’ use of broadband. Probably the most controversial question in the NPRM asks if the FCC should somehow try to limit screen time for students. The FCC cites some statistics that say that children ages 5- 8 average about three and a half hours per day of screen time. For students ages eight to twelve, the average is about five and a half hours daily. Finally, teens spend an average of eight hours per day using a screen. The FCC cites an expert who recommends that children five years and older should be limited to no more than two hours per day of screen time.

The FCC asks if it should intervene to try to limit screen time inside schools that receive E-Rate. It’s an interesting question, and I suspect there will be parents who welcome this. When reading the document, it’s easy to think the FCC is leaning towards ordering this. I have a hard time understanding how this is within the FCC’s jurisdiction. The E-Rate rules from Congress give the FCC instructions to make sure schools have adequate broadband, but didn’t give any authority over how schools or students should use broadband. In a related question, the FCC asks if parents should be allowed to opt out of having their children use computers in school. I’m sure teachers are shuddering at the possibility of having a mix of students with and without computers in every class.

The NPRM also asks about stricter regulations to make sure that students with school-supplied computers cannot access harmful information on the web, both when using devices in the school and when taking the devices home. This is a requirement that’s been around since the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which was enacted in 1999. Apparently, the FCC is hearing of examples of students able to bypass restrictions on computers.

In the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC is tackling the issue of better regulating E-Rate consultants. This is due to some recent headlines where consultants defrauded schools and the E-Rate fund. The FCC is suggesting an annual disclosure and certification of E-Rate consultants.

In addition to these proposals, the FCC recently separately suggested that E-Rate service move to a portal operated by USAC, where ISPs could competitively bid to serve E-Rate schools.

Remembering Our Microwave Past

Somebody sent me a link to an interesting article posted on 99% Invisible, a website associated with a podcast that looks at “the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world” The article covers a book called The Long Lines that documents the abandoned infrastructure of the national microwave network built by AT&T that predated the eventual long-haul fiber networks that now connects us.

The AT&T microwave network was built in the 1950s. The first long-haul microwave route put into service was between New York and Chicago, and went live on September 1, 1950. Over the next few years, microwave routes were established across the country.

The networks were enabled by the high-powered klystrons developed during World War II, plus new microwave technologies that allowed for the simultaneous transmission of multiple channels of data. A klyston is a vacuum tube that amplifies a signal from a low-power level to a higher one. The klystron system enabled the creation of microwave links with enough power to carry not only voice calls, but television signals. The technology was developed at Bell Labs, and the microwave radios were manufactured by Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.

The AT&T microwave network enabled the first nationwide broadcasts of television shows and news events. The first television event sent was a speech by President Harry Truman from the San Francisco Peace Conference in September 1951, which was then broadcast by the early television stations in major cities across the country. The first regular TV show that used the microwave network was Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now, broadcast in November 1951.

The AT&T microwave network led to some of the early success of television networks since it allowed for content that people had never seen before, like live Saturday football games from across the country. From the 1950s through the 1970s, practically all national programming was transmitted through the microwave network.

The microwave network wasn’t the only transmission network used by AT&T. The company had built coast-to-coast copper networks, and Alexander Bell made the first transcontinental phone call from New York City to San Francisco on January 25, 1915. This network was eventually enhanced with long-line coaxial networks, but those networks didn’t have the capacity to support television signals.

The microwave network consisted of towers built between thirty and forty miles apart, which accommodated the need for a line-of-sight connection. Interestingly, the core network electronics nodes of the network were built to supposedly withstand a nuclear explosion, since the microwave network also carried military traffic. These core locations included underground bunkers for electronics, staff, and backup power generators.

Anyone of a certain age remembers these towers, which either disappeared or were repurposed for cellular. Each tower had multiple giant horn antennas used to transmit and receive data. I remember in the 1970s that it was always easy to spot the AT&T building as you drove into a city because of the giant antennas on top, like the picture at the top of the blog of the antennas of the AT&T building in Minneapolis.

AT&T isn’t the only company that used a microwave network. MCI got its start as a competitor to AT&T by carrying telephone calls using its own microwave network that was often built along railroad rights-of-way. That network supported the early competition that eventually resulted in a competitive telecom industry.

The microwave towers were eventually replaced by the now-familiar fiber routes that were built starting in the late 1970s, and the greater capacity of fiber quickly made the microwave network obsolete.

AT&T – No Rush for 6G?

Jenifer Robertson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Mass Markets for AT&T, gave a lengthy interview at CTIA’s annual summit in D.C. that led to an article by Rob Pegoraro of Light Reading. The interview covered a range of topics and is worth reading. I was struck by a comment at the end of the article where Robertson said,  “I don’t have any data that tells me consumers are chomping at the bit for 6G.”

Part of that reason is that the AT&T 5G network is performing well. A big part of that performance came earlier this year when the company integrated the midband spectrum purchased from EchoStar. I’m an AT&T subscriber, and I saw my 5G cellular speeds more than double after that upgrade.

AT&T also moved further along the path towards fully implementing 5G. The company announced it deployed its first 5G standalone in October 2025. That includes launching new features that the company is labeling as 5G Advanced, which includes network slicing and other features that were part of the original 5G specification.

It’s not unusual that AT&T is still implementing 5G features in 2026. The cellular industry has implemented a new G generation of cellular technology every decade, starting with the introduction of 1G in 1979. It’s always taken much of each new decade to fully implement the newest generation of technology. You might remember that ten years ago, the big carriers were still implementing some of the specification features of 4G.

Robertson’s comment on 6G is a big shift from the way that the big carriers talked about 5G a decade ago. The hype for upgrading to 5G started in 2016, and folks probably remember that you couldn’t read an industry publication or go to a tradeshow without being bombarded about the upcoming miracles that were going to be unleased with 5G. We’re not seeing that same kind of excitement for 6G, and I would bet that the average cellular customer hasn’t even heard of 6G.

I also remember the market reaction when 5G was introduced in 2019. The first introduction of 5G only included a small piece of the new 5G specification, and the major real-world difference from 4G was that carriers put 5G connections on a different set of spectrum. Early adopters praised 5G, mostly because they were connecting on empty networks, but within a year, that advantage disappeared as the 5G spectrum got flooded with users.

There is a lot to brag about with 5G performance. Speeds increased dramatically over 4G, and in most urban markets, 5G speeds are at 200-300 Mbps download, or faster. There is one big downside to 5G in rural areas, in that the higher spectrum for 5G doesn’t carry as far, and so cellular network coverage in rural areas is shrinking. This will be dramatically noticeable when the carriers eventually decommission 4G.

By the time 5G was released to the public, every tech head wanted the new technology. This led to a huge surge in handset sales. There is no doubt that the equipment and handset vendors will want a big push for 6G. But there aren’t many advantages of 6G that will excite consumers. Most of the advantages of 6G benefit the carriers more than the public. Consider the following touted benefits. 6G will:

  • Enable immersive communication and human-machine interactions. That would enable eXtended Reality (XR), remote multi-sensory telepresence, holographic communications, haptic sensors and actuators, and multi-sensory interfaces.
  • Allow the connection of massive numbers of devices at a cell site. This will supposedly unleash more smart city applications, smart cars, environmental monitoring, and agricultural sensors.
  • Ease connections to smart machines for the remote operation of robots, autonomous factories, and the creation of digital twins for factories, health care, and other complex use cases.
  • Have peak theoretical data rates between 50 and 100 Gbps.
  • Target air interface latency between 0.1 ms and 1 ms.
  • Will introduce AI-related features to support distributed data processing, distributed learning, AI computing, AI model execution, and AI model inference.

Almost none of these new benefits will excite the average cellular customer. These upgrades mostly open up new markets for the carriers. The big carriers saw similar claims for 5G fizzle in the market. Folks aren’t interested in buying separate cellular subscriptions for smart devices, and the battle for connecting multiple devices has largely been won by WiFi. Faster speeds will benefit FWA home cellular, but will not be seen as an important benefit for cellphone users.

It’s going to be interesting to see if AT&T and the other big carriers stay lukewarm about paying for the upgrades to 6G. That would break the cycle of a new generation of cellular technology every ten years and would put equipment and handset vendors into a tailspin.

New Rules for FCC Maps

At the end of April, the FCC released a Report and Order and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to its broadband mapping processes. There are no earth-shattering changes in the order and this is part of the ongoing process of finetuning the FCC broadband maps.

The following are the changes that were ordered:

  • The FCC ordered that the definition of broadband be the same for the BDC map collection process as the Form 477 process where ISPs and carriers report customers. Currently, there are some types of customers included in the BDC maps that are not included on the Form 477.
  • The FCC is eliminating the process, where an ISP or carrier must be notified of challenges to the map fabric and given a chance to respond. The map fabric is the database of potential customer locations. Eliminating this extra step will hopefully speed up the process of implementing challenges to the fabric.
  • The FCC shifted the responsibility to the FCC staff (or its mapping vendor) to remove demonstrably bad data from the BDC maps rather than requiring the ISP or carrier to make changes.

In the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC asked for feedback from the industry on a number of questions:

  • The FCC asks about changing the map restoration This is the process where ISPs or carriers can reenter data into the FCC maps that was removed due to map challenges or other FCC actions. We now know that a lot of changes were made to the maps as a result of the BEAD map challenges, and the FCC is asking if there can be a simpler process for ISPs or carriers to fix the maps.
  • The FCC asks if it should eliminate the requirement for ISPs to report “grandfathered” broadband coverage, meaning locations where maximum download speeds are slower than 25 Mbps.
  • The FCC also asks about eliminating the requirement to report 3G cellular coverage.
  • The FCC asks if the rules for fixed wireless reporting should be changed when reporting the ‘buffer size’, which is the maximum distance an ISP wants to claim to be able to provide service from a tower site.
  • The FCC asks if it should change or relax the assumption that fixed wireless providers should assume the height of a customer receiver at a height no higher than 7 meters.
  • The FCC currently requires BDC providers to retain all of the backup for reported data for three years, and it asks if that should be something different.
  • The FCC is seeking comments on changes that would speed up and streamline the map challenge process. There are questions related to individual map challenges, bulk challenges, and crowdsourced challenges.
  • The FCC asks if there are needed changes to the mobile verification and audit processes.
  • Finally, the FCC asks if certain kinds of data should automatically be considered to be confidential, rather than requiring ISPs and carriers to seek confidentiality with each data submittal.