New fixed wireless speed tests for Q2 2026 from Ookla show that T-Mobile continues to dominate the category, with a median download speed of 222.7 Mbps, (outpacing AT&T Internet Air by 38.8% and Verizon 5G Home by 76%).

T-Mobile’s Q2 2026 median upload speed (18.1 Mbps) also beat AT&T by 79.2% and Verizon by 48.5%.

The data also highlighted some encouraging trends and some emerging problems. All three providers experienced a performance drop in download and upload speeds between Q1 2026 to Q2 2026. This, however, is likely a seasonal impact, Ooklas reported as dense leaves on trees can weaken FWA signals.

In more positive news, AT&T’s median download speed surged nearly 60%—from 104.61 Mbps in Q3 2025 to 167.34 Mbps in Q1 2026. This is likely the result of deploying the additional 50 MHz of spectrum purchased from EchoStar, Ookla reported.

The report also highlighted an important shift in urban deployments that could have larger implications for the broadband industry.

Traditional cable and telco operators have long dominated urban markets and fixed wireless access providers have long been seen as an attractive technological solutions for rural areas, where the cost of wiring isolated homes can be high.

The new Ookla Q2 data shows, however, that fixed wireless providers can deliver faster speeds in urban areas, potentially making them more competitive with faster wired options from cable and telcos.

Rural FWA users across all three providers nationwide have lower median download speeds and higher multi-server latency. Urban users benefit from a multi-server latency that is 7 to 13 milliseconds lower than their rural counterparts, the Ookla data shows.

Even so, the Ookla data showed that only two states (Hawaii and New York) and the District of Columbia produced fixed wireless access samples where 40% or more of the samples met the FCC’s minimum standard for broadband speed (100 Mbps download/20 Mbps upload).

T-Mobile was found to offer the fastest mobile network and fastest 5G network in Ookla’s latest Connectivity Report on the state of U.S. mobile and fixed networks in the first half of 2026.

Cellphone provider T-Mobile was deemed to have the Best Mobile Network, with a median download speed of 275.55 Megabits per second across all technologies combined, and the Best 5G Network, with a median download speed of 314.38 Mbps, Ookla reported.

The speeds have important implications for broadcast journalists and news organizations in the field who rely on 5G networks to deliver video feeds and stories to newsrooms.

To earn its top rankings, T-Mobile recorded a Speedtest Connectivity Score of 80.12, and a Speedtest 5G Connectivity Score of 73.52. Speedtest Connectivity Score combines key metrics to evaluate a mobile provider’s overall user experience offer. It includes Speed Score, indicators for web browsing performance and Video Streaming Score, Ookla said.

T-Mobile also offered the best gaming and video streaming experiences in the United States during 1H 2026, across all broadband technologies and 5G, according to Speedtest Intelligence data.

Ookla found that AT&T Fiber offered the Best Internet and was the Fastest Fixed Network in the U.S. during the first half, with a median download speed of 374.75 Mbps and a median upload speed of 320.65 Mbps.

Among the most populous cities in the United States, Lincoln, Neb., recorded the fastest median mobile download speed of 395.83 Mbps, while Durham, N.C., outpaced other cities to record the fastest median fixed download speed at 380.47 Mbps.

Ookla is a research firm best known for Speedtest.net, which tests and tracks global internet and mobile network speeds.

More data and the full report can be found here.

As cable operators face increased competition from 5G fixed wireless access providers, a new report from Ookla Research finds that T-Mobile is the FWA speed leader with a median download speed which is approximately double that of AT&T.

5G fixed wireless access (FWA) is a popular and growing broadband option in the U.S. with the top three U.S. FWA providers —T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon — adding 1.04 million new subscribers in Q3 2025 bringing the total number of FWA customers to 14.7 million, which is slightly more than 12.5% of the 117.4 million U.S. households with broadband, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey, the Ookla report noted.

According to recent Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data, T-Mobile maintains its FWA leadership position with median download speed of 209.06 Mbps for Q3 2025, which is approximately double that of AT&T’s median download speed of 104.63 Mbps in the same quarter.

The Ookla data indicates, however, that there was a noticeable decline in all three providers’ download and upload speeds during Q2 2025 and Q3 2025, which may be a seasonal pattern as we saw a similar decline in median upload speeds for all three operators in Q2 and Q3 2024 and a decline in download speeds for AT&T and Verizon in Q2 and Q3 2024.

It’s also possible that this may be an early indication that strong uptake in FWA is starting to impact performance, the researchers said.

Key takeaways from the report were:

• Speedtest users from all three U.S. FWA providers—T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T—experienced declines in both their median download and upload speeds during Q2 2025 and Q3 2025.
• AT&T Internet Air’s latency is higher than its peers but it’s improving. In Q3 AT&T’s median latency was 67 milliseconds (ms) compared to Verizon at 54 ms and T-Mobile at 50 ms. However, AT&T’s latency is improving every quarter from a high of 78 ms in Q3 2024.
• AT&T and T-Mobile customers in the 10th percentile of users are experiencing speed declines during peak hours in the late afternoon and evening. Verizon subscribers in the 10th percentile don’t have the same sorts of declines, indicating the operator’s enforcement of speed caps may be helping it deliver a more consistent experience to those customers.
• T-Mobile is the FWA speed leader. T-Mobile’s median download speed of 209.06 Mbps in Q3 2025 is approximately double AT&T’s median download speed of 104.63 Mbps in the same quarter.

More information is available here.

BELLEVUE, Wash. and NEW YORK—Fox Weather has tapped T-Mobile as its preferred communications provider and said all of its reporters will be equipped with SuperMobile, a T-Mobile business plan that combines intelligent performance, built-in security and seamless satellite coverage.

Fox Weather said the enhanced connectivity solution will allow its reporters to deliver uninterrupted coverage from virtually anywhere in the U.S., regardless of conditions. Reporters can livestream from the heart of a storm, share real-time radar imagery and send critical updates to producers and audiences, even during times of high network demand, the companies said.

“We are thrilled to work with T-Mobile as our preferred communications provider,” said Sharri Berg, president of Fox Weather, “With our expansive reporter footprint across the country, this collaboration will ensure our communications network can keep up with our breaking news coverage regardless of the situation on the ground.”

“The Fox Weather team goes where conditions are most unpredictable — from sudden summer storms and winter fronts to wildfires and tornadoes in rural communities,” added Mo Katibeh, chief marketing officer, T-Mobile Business Group. “That’s why we built SuperMobile: to give reporters intelligent performance, secure connectivity and off-grid coverage with T-Satellite, so Fox Weather can keep delivering the updates communities count on—powered by America’s Best Mobile Network.”

T-Mobile said the plan offers Fox Weather three key capabilities:

• Intelligent connectivity on America’s Best Mobile Network. The SuperMobile network slice technology dynamically allocates network resources to support Fox Weather’s most critical needs—from high-quality livestreams to large video files and real-time updates. By helping prevent buffering, dropped feeds, and slow uploads, SuperMobile gives teams a more consistent experience whether they’re streaming from the aftermath of a storm or sending high-resolution radar imagery from the field—even in times of high demand.
• Built-in security designed for journalists. Leveraging T-Mobile’s 5G standalone architecture, the plan provides enhanced encryption, advanced device authentication and strong privacy protections.
• Access to the nation’s largest satellite-to-mobile network with T-Satellite. With more than 650 satellites in orbit, Fox Weather crews stay online even in the more than 500,000 square miles of the country that are unreached by any carrier’s earth-bound cell towers. And as of Oct. 1, T-Satellite now includes data, helping Fox Weather reporters access apps like maps for navigation and share video and picture messages to stay connected to the latest weather conditions in remote places that terrestrial cellular networks cannot reach.

More information is available here and at FoxWeather.com.

ATLANTA—Move over Shohei Ohtani. Make way Aaron Judge. Tonight’s 2025 MLB All-Star Game will see a private 5G wireless network emerge as a television production all-star in its own right, contributing numerous wireless camera shots, supporting comms and camera control from in and around Truist Park.

“The amazing part about Atlanta is that it’s not just a ballpark, and it’s not just a ballpark with a big parking lot around it,” Brad Cheney, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports, said. “It’s a ballpark with an amazing entertainment district [The Battery Atlanta] tied to it. That screams connectivity needs for us.”

(Editor’s note: Fox stations and cable network Fox Deportes will air the 2025 MLB All-Star Game at 8 p.m. ET from Truist Park in Atlanta. Viewers can also stream the game with the Fox Sports app and on Hulu + Live TV, FuboTV, YouTube TV and DirecTV.)

Crowded House
The Battery Atlanta, adjacent to the home of the Atlanta Braves, is a mixed use/entertainment complex with shops, bars and restaurants. Office buildings, apartments and a hotel round out its features—any one of which increases wireless network traffic and together, for an event like the All-Star Game, compounds the wireless network challenge.

“We learned back in 2021 during the World Series that The Battery was popular, and it’s continued to grow ever since from when it was relatively small and new,” he said.

To sidestep any 5G network congestion, Fox Sports is working with Major League Baseball sponsor and technology partner T-Mobile for private 5G wireless network coverage of the entertainment district and ballpark. CP Communications is managing the private 5G network and most conventional RF and wireless comms, he added, noting that the RF connectivity of a handful of specialty cameras being deployed will be managed by their respective vendors.

Fox Sports made big use of 5G for wireless camera contribution on Monday (July 14) during FS1’s “Live at the All-Star Game” show and will again rely on 5G connectivity to contribute shots for tonight’s game to “expand the zone of coverage” to include The Battery and Truist Park, Cheney said.

For the 140 wireless communications packs to be used to produce the game, there was no other practical choice. “There’s really no system large enough out there that’s not cellular-based that can do the amount of wireless audio packs we need for communications—not just for us, but also for Major League Baseball, for ESPN and all of the other rightsholders,” said Cheney.

Production Highpoints
Fox Sports will produce the All-Star Game in 1080p Full-HD HDR. Upscaled 4K HDR streams will be available for connected TVs and living room apps, such as Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV and Roku devices.

It will deploy 55 cameras, including six Super-Slow Mo cameras, a FlyCam traveling from The Battery Atlanta into the ballpark at home plate along the first base line, a helicopter camera and a drone camera from Beverly Hills Aerials.

A first for All-Star Game coverage, the broadcaster will outfit the entire umpire crew with body-worn cameras. Base umpires will wear MindFly chest cams, while the home plate umpire will wear a third-generation RF Wireless Mask Cam, the broadcaster said.

Managing the color and the look of the Ump Cams and drone camera isn’t simply a matter of tweaking CCU settings, especially given the need to integrate the camera shots seamlessly into the HDR production of the game.

“We’ve spent some time with colorists to make a profile for the drone that takes the SDR and makes the HDR correctly that matches the broadcast cameras as close as possible, obviously, knowing that the lensing is not the same and the sensors are not the same,” said Cheney. “We then use [AJA Video] ColorBoxes [and color controllers from Cyanview] to actually manage that color throughout the game.”

Fox Sports has a history with this color management strategy for specialty cameras, Cheney noted. During the UFL season, Fox Sports made extensive use of Mindfly cameras, and it has been regularly using the third-generation RF Wireless Mask Cam this season since it debuted during the 2024 MLB playoffs.

“It looks spectacular on its own, but when we get the maestros to tweak it up a bit, it’s going to look exactly like everything else there.”

The broadcaster must also address the effect of changing lighting conditions on color and the overall look of video as the evening game, which starts in daylight, transitions to stadium lighting as night falls. Fox Sports will rely on the ColorBoxes and Cyanview units to make necessary adjustments, according to Cheney.

Five COSM cameras are being deployed for presentation of the game at the COSM venues in Los Angeles and Dallas; however, it’s likely they will be used “once or twice throughout the broadcast to show off a special angle,” he said.

Fox Sports will deploy 40 field-effects mics and 10 player mics for real-time conversations between the announcers and players in the game. Joe Davis and John Smoltz will reunite in the booth for their fourth All-Star Game together. Reporters Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci will provide inside information and in-game reports from the field, the broadcaster said.

The ongoing work at Fox Sports leveraging artificial intelligence to uncover storylines from all audio sources that might otherwise get overlooked will not be integrated into game coverage. “That’s something we are working to deploy in Major League Baseball overall, but it’s not something for the All-Star Game,” said Cheney.

“Our audio focus for this show is really about the player audio and the two-ways that we’re able to do with all those players and continually making that kind of the focus of the game itself,” said Cheney.

(Editor’s note: CBS Sports coverage of the PGA Championship began May 15 and wraps up May 18. Interviews for this story were conducted on-site May 14.)

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—To fans and golfers at the 14th hole here at Quail Hollow, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary for one of the four majors.

Not so for the viewers at home enjoying CBS Sports coverage of the PGA Championship.

The broadcaster, working with a handful of technology vendors, has created “an immersive tee box of the future,” leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) graphics, 5G wireless connectivity, a remotely controlled robotic camera and tracking data system, Jason Cohen, senior vice president of remote technical operations for CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network, said.

“We are bringing the tee box to life in a more immersive virtual manner so we can show headshots of the group that’s about to hit,” Cohen said. “We can do a virtual display of the hole with a trail of the ball in this virtual map, and we can use the shot link data to create other metrics and information about how the golfer has been playing that course or how the hole has been played in general by other golfers in the field.”

The immersive tee box isn’t the only innovative technology the broadcaster is bringing to the tournament. Ball tracing from drones, first deployed last summer, is making its PGA Championship debut. Two new miniature POV 4K cameras embedded in the bunker at the 18th hole will enable CBS to zoom in to capture “nice, tight shots” showing the grains of sand as the ball is being hit without losing any resolution for the 1080p HDR production, Cohen said.

Other familiar technologies, including three FlyCams suspended overhead from two wires over different parts of the course and practice range, two drones, the blimp and the jibs, are contributing their unique perspectives to the overall production. “These other camera technologies are not just eye candy,” he said. “They really help with coverage.”

AR Deep Dive
What set the immersive tee box in motion was a desire to use all available data in a new, more effective way. “There’s a lot of information, a lot of data and a lot of analytics at our disposal that always don’t make the screen at the same time,” Cohen said.

Forming a technology partnership with T-Mobile, Cohen’s team began to reimagine coverage from the tee box that would be more futuristic and innovative.

The setup relies on a combination of technologies from a variety of vendors. All video and tracking data for the immersive experience is being transported via a T-Mobile 5G wireless network, which “goes into the private network cores located on premise,” said Scott Jacka, senior director of technology development strategy at T-Mobile. From the core, a fiber connection transmits the video and data to the CBS broadcast compound.

“The signal is lightning-quick,” Cohen said. “It’s almost as fast as the fiber, which is almost mathematically hard to believe.”

High above the tee box in a trace tower, a Robovision robotic camera, with a Mo-Sys Sony P50 robotic camera alongside it, is capturing the video and tracking data needed for the virtual presentation. Alston Elliot (AE) Live, which acquired Silver Spoon Animation in 2023, is providing the augmented reality engine, including hardware, software and personnel, in the broadcast compound.

Finally, a virtual window adjacent to the golfer in the tee box is displaying a virtual representation of the 14th hole created by Animation Research Labs (ARL) to show viewers how that golfer is playing that hole as he tees off.

CBS is deploying a roaming Steadicam-mounted Sony camera tech stack, including the Sony PDT-FP1 portable data transmitter, which transmits footage of the golfers as they leave the 13th hole and enter the 14th. T-Mobile 5G is used to transport the HEVC-encoded video from the rig at 25Mbps.

“It’s a full end-to-end 5G experience from the moment the golfers release 13 to the moment that ball lands wherever the drivable ball goes on the 14th hole,” Cohen said.

When not capturing players leaving the 13th on their way to the 14th hole, the roaming camera is also being used for “a walk and talk” with players as they walk from the 14th to the 18th holes, Grant Castle, senior vice president of systems realization at T-Mobile, said.

Size, Scope and Storms
The PGA Championship is a massive remote production. CBS has assembled 24 mobile production trucks, including units from NEP, Game Creek and F&F Productions, six trucks playing supporting roles and some 700 technicians and engineers, production personnel, managers and vendor partners for its coverage.

More than 125 cameras are strategically placed to capture every shot over the four-day tournament. “We try to anticipate and think about what the course is offering us that’s unique from year to year because we’re going to a different location each year.

“We take every hole and dissect it from the tee to the green, thinking about which angle we can shoot from and what different types of camera technologies allow us to capture all those unique angles,” Cohen said.

He points to the FlyCams as an example. One travels along the two-wire system across the large lake on the back nine from the 14th green to nearly the 18th green. “That’s an exciting camera technology,” Cohen said. “It’s got a fluctuating line where it can dip down to almost skim the water and then come back up.”

Another, the Sparrow FlyCam, is a miniature version that travels on the wire system from a tower on the 18th through a grandstand window. “These are not just bells and whistles,” he said. “They really help out with our coverage as players tap out on those various greens.”

Setup for the coverage began in mid-April with early work on the broadcast compound. Production trucks were on-site and parked by May 7. In the days leading up to the championship, severe thunderstorms struck the Charlotte area.

“A lot of the cameras were bagged and covered,” Cohen said. “A lot of them were not even deployed. But that schedule that we built takes into account an unforeseen situation. It allows us to still be in a position where today, which is an enormous day before air, we are doing a full rehearsal of every camera and every technology. The production teams are in their trucks right now getting set for the first golfers from tomorrow morning.”

SEATTLE—T-Mobile has announced that it set a new uplink speed record of 550 Mbps in sub-6 GHz spectrum using cutting-edge 5G Advanced tech.

The live demo with Nokia and MediaTek took place in a real commercial site in Seattle. The demo was the first in the world to set a speed record using Release 17 UL Tx Switching.

The news is notable because the broadband industry has traditionally focused on download speeds. But, as future applications become more interactive, real time and cloud connected, uplink speeds become increasingly important.

Potential customers for offerings with very fast upload speeds include content creation and gaming.

“Everyone obsesses over download speed, but at T-Mobile we see what’s coming, and uplink is the next big thing,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, president of Technology, T-Mobile. “Whether you’re uploading 4K video, gaming in real time or powering a VR headset, this record shows that T-Mobile is already building the network for that future and focused on bringing the best customer experience.”

T-Mobile achieved this record-breaking 5G Advanced uplink speed by implementing the 3GPP Release 17 UL Tx Switching feature. This feature provides smart multiplexing to maximize user throughput on the available device Tx chains by optimizing use of UL Carrier Aggregation and UL MIMO for TDD and FDD spectrum.

“It’s significantly more challenging for carriers to enhance data speeds in the uplink — from a mobile device back to the network — compared to boosting downlink speeds. This is precisely what makes this achievement so impressive. As demand continues to rise for AI, XR and video uploads, exceptional uplink performance will become essential,” said Tommi Uitto, president of Mobile Networks at Nokia. “Our partnership with T-Mobile keeps growing stronger, fueling innovation, shaping the network of the future and delivering extraordinary experiences to T-Mobile’s customers.”

T-Mobile used 100MHz of TDD spectrum (n41) and 35MHz of FDD spectrum (n25) in its live network demonstration to achieve the record-breaking 550 Mbps total speed. The test was conducted using a MediaTek smartphone flagship test device with an integrated M90 modem.

“This groundbreaking 550 Mbps uplink speed achievement, using 5G Advanced features, is a thrilling example of the innovation that can take place when we work together,” said HC Hwang, general manager of wireless communication system and partnership at MediaTek. “This milestone, a result of collaboration with T-Mobile, marks a significant leap forward for immersive VR and AR experiences, enabling creators and consumers to seamlessly interact, stream and share content with unparalleled real-time responsiveness.”

T-Mobile set a record of 275 Mbps in 2022, breaking it with 345 Mbps in early 2024 using Release 16 UL Tx Switching, and this year, surpassing 500 Mbps with Release 17.

A new study of fixed wireless access (FWA) providers and their internet access speeds shows that operators continue to improve their speeds, with T-Mobile’s median download speeds increasing by more than 50% from 134.99 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 205.44 Mbps in Q4 2024, according to Ookla.

The analysis found that AT&T’s Internet Air FWA customers experienced strong median download speeds of 150.47 Mbps as of Q4 2024.

Verizon, which has more than 4.3 million FWA subscribers, saw its median download speed rise more than 12% from 132.55 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 150.47 Mbps in Q4 2024.

“5G fixed wireless access (FWA) has steadily gained popularity in the U.S. over the past four years and now the service has more than 11.5 million subscribers —and that’s just counting the FWA subscribers from the big three nationwide operators,” explained Sue Marek, Ookla’s editorial director and part of the company’s analyst team “Today FWA is considered a viable broadband competitor, and its traction with customers has caused many cable operators to lose customers to FWA.”

Marek also reported that the study also found improved Upload speeds, which are becoming increasingly important to consumers and remote workers. “Our data shows that median FWA upload speeds increased from Q4 2023 to Q4 2024 with T-Mobile’s upload speeds consistently outpacing the competition,” Marek noted. “T-Mobile’s upload speed increased 9.05% from 19.88 Mbps in Q4 2023 to 21.68 Mbps in Q4 2024.”

FWA operators, however, saw less improvement in the area of latency, which is important for streaming live events and gaming.

“Unlike FWA upload and download speeds that have improved from Q4 2023 until Q4 2024, latency figures have remained somewhat static for Verizon and AT&T while T-Mobile’s latency has declined,” Marek wrote. “Latency is a key measurement because higher latency will impact real-time applications such as online gaming and video conferencing.”

More data and the full article is available here.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile is further expanding its advertising business with the announcement that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Vistar Media, a leading provider of technology solutions for digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertisements reaching millions of consumers.

More specifically the company’s T-Mobile Advertising Solutions business will acquire all of Vistar’s ad tech solutions and capabilities, including its intelligent marketplace and technology solutions for buying, selling and managing media campaigns across a global network of more than 1.1 million digital screens provided by nearly 370 OOH media owners and serving more than 3,000 brand partner advertisers.

T-Mobile will pay approximately $600 million in cash for Vistar, subject to closing adjustments., the carrier reported. The transaction is expected to close in first-quarter 2025, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

eMarketer is forecasting that DOOH ad spending in 2025 will account for over one-third of the nearly $10 billion spent on OOH advertising in the U.S.

In announcing the deal, T-Mobile said that the combination of Vistar’s end-to-end ad-tech platform and scale and T-Mobile’s unique customer insights and data will help transform the DOOH business in a variety of ways.

As a top marketer, connectivity provider and one of the largest physical in-store retail media network operators, the combined solutions will allow marketers and advertisers to reach consumers with more addressable and measurable solutions, delivering greater efficiency and ROI, while enhancing the consumer experience with more meaningful and engaging content.

“T-Mobile is always envisioning new ways to deliver for consumers and we see a tremendous opportunity to provide more relevant and personalized advertising,” said JP Colaco, senior vice president and chief T-Ads officer, T-Mobile. “Combining T-Mobile’s customer-centric approach and its expertise as one of the nation’s most scaled marketers, with Vistar’s leading out-of-home technology means advertisers can easily place their ads where they know their audience will be, improving every step of the customer journey. Together with Vistar, T-Mobile will deliver advertising solutions built by marketers, for marketers.”

“We are excited to join T-Mobile, a brand that truly understands the power and potential of out-of-home advertising,” Michael Provenzano, CEO and co-founder of Vistar Media, said. “For 13 years, Vistar has pioneered using technology and data to transform OOH into a strategic and measurable channel. T-Mobile’s belief in the future of OOH - and their decision to acquire Vistar underscores the strength of this channel. Together, we have the opportunity to enhance our offerings for customers and partners globally, and inspire brands to think bigger and redefine how they engage with audiences in the real world.”

Allen & Co. is serving as T-Mobile’s financial adviser on the transaction with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton serving as T-Mobile’s legal counsel. Global investment bank, Canaccord Genuity, advised Vistar Media on the transaction, with Lowenstein Sandler LLP. Serving as Vistar Media’s legal counsel.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile said that working with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, it has broken another world record with its 5G standalone (SA) network reaching peak uplink speeds of over 2.2 Gigabits per second.

The test is an important development for broadcast crews needing fast uplink speeds to send content from sports venues, T-Mobile said.

The speeds were achieved by leveraging an emerging feature called New Radio Dual Connectivity (5G DC). With 5G DC, T-Mobile was able to massively increase uplink throughput and capacity, reaching peak speeds of 2.2 Gbps in a demo that demonstrates the technology’s potential to create serious efficiencies in how data is transmitted from devices to the network, the companies said.

5G DC enabled T-Mobile to aggregate 2.5 GHz and mmWave spectrum, allowing for a massive improvement in uplink throughput and capacity. In this test, T-Mobile was able to allocate 60% of the mmWave radio resources for uplink, whereas previous use cases typically allowed up to 20%. The test was completed on T-Mobile’s 5G SA production network in SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, with equipment and 5G DC solution from Ericsson and a mobile test smartphone powered by a flagship Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF System from Qualcomm.

“With 5G DC, T-Mobile is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to create better experiences in the places that matter most to our customers,” T-Mobile President of Technology Ulf Ewaldsson said. “This accomplishment is a testament to the network we’ve built over the last five years and our ability to deliver unparalleled capabilities that extend beyond the devices in our pockets.”

Download speeds typically reign as the top network performance metric, but with recent strides in uplink capabilities and increasingly demanding tasks, upload speed is becoming more important than ever, especially for live events, mobile gaming and extended reality applications, the companies said.

Because of this, SoFi Stadium served as the perfect test site for 5G DC. Every year, millions of people flock to the stadium for football games or to catch their favorite artists in concert. Naturally, all these people want to post, livestream and share their experiences in real time, which can sometimes be a challenge at crowded events with limited capacity.

In addition, broadcast crews need the capacity to upload high-definition content to production teams in real time. With 5G DC and T-Mobile, all of this gets done faster than ever, alleviating posting FOMO and production crew headaches.

“High uplink speeds are essential for delivering immersive experiences and reliable 5G connectivity,” Ericsson Head of Product, Area Networks Mårten Lerner said. “This mirrors one of our key objectives with the recent launch of Ericsson 5G Advanced, which is to elevate user experience by enhancing network performance for more interactive applications. This 5G uplink speed milestone, achieved with T-Mobile and Qualcomm, underscores our commitment to taking user experience to unprecedented levels.”

Added Qualcomm Vice President, Product Management Sunil Patil: “We are incredibly proud to achieve yet another world record with T-Mobile. This groundbreaking achievement shows what could be possible with 5G DC and how it can bring new, unparalleled experiences to consumers, especially at large events like football games and concerts. We will continue our close collaboration with global innovators like T-Mobile and Ericsson to push the boundaries and unlock the full potential of 5G.”

It’s been five years now since the wireless carriers began rolling out 5G connectivity. Claims—sometimes exaggerated—about its possibilities were rampant then, including better steering of scalpels in robotic surgeries, downloading of HD feature-length movies in milliseconds, alleviating traffic jams and obsoleting human control of automobiles.

Not all of these glowing promises have come to fruition, and only time will tell if they ever will. One thing about 5G is certain, though, and that’s its much-less-hyped impact on TV broadcasters and content producers. Although bonded-cellular video transmission arrived a decade ahead of 5G’s rollout and has done a lot in terms of freeing remote telecasts from conventional connectivity, broadcasters—in general—agree that this fifth iteration of wireless broadband is living up to the promises that accompanied it.

What It Brings to the Table
“We have spoken for several years now about the impact that 5G has made to bonded cellular,” said Dan Pisarski, chief technology officer at LiveU. “A key example is what is called ‘deterministic latency,’ where the changes in the in-air protocol called ‘New Radio,’ or ‘NR,’ in 5G, use a much more fixed latency compared to LTE [long term evolution, a term used to describe earlier broadband wireless technology].

Pisarski observed that 5G’s utilization of new spectrum allocations provides “a much more complete workflow for users,” allowing such enhancements as two-way intercom capability, video return feeds, robotic camera control and more.

“This ensures that a team deployed with a LiveU unit is a full-capability remote team, communicating, reviewing and interacting with remote management—not just ‘shooting video,’ ” he said.

A notable example of how 5G is impacting live sports coverage happened last summer when NBC Sports was able to add more 5G cameras to more holes at Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, Washington, site of the 2024 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. This was due to the scalability of T-Mobile’s 5G portable private network, according to Chris Melus, vice president of product management at T-Mobile’s Business Group.

“Broadcasters loved that they could get super-fast, fiber-like speeds without the wires,” he said, adding that 5G can provide “glass-to-glass latency that averages under 100 milliseconds, enabling full-4K 60 fps resolution.”

As an added bonus at the tourney, T-Mobile also rolled out another 5G-based enhancement for spectators in the form of real-time player data delivered to smartphones. The app provided such information as radar trajectory of golf shots, 3D imagery, views of greens and more. “Broadcasters have found tremendous value in the ability to integrate 5G into their remote production suite of tools because of 5G’s ability to efficiently bring fans more high-quality content without the burden of wires,” Melus added.

5G at the Olympics
5G also made a big splash at the Paris Summer Olympics, allowing broadcasters to provide coverage of events in ways that would not have been possible previously, and taking both in-person and video spectator enjoyment to new heights.

5G was key for France.tv to be able to cover the torch relay across 1,600 kilometers (about 1,000 miles) of France from May to July, according to Matt McEwen, vice president of product at TVU Networks.

“In the past, a large-scale moving event like this would have required helicopters and planes to receive and relay the video signals being captured by the mobile cameras,” he said. “Utilizing both public and private 5G infrastructure allowed France.tv to transmit the mobile signal without aerial support, saving 92% of the typical costs. If such a workflow were not possible, France.tv simply would not have been able to produce nine weeks of live torch relay coverage due to budget constraints.”

“5G has absolutely transformed how we now cover large-scale events like the Summer Games in Paris,” said Sukhvir Grewal, sales account manager at Dejero. “These events demand real-time, high-quality coverage from multiple locations and angles. With 5G’s higher bandwidth and lower latency it’s possible to deliver a better viewer experience even more seamlessly.”

In recalling coverage of the event’s opening ceremonies, which took place along a 6-kilometer (about 4-mile) portion of the River Seine, Jim Jachetta, chief technology officer at VidOvation, observed that 5G made all the difference in capturing close-up footage of athletes aboard the scores of boats.

“Olympic Broadcasting Services, in partnership with Haivision, utilized over 200 Samsung S24 Ultra smartphones equipped with Haivision’s MoJoPro mobile camera apps … [to provide] HDR video feeds via a dedicated 5G network supported by 12 5G cells mounted on bridges,” he said.

Jachetta added that history was made in coverage of another water event, the Marseille sailing competitions. “A standout achievement was the creation of the world’s first sea-based private 5G network,” said Jachetta. “This network, which featured 5G antennas on large catamarans, enabled live video transmission from rapidly moving boats. The 5G network’s flexibility allowed it to adapt to various sailing courses, ensuring uninterrupted coverage of the sailing events regardless of the boats’ location.”

Is It Really All That?
Since its introduction, bonded cellular has been quietly displacing conventional microwave and satellite links to deliver news and other live feeds. When the first bonded-cellular gear appeared, 4G (with anticipated data rates of perhaps 100 Mbps), was just beginning to roll out, and 3G with its low Mbps (or even high Kbps) throughput was still the norm.

Fast forward to 2024 and the availability of 5G networks across most of the United States has greatly expanded, with about 60% of the population within the reach of a 5G signal. We asked several broadcasters if it was really making a difference in their field operations. The answers were something of a mixed bag.

“I can’t say I’ve noticed a difference between 4G and 5G,” said Pete Sockett, Capitol Broadcasting’s director of engineering and operations, who is based in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area. “It may have helped some with connectivity, but it’s hard to say.”

Dan Wilson, chief engineer at WPSD-TV Paducah, Kentucky, had a different response. “Since we switched to 5G, we’re able to get shots that we could never get before,” he said. “With 5G it’s even better and easier to get shots. Before 5G, the shots might pixelate and a reliable transmission was ‘iffy.’ Once 5G hit, that went away.”

Wilson noted that his station was still getting used to 5G, as it’s only been available in the Paducah area for the past half-year or so. He also commented on the impact 5G’s reduced latency was having on WPSD’s remote operations.

“The low latency is even better than I thought possible,” he added. “We’d gotten accustomed to a minimum three-second delay. Now it’s a second-and-a-half or even just a second. This has gotten us almost back to analog microwave days in terms of delay. It’s a real game-changer.”

David Ostmo, San Antonio, Texas-based regional engineering director for Sinclair Broadcast Group, noted that while 5G has perhaps increased the comfort level in bringing in remotes via bonded cellular, it hasn’t been a complete panacea.

“We were making pretty extensive use of LiveU technology prior to the 5G rollout,” said Ostmo. “It may be a little more comfortable trusting a football game to 5G than to 4G. We’re always concerned about a secondary link with microwave or satellite at an important event. We’ve lost live shots at large events using only bonded cellular. There was a strong signal when we were testing, but then the video was poor with pixelation when we went on the air.”

He noted that in this respect, 5G has made things better. “Where it is available, we get a more robust connection and better throughput,” he said, adding that 5G was also enabling more elaborate field productions than could be undertaken before its deployment.

What About Trucks?
Ostmo noted also that while his organization had eliminated some of its conventional microwave and satellite trucks, he felt that it was important to retain a backup to cellular, despite the claims made for 5G. “We need the ability to broadcast after a large natural disaster such as a hurricane or tornado, and cellular networks could be destroyed,” he said. “This is especially in tornado- or hurricane-prone areas.”

Ostmo observed that as microwave or satellite trucks “age out” and are retired, there will always be a need for microwave and two-way radio linkage from the field that’s independent of common carriers.

Perhaps the biggest problem with 5G right now, according to Ostmo—whose responsibility extends over Sinclair stations spread over several states in the south-central portion of the U.S.—is lack of solid coverage.

“Where it’s available, we get a more robust connection and better throughput,” he said. “But it’s not available everywhere. In San Antonio, there’s good coverage in the city and not-so-good coverage as you go further out. There’s not any advantage in Nebraska.”

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T–Mobile has announced a "Rally for Relief" effort to help those impacted by recent hurricanes. As part of the campaign, the cellphone carrier said it would donate $25,000 for every home run hit during the World Series and that it would also send $10 to relief efforts when anyone texts ‘RALLY’ to 90999, for a total of up to $1 million.

In partnership with the American Red Cross, Rally for Relief will support communities affected by hurricanes and tropical storms in 2024, including hurricanes Helene and Milton.

“Since hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall, T-Mobile’s Emergency Response teams have been on the ground helping restore connectivity and assist impacted communities,” Mike Katz, president of marketing, strategy and products, T-Mobile, said. “Now, as those communities are working through the challenging process of rebuilding, we remain by their side, extending our support and enabling baseball fans to join us through Rally for Relief. We’re using one of baseball’s biggest stages to bring attention to these impacted areas and make a difference for the communities that need it most.”

Also Read: Fox Sports Aims To Enhance World Series Coverage With ‘Inside-Out’ Perspective

Donations raised as part of Rally for Relief will enable the Red Cross to help those affected by hurricanes and tropical storms in 2024.

The commitment follows T-Mobile's previous efforts during MLB’s Postseason and its longstanding support of hurricane recovery and restoration efforts, it said.

Since first introducing Home Runs for Hurricane Recovery in 2017, T-Mobile said it has donated over $7.5 million to organizations supporting hurricane and natural disaster relief and recovery efforts. T-Mobile’s efforts have supported the rebuilding of over 30 homes in Florida following Hurricane Irma in 2017 and the building of more than 500 hurricane-resilient roofs in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The carrier also partnered with the Red Cross to provide connectivity support to over 200 evacuation centers in Florida ahead of Hurricane Ian in 2022.

(This year’s World Series, which starts Oct. 25, could see a lot of home runs. It will feature Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, baseball’s top home-run hitter in 2024 with 58, facing off against No. 2 slugger Shohei Ohtani, with 54 home runs, and his Los Angeles Dodgers.)

As a part of the Rally for Relief donation commitment and campaign, T-Mobile also teamed up with nine-time Grammy Award-winning musician Sheryl Crow to record a new track titled “Light a Candle,” penned by Kobalt Music/Little Louder publishing writer Luke Dick and co-writer and songwriter Ronan O’Mahony. The track will be featured in a new TV spot debuting during Game 1 of the World Series. Crow’s proceeds from the song will be donated to the American Red Cross.

“In the wake of these historic storms, countless individuals have faced life-altering devastation to their homes, their towns and to their everyday lives,” Crow said in a statement. “I'm thankful for the opportunity to lend my voice to the relief efforts in partnership with T-Mobile and give these folks who are truly in need a helping hand. I hope that anyone who hears this song will be inspired to participate and contribute to the cause by donating.”

T-Mobile is launching its Rally for Relief campaign as a partner of Major League Baseball, adding to the nearly $4 million contributed by MLB and its clubs to date.

Also Read: Cox Media Group Provides Nearly $1 Million for Hurricane Relief

As part of its relief efforts, T-Mobile said it sent more than 600 emergency crew members, field engineers and technicians to areas impacted by Helene and Milton. The company’s Network Team deployed and maintained over 800 generators — alongside other temporary connectivity solutions — to rapidly restore coverage to affected sites.

In addition, T-Mobile's Emergency Response Team operated Wi-Fi trailers and trucks, a Mobile Command Center, charging stations and distributed supplies like charging cords and more. Key team members also collaborated with federal, state and local officials, working with emergency management officials and in-state operations centers to ensure prioritization of key recovery areas. More on T-Mobile’s ongoing response is available at: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/emergency-response.

New Q1 2024 data from Ookla shows that T-Mobile continues to provide the fastest 5G download speeds in the U.S., with a median 5G download speed of 287.14 Mbps as of March 2024, an increase of 29.64 Mbps in a single month. That helped it extend its lead over Verizon, which recorded 224.67 Mbps, and AT&T with 145.36 Mbps.

The increases in 5G speeds will be an important factor in the ongoing competition between 5G providers and broadband services offered by cable operators. 

The Ookla speedtest data from the U.S. also showed 5G delivered a much better page load speed than 4G on three major services during Q1 2024. Google loaded 21% faster on 5G than 4G, YouTube was 22% faster, and Facebook was 26% faster on 5G.

While national median speeds continue to advance, there remain some significant disparities in 5G performance at an individual state level. The Midwestern States fare best, with Illinois, Kansas, North Dakota, and Minnesota all within the top-5 performing states nationally, with median 5G download speeds above 225 Mbps during Q4 2023.

At the other end of the scale are U.S. states with the highest shares of rural populations, including Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia, which had median download speeds below 100 Mbps. 

Performance gains from all national cellular providers also enabled the U.S. to climb the ranks when compared to its peers internationally. This has been driven by increased availability of mid-band spectrum for 5G use, Ookla reported. 

More data and the full report can be found at  https://www.ookla.com/articles/5g-in-the-us-q1-2024.

T-Mobile announced today that it is deploying its 5G Advanced Network Solutions (ANS) to enhance the fan experience as well as CBS Sports’ live coverage of the PGA Championship taking place at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., May 15–19. The carrier is partnering with PGA of America to deploy what it tags “golf’s FIRST 5G private network in the U.S.” to enable operational efficiencies during the broadcasts.   

For the first time in golf, 5G will be implemented into a live broadcast with CBS Sports using 5G-connected cameras connected via a T-Mobile 5G private network for new angles of the iconic Hole 13, and cinematic quality footage, giving fans more hero shots of their favorite players at Valhalla.

Fans will also be able to watch brand-new pre-championship coverage live on PGA digital and social channels. T-Mobile’s 5G private network and 5G POV cameras will bring fans an exclusive, up-close look at the action on the practice range while PGA coaches and expert commentators provide valuable insights and analysis on the players’ warm-up sessions. Fans will also get detailed stats, including ball speed, apex, curve, distance and more.

"Sports organizations typically come to T-Mobile to see if 5G can help them enhance operations, the fan experience, or the event broadcast, and we’re delivering all of the above and more at the PGA Championship," said Callie Field, President, T-Mobile Business Group. "5G firsts are always exciting, but it’s so rewarding to see how our T-Mobile for Business solutions are making a tangible difference—from making it easier for producers to capture and create amazing new broadcast moments to helping fans experience even more action.”

T-Mobile says bringing more wireless cameras will declutter the golf course during live broadcasts, freeing up thousands of feet of wiring and cabling, resulting in faster setup and teardown, and saving money. Plus, the private network is portable and can be deployed without a major installation effort and also adds capacity to make other systems—like security cameras or ticketing—wireless as well, the company said.

Up until recently, wireless cameras have also been limited to HD, instead of 4K resolution, but T-Mobile says it has partnered with Sony to use Sony’s PDT-FP1 portable data transmitters combined with Sony’s ultra-low latency encoders/decoders to lower the latency to less than 100 milliseconds, which can open capacity to support more wireless cameras and give production teams creative freedom to provide new angles all around the course.

In addition, by carving out a dedicated channel within the broader 5G macro network, a network slice can help optimize performance and increase the reliability of the concession payment terminals as well as ticketing scanners and ensuring that they run smoothly and deliver peak performance and customer experiences, all while the fans onsite at the tournament use their phones without any interruptions, T-Mobile said.

"We’re thrilled to introduce groundbreaking technology to one of golf’s most significant events through this partnership with T-Mobile,” said Jeff Price, Chief Commercial Officer of the PGA of America. “T-Mobile has paved the way for unprecedented innovation that will continue to thrill our fans. And this is just the beginning.”

CAMPBELL, Calif.—Streaming media company Plex and T-Mobile will work together to expand T-Mobile’s connected TV (CTV) inventory and advance the connection between mobile and CTV.

T-Mobile Advertising Solutions reaches more than 240 million consumers across screens, Plex said.

Plex combines free ad-supported TV with ad-supported video on demand (AVOD), reaching more than 22 million monthly active users globally. The partnership between the companies allows advertisers to leverage T-Ads insights and audience data to bring relevant ads to customers while they consume Plex content within a specialized T-Mobile experience. The free entertainment includes movies, TV series and news, it said. 

Plex ad-supported video-on-demand and live TV offerings are available in more than 180 countries. The company recently announced its FAST channel lineup includes more than 800 free channels streamed in the U.S. alone. which will be accessible to T-Mobile customers, it said.

More information is available on the Plex website.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—With more Americans relying on mobile 5G services to access streaming video, T-Mobile is adding Hulu on Us to its suite of complementary streaming services for those subscribing to its Go5G plan. 

Hulu will become the fourth free streaming service on the plan on January 24. 

With the launch Mike Katz, president of marketing, strategy and products at T-Mobile said that Hulu will be offered along with Apple TV+, Netflix and MLB.TV at no extra cost to Go5G Next customers.

“That’s over $400 a year in streaming benefits, from the very best services in the market, all included in your plan at no extra cost,” he said. 

With Hulu on Us—a $95.88 annual value for the Hulu (With Ads) monthly plan option—T-Mobile customers on Go5G Next can access thousands of hit TV shows, movies and more like “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and “Only Murders in the Building,” the carrier said. 

Currently its 5G network covers more than 330 million people across two million square miles — more coverage area than AT&T and Verizon combined. In addition 300 million people nationwide are covered by T-Mobile’s super-fast Ultra Capacity 5G with over 2x more square miles of coverage than similar mid-band 5G offerings from the Un-carrier’s closest competitors.

More information is available at https://www.t-mobile.com/benefits.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—In a development that could have implications for fixed wireless speeds and 5G broadcasting, T-Mobile has announced a successful test that leveraged 5G standalone millimeter wave (mmWave) on its production network.

T-Mobile is calling the test results a U.S. 5G first.  

Working with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., T-Mobile aggregated eight channels of mmWave spectrum to reach download speeds topping 4.3 Gbps without relying on low-band or mid-band spectrum to anchor the connection. T-Mobile also aggregated four channels of mmWave spectrum on the uplink, reaching speeds above 420 Mbps.

5G mmWave can deliver incredibly fast speeds because it offers massive capacity. But the signal doesn’t travel very well through obstacles, making it less ideal for mobile phone users who aren’t sitting still. 

To address that problem, T-Mobile has implemented a multi-band spectrum strategy using low-band to blanket the country and mid-band and high-band (Ultra Capacity) to deliver fast speeds to nearly everyone. 

The 5G mmWave on 5G SA could be used in crowded areas like stadiums and, potentially, for fixed wireless service, T-Mobile said. 

“We’ve been industry leaders – rolling out the first, largest and fastest 5G standalone network across the country – and now we’re continuing to push the boundaries of wireless technology,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, president of Technology at T-Mobile. “We’ve always said we’ll use millimeter wave where it makes sense, and this test allows us to see how the spectrum can be put to use in different situations like crowded venues or to power things like fixed-wireless access when combined with 5G standalone.”

T-Mobile’s 5G network covers more than 330 million people across two million square miles — more than AT&T and Verizon combined. 

In addition about 300 million people nationwide are covered by T-Mobile’s super-fast Ultra Capacity 5G.

NEW ROCHELLE, NY—As subscriber numbers for 5G wireless home internet services continue to spike,  with fixed wireless providers reporting record growth in Q3 2023, a new survey from Horowitz Research finds that consumer satisfaction with the technology is strong and that it is posing a competitive threat to traditional broadband providers. 

“5G wireless home internet is definitely a competitive threat to traditional fixed-line broadband providers as consumers look to trim costs for reliable internet, which is now an essential utility,” notes Adriana Waterston, executive vice president and insights and strategy lead for Horowitz Research. “The novelty of being able to try out a new, alternative provider, combined with the trust people already have in mobile brands like Verizon and T-Mobile, are forcing traditional ISPs into a defensive position. This competitive environment will be a win for consumers. We anticipate this will drive internet prices down and quality up while all providers focus on delivering the most reliable home internet service for the best value in order to attract and retain customers.”

The findings are part of the new Horowitz “State of Media, Entertainment, and Tech: Disruptions 2023” study, which looks at consumer attitudes towards and adoption of disruptive technologies, including 5G wireless home internet.

It found that 5G wireless home internet has become available in more and more markets across the United States in the past two years and that awareness of the technology is growing. 

One in four (23%) consumers surveyed who do not have the service say they “know a lot” about it, with awareness highest among younger and urban consumers.

Moreover, satisfaction with 5G wireless home internet is high, Horowitz found. 

The Horowitz study finds that about 2 in 3 subscribers (67%) of the service – offered by mobile providers such as T-Mobile and Verizon in their 5G coverage areas – say that their Wi-Fi covers all the areas of their homes better than traditional broadband. In comparison, less than 1 in 10 (7%) consumers with 5G agree that traditional broadband is better, while an additional 2 in 10 feel that 5G service is about the same as broadband. It also gets higher ratings than traditional ISPs for “value for the money.”

Though penetration of 5G wireless home internet across the United States overall is low — at 3%, according to the Horowitz study — penetration is much higher in markets where the service is actually available. 

As mobile providers expand their 5G home internet coverage areas, the study also found that consumers are bullish about these services. Half (49%) of TV content viewers surveyed by Horowitz Research who do not have 5G wireless home internet service say that they are likely or very likely to consider subscribing when it becomes available in their area.

The full State of Media, Entertainment, and Tech: Disruptions 2023 report tracks the evolving market for new and potentially disruptive technologies that could be game-changers, including over-the-air (OTA) antennas, wireless 5G home internet services, and piracy and password sharing. The survey was conducted in September 2023 among 1531 adults 18+ who have a role in decisions regarding TV and internet services in the home. Data have been weighed to ensure results are representative of the overall U.S. population. The report is available in total in FOCUS Latinx, FOCUS Black, and FOCUS Asian editions.

For more information about the State of Media, Entertainment, and Tech: Disruptions 2023 report, is available here. 

DURHAM, N.H.—Leichtman Research Group has released new data that shows record growth in the number of subscribers to fixed wireless broadband services, further strengthening the competitive position of wireless carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon in the broadband market. 

LRG found that the largest cable and wireline phone providers and fixed wireless services in the U.S. – representing about 96% of the market – acquired about 950,000 net additional broadband Internet subscribers in 3Q 2023, compared to a pro forma gain of about 865,000 subscribers in 3Q 2022.

Almost all of that growth, however, went to T-Mobile's and Verizon’s fixed wireless services. 

Fixed wireless/5G home Internet services from T-Mobile and Verizon added about 940,000 subscribers in 3Q 2023 – compared to 920,000 net adds in 3Q 2022. 

In sharp contrast, the top cable companies added about 5,000 subscribers in 3Q 2023 – compared to a gain of about 45,000 in 3Q 2022 and the top wireline phone companies added about 5,000 total broadband subscribers in 3Q 2023 – compared to about 100,000 net losses in 3Q 2022.

Wireline telcos had about 525,000 net adds via fiber in 3Q 2023, and about 520,000 non-fiber net losses.

“Top broadband providers added about 950,000 subscribers in 3Q 2023, largely attributable to the most quarterly net adds ever for fixed wireless services,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.  “Over the past year, fixed wireless services have accounted for 101% of the approximately 3,625,000 net broadband additions.”

Overall, the country’s top broadband providers now account for 113.9 million subscribers, with top cable companies having about 76.2 million broadband subscribers, top wireline phone companies having about 30.7 million subscribers, and top fixed wireless services having about 6.9 million subscribers.

The top broadband providers at the end of Q3, 2023 include Comcast (32,287,000 subs, down 18,000 in Q3); Charter (30,649,000 up 63,000); AT&T (15,296,000 wireless subs, down 8,000); Verizon (7,612,000 wireline subs, up 50,000). T–Mobile’s fixed wireless service had 4,235,000 (up 557,000 in Q3) and Verizon has 2,679,000 fixed wireless subs (up 384,000.)

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has announced that it has expanded its 5G network in Utah to the point where it now provides wireless coverage across a whopping 85,000 square miles in the state where nearly 99% of Utah residents live. 

Since 2021, T-Mobile said it has added more than 192 new cell towers and upgraded more than 621 existing ones to expand 5G coverage to more people in rural areas. The carrier also reported that it is planning more new installations and upgrades to existing towers throughout this year and 2024 to further boost capacity and data speeds.

“Utahns are experiencing faster 5G speeds and better 5G coverage with the Un-carrier, thanks to collaborative partnerships with local and state agencies and entities,” said Darryl Hawkins, senior vice president, field engineering at T-Mobile. “Our recent 5G network expansion across the state exemplifies our unwavering commitment to elevate wireless capabilities for individuals, families and businesses, underscoring our dedication to enhancing the overall customer experience.”

Some of the counties in Utah with expanded coverage and capacity include:

• Beaver
• Box Elder
• Cache
• Carbon
• Daggett
• Davis
• Duchesne
• Emery
• Garfield
• Iron
• Juab
• Kane
• Millard
• Morgan
• Rich
• Salt Lake
• Sanpete
• Sevier
• Summit
• Tooele
• Uintah
• Utah
• Wasatch
• Washington
• Wayne
• Weber

T-Mobile also noted that nearly 1 in 5 Utahns have only two or less choices for home broadband and that its network expansion is providing Utah residents greater access high-speed broadband via the T-Mobile 5G Home Internet service. 

Today, 5G Home Internet from T-Mobile is available to 650,000 households across the state. 

Utah residents can learn more and check eligibility at www.t-mobile.com/home-internet, and Utah businesses can learn more about T-Mobile Business Internet by visiting www.t-mobile.com/business-internet. 

As carriers race to expand the reach of their 5G offerings, T-Mobile has announced it has achieved its 2023-year-end goal of covering 300 million people in the U.S. with Ultra Capacity 5G (5G UC) months ahead of schedule. 

With additional network enhancements made, T-Mobile’s overall 5G footprint has expanded as well. It now covers more than 330 million people or 98% of the population.

The expansion is important for consumers seeking higher capacity mobile networks as well as news operations and other video producers who can now rely on faster 5G networks. 

It also puts more pressure on cable operators to increase their broadband speeds to better compete against 5G networks. 

“We have been leaders in the 5G era from the start, deploying the largest, fastest, most awarded and most advanced 5G network in the country faster than anyone else,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, president of technology at T-Mobile. “While the other guys are playing catch-up, finally beginning to build out their mid-band 5G networks, we are maintaining our lead and will continue offering customers the best network – paired with the best value – for years to come.”

T-Mobile holds a lead in 5G coverage and speed thanks to a strategy set in motion years ago, the carrier said.

While other U.S. operators focused on millimeter wave technologies at the beginning of the 5G era, the Un-carrier set its sights on a multi-band spectrum strategy using low-band 5G to blanket the country and mid-band 5G (Ultra Capacity) to bring insanely fast speeds to nearly everyone. 

T-Mobile claims that currently its Ultra Capacity 5G covers more square miles than the mid-band 5G networks of the other guys combined. 

Ookla has released a new report on Q3 2023 mobile speeds in the U.S. that shows T-Mobile leading the list with average download speeds of 163.59Mbps. 

But the new Ookla data also shows that the U.S. mobile data speeds remain relatively sluggish by global standards. Overall, Ookla ranked the U.S. 15th in mobile download speeds at 97.09 Mbps, 15th in upload average speeds at 9.01 Mbps and 15th in average latency at 31 ms. 

In the U.S. T-Mobile was the fastest mobile operator with a median download speed of 163.59 Mbps followed by Verizon at 75.68 Mbps. T-Mobile also had the fastest median 5G download speed at 221.57 Mbps, as well as the lowest 5G multi-server latency of 50 ms. 

In measuring the Consistency of each operator’s performance, Ookla found that T-Mobile had the highest Consistency in the U.S. during Q3 2023, with 85.2% of results showing at least 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds. Verizon Wireless and AT&T followed at 80.8% and 78.4%, respectively.

In terms of the performance of video on their networks, Ookla reported that T-Mobile had the highest Video Score in the U.S. at 74.82 during Q3 2023. Verizon Wireless was a close second at 71.59 and AT&T was third at 69.54.

More information, including data on specific cities and regions, is available here.  

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has become the first U.S. carrier to offer four-carrier aggregation of spectrum to provide much faster 5G speeds to consumers. 

While the launch is targeted to consumers and top speeds are currently only available to users of the Samsung Galaxy S23, the service is expected to spread to more devices, making the offering potentially important for news organizations, professional videographers and others needing fast connections for ENG and live streaming. 

T-Mobile said that four carrier aggregation can deliver speeds up to 3.3 Gbps. The speeds went live on July 25 in part of its network and are expected to be available nationwide in the coming weeks.

“T-Mobile is blazing the trail for wireless customers around the globe, delivering new capabilities that unleash the true potential of 5G,” said Ulf Ewaldsson, president of Technology at T-Mobile. “With the only nationwide 5G standalone network in the country, T-Mobile is the only provider bringing game-changing technologies like four-carrier aggregation to customers across the country.”

5G carrier aggregation allows T-Mobile to combine multiple 5G channels (or carriers) to deliver greater speed and performance. The carrier is now merging four 5G channels of sub-6 GHz spectrum – two channels of 2.5 GHz Ultra Capacity 5G, one channel of 1900 MHz and one channel of 600 MHz spectrum. 

T-Mobile said that’s “like taking four separate highways and turning them into a massive superhighway where traffic can zoom faster than before. Customers with the Samsung Galaxy S23 will be the first to experience four-carrier aggregation with more devices to follow.”

More information on T-Mobile’s network is available here.  

PRINCETON, N.J.—The sixth-largest U.S. cable provider Astound Broadband has announced plans to launch a Astound Mobile service that will be built on T-Mobile’s 5G network. 

Astound will make its mobile offering available to customers in approximately 4 million homes currently passed by the company across 12 states.

The service will be initially available in June to Astound home internet customers who are eligible residents in Massachusetts and Corpus Christi, Midland-Odessa, Temple, and Waco Texas. 

The company plans to continue to launch Astound Mobile in its remaining markets by the end of the year.

“Astound’s entrance into the wireless market comes at a time when the need for fast, reliable, high-value broadband and mobile services is at an all-time high and more critical than ever,” said Jim Holanda, Astound CEO. “Through our relationship with T-Mobile, we’ll bring exceptional choice, value and savings, and competitive, award-winning services that customers need to stay connected to their world.”

“By choosing the T-Mobile nationwide network, Astound will further their commitment by creating custom applications that benefit their customers beyond their home or business on T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network,” said Dan Thygesen, senior vice president of t-mobile wholesale and head of T-Mobile’s growing wholesale business.

Astound’s mobile product will leverage T-Mobile’s 5G network and will offer a variety of plans bundled with Astound’s internet service. 

The operator said it will offer two “pay by the gig” plans and two unlimited talk and text plans. 

For more information, visit astound.com/mobile. 

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile and Google Cloud have announced that they will be working together to develop advanced 5G network solutions that combine the power of 5G networks and edge compute technologies. 

As part of the effort, T-Mobile will connect its 5G ANS suite of public, private and hybrid 5G networks with Google Distributed Cloud Edge (GDC Edge) to help customers deploy next-generation 5G applications and use cases in such areas as AR/VR. 

The partnership comes at a time when the global edge compute market size is expected to grow by 37.9% to $155.9 billion in 2030 and more companies are focusing on edge computing, which offers lower latency for such services as streaming, online gaming, AR and VR, the two companies reported. 

As part of the agreement, GDC Edge customers across industries will be able to leverage T-Mobile’s 5G ANS easily to get the low latency, high speeds, and reliability they will need for any use case that requires data-intensive computing processes such as AR or computer vision, the companies reported. 

To demonstrate the promise of 5G ANS and GDC Edge in a retail setting, T-Mobile created a proof of concept at T-Mobile’s Tech Experience 5G Hub called the “magic mirror” with the support of Google Cloud. This interactive display leverages cloud-based processing and image rendering at the edge to make retail products “magically” come to life. Users simply hold a product in front of the mirror to make interactive videos or product details — such as ingredients or instructions — appear onscreen in near real-time.

“We’ve built the largest and fastest 5G network in the country. This partnership brings together the powerful combination of 5G and edge computing to unlock the expansion of technologies such as AR and VR from limited applications to large-scale adoption,” said Mishka Dehghan, senior vice president, strategy, product, and solutions engineering, T-Mobile Business Group. “From providing a shopping experience in a virtual reality environment to improving safety through connected sensors or computer vision technologies, T-Mobile’s 5G ANS combined with Google Cloud’s innovative edge compute technology can bring the connected world to businesses across the country."

“Google Cloud is committed to helping telecommunication companies accelerate their growth, competitiveness, and digital journeys,” said Amol Phadke, general manager, global telecom industry, Google Cloud. “Google Distributed Cloud Edge and T-Mobile's 5G ANS will help businesses deliver more value to their customers by unlocking new capabilities through 5G and edge technologies.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The FCC has approved Dish’s request to conduct a 5G test in Yuma, Ariz. 

The 5G testing in Yuma will utilize the 3GPP band n26 in frequency range 817-824/862-869 MHz and use spectrum owned by T-Mobile. 

Dish has been building a 5G network and has rights to buy the spectrum from T-Mobile but has not laid out what, if anything, it would do with the spectrum.  

Dish has until September to buy the spectrum for $3.59 billion and could be forced to pay T-Mobile $72 million and the U.S. government $360 million if it decides not to purchase the low-band spectrum. 

BARCELONA, Spain—In what T-Mobile is calling a world-first at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the carrier has announced the successful completion of a four-carrier aggregation data call on its 5G Standalone Network with a commercial device. The test combined four channels of mid-band spectrum to hit peak speeds topping 3.3 Gbps.

The successful tests and the deployment of these technologies more widely in the future is an important development for media companies seeking to deliver live news, sports and other content over 5G networks. 

They also have important implications for the rollout of NextGen TV broadcasts. Ultimately, the rollout of 5G broadcasting services built on these infrastructures could radically change the media landscape, providing both competition and potential partners for broadcasters looking to rollout datacasting services using ATSC 3.0.

In this test, T-Mobile aggregated four channels of mid-band spectrum on its 5G standalone (5G SA) network using the Samsung Galaxy S23 device, working with Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Samsung. 

Carriers see 5G SA as the future of wireless, delivering a whole new level of performance – faster speeds and lower latency (improved response times). 

In a keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, T-Mobile’s president of Technology Neville Ray explained T-Mobile’s plans to take its nationwide 5G SA network — the only in the U.S. — to the next level. 

In addition to discussing the four-carrier aggregation data call, Ray also announced that the carrier had deployed VoNR service in four additional cities and plans to cover 100 million people with VoNR in the coming months.

“We are working with industry leaders around the globe to move the 5G ecosystem forward for the benefit of wireless customers everywhere,” said Ray. “With the most advanced 5G network in the world, T-Mobile is at the forefront of wireless innovation, spearheading new capabilities so we can continue raising the performance bar and enable future transformative applications that require a seamless and robust 5G connection.”

5G carrier aggregation allows T-Mobile to combine multiple 5G channels (or carriers) to deliver greater speed and performance. In this test, the T-Mobile merged four 5G channels of mid-band spectrum – two channels of 2.5 GHz Ultra Capacity 5G and two channels of 1900 MHz spectrum – creating an effective 225 MHz 5G channel. 

That’s like taking four separate highways and turning them into a massive superhighway where traffic can zoom faster than before, the company said. 

Customers with the Samsung Galaxy S23 will be among the first to experience four-carrier aggregation later this year with more devices to follow, T-Mobile said. 

With VoNR, T-Mobile is moving voice traffic to 5G so customers stay consistently connected to 5G. In the near-term, customers connected to VoNR may notice slightly faster call set-up times, meaning less delay between the time they dial a number and when the phone starts ringing. 

Most importantly, VoNR brings T-Mobile one step closer to additional improvements to its 5G SA network because VoNR enables advanced capabilities like network slicing that rely on a continuous connection to a 5G core. 

Today VoNR is now live in six cities – Cincinnati, New Orleans, New York, Portland Ore., Salt Lake City and Seattle. In the next few months, T-Mobile said it will expand this technology to additional cities covering more than 100 million people in the coming months.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has announced that it will be giving customers free access for one year to the MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV app. 

MLS Season Pass ($99 annual value) features every live regular-season match, all MLS Cup playoff matches, and the Leagues Cup – all with no blackouts. It will be available for free to all T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile customers beginning Feb. 21 in the T-Mobile Tuesdays app.

“T-Mobile customers already get unbeatable value with entertainment benefits like Apple TV+ on Us and now we’re giving them yet another with one year of MLS Season Pass on the Apple TV app on Us,” said Mike Katz, president of marketing, innovation and experience at T-Mobile. “With the Un-carrier, you don’t just get access to the nation’s leading 5G network, you also get some serious value with so much included on top of your wireless plan.”

To access, T-Mobile customers need to download the app and sign in with their phone number. 

For more information about MLS Season Pass, visit here.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has announced that it has expanded its 5G coverage and capacity to reach 323 million people with Extended Range 5G and 260 million people with Ultra Capacity 5G. 

The expansion means that T-Mobile reached its mid-band 5G year-end goal weeks ahead of schedule and moves the telco closer to its target of covering 300 million people with Ultra Capacity 5G by the end of 2023. 

In addition the carrier announced that it has added a massive boost to its Ultra capacity 5G network with a new nationwide layer of mid-band 5G spectrum at 1900 MHz that will improve speeds and reliability. 

The expansion and improvement of the 5G network is notable in that it will provide more competition to cable operators who have been responding with rollouts of 10G and DOCSIS 4.0 technologies capable of delivering multi-gigabit speeds. 

The expansion of 5G networks is also important for broadcasters in that it will provide wider availability of the faster 5G connections for newsgathering and other operations. 

“We’re rapidly executing on our vision to deliver the highest capacity network this country has ever seen,” said Neville Ray, president of technology at T-Mobile. “We’ve led in 5G coverage from the beginning, delivering a massive 5G footprint that continues to grow. And with Ultra Capacity 5G, it’s undeniable that T-Mobile customers have access to the most powerful 5G network around.”

DURHAM, N.H.—Broadband internet subscription growth was fairly flat for Q3 2022 as churn kept numbers down, however new fixed wireless services now on the market are helping to stem the bleeding, according to a new report from Leichtman Research Group.

LRG found that the largest cable and wireline phone providers and fixed wireless services in the U.S.—representing about 96% of the market—acquired about 825,000 net additional broadband Internet subscribers in 3Q 2022, similar to a pro forma gain of about 820,000 subscribers in 3Q 2021.  These top broadband providers account for about 110.8 million subscribers, with top cable companies having about 75.6 million broadband subscribers, top wireline phone companies having over 32 million subscribers, and top fixed wireless services having about 3.2 million subscribers.

Overall, LRG reports that broadband additions doubled in 3Q 2022, compared to 3Q 2021, with top cable companies adding about 40,000 subscribers in 3Q 2022—compared to about 590,000 net adds in 3Q 2021. The top wireline phone companies lost about 135,000 total broadband subscribers in 3Q 2022—compared to about 40,000 net adds in 3Q 2021 and wireline telcos had about 550,000 net adds via fiber in 3Q 2022, and about 685,000 non-fiber net losses.

As expected, the growth of fixed wireless/5G home internet services from T-Mobile and Verizon helped keep numbers up, as both companies more than tripled their subscriber count, adding about 920,000 subscribers in 3Q 2022, compared to about 190,000 net adds in 3Q 2021, LRG said.

“Top broadband providers added about 825,000 subscribers in 3Q 2022, including 920,000 net adds for fixed wireless services, along with a minor gain for cable, and net losses for wireline phone providers,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.  “Over the past year, fixed wireless services have accounted for nearly 80% of the approximately 3,260,000 net broadband additions.”

BELLEVUE, Wash.—In a move that will create more competition for cable operators and telcos, T-Mobile has announced a notable expansion of its 5G Home Internet service across 70 cities and towns in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. 

With this expansion, more than 6 million homes throughout these states, and more than 40 million homes nationwide, are now eligible for T-Mobile Home Internet, T-Mobile reported. 

Increased competition from wireless 5G internet services has already pushed some operators to roll out fiber-to-the home service or DOCSIS 3.0 infrastructures capable of delivering Gigabit speeds. 

“Access to high-speed internet should be a given, yet millions of people across the country still have little to no choice when it comes to their home broadband. As reliance on internet access has skyrocketed in recent years, many ISPs have continued to underserve customers – year after year,” said Mike Katz, chief marketing officer at T-Mobile. “Today, T-Mobile is taking another step to close the Digital Divide and increase access, bringing our Home Internet service to millions more homes across the Midwest.”

In announcing the expansion, T-Mobile noted that in Michigan, 1.2 million residents – or 1 in 4 statewide – lack a permanent fixed broadband connection. In Wisconsin, it’s even worse. 1.3 million households lack access or can't afford broadband internet service. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Federal Communications Commission has announced the winning bidders in the 2.5 GHz band auction with T-Mobile being by far the largest bidder, spending $304 million for 7,154 licenses. 

T-Mobile was expected to be particularly active in the auction because it already owns or leases much of the 2.5 GHz spectrum across the United States, and it wanted to fill in the gaps in its coverage.

In all, 7,872 of the 8,017 county-based licenses, or 98% of the total inventory, were sold during the Auction 108. There are 63 winning bidders in Auction 108, which raised gross proceeds exceeding $427 million.

Most of the available spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band being auctioned was located in rural areas and the FCC hopes that the sales will help improve wireless services in rural communities.

The FCC said the five bidders with the largest total gross winning bid amounts were:

• T-Mobile License LLC: $304,325,290
• PTI Pacifica Inc.: $17,690,000
• TeleGuam Holdings, LLC: $16,565,000
• Evergy Kansas Central: $12,744,400
• Cellular South Licenses, LLC: $11,861,300

 The five bidders winning the largest number of licenses were: 

• Empty list 
• T-Mobile License LLC: 7,156
• North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation: 107
• Evergy Kansas Central: 54
• LICT Wireless Broadband Company, LLC: 46
• Broadband One of the Midwest, Inc.: 42

BELLEVUE, Wash.—The ongoing expansion of 5G home broadband services continues with T-Mobile announcing that it has expanded the footprint of its 5G Home Internet in 32 California towns, making the product available to over six million homes throughout the state.

The move is creating more competition for traditional broadband services from cable companies and telcos and expanding the availability of broadband services in underserved areas. 

“Broadband customers are stuck – millions of families across the country still have little to no choice when it comes to home internet. For decades, customers have been stuck with terrible customer service, price hikes and surprise fees from their internet providers,” said Mike Katz, CMO at T-Mobile. “Today, we’re taking another step to change that, increasing access to T-Mobile Home Internet throughout California. With the Un-carrier, residents across the Golden State can get reliable, affordable home broadband without all the traditional ISP BS. That’s why more than a million customers nationwide have already switched to T-Mobile Home Internet.”

T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet is priced at $50 a month with AutoPay or $30 per month for families with Magenta MAX, T-Mobile’s most popular phone plan. 

The areas where the service has been expanded in California are: 

• Bakersfield
• Chico
• Clearlake
• Crescent City
• El Centro
• Fresno
• Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim
• Madera
• Merced
• Modesto
• Napa
• Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura
• Red Bluff
• Redding
• Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario
• Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom
• Salinas
• San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad
• San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley
• San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara
• San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles
• Santa Cruz-Watsonville
• Santa Maria-Santa Barbara
• Santa Rosa-Petaluma
• Sonora
• Stockton
• Susanville
• Truckee-Grass Valley
• Ukiah
• Vallejo
• Visalia
• Yuba City

WASHINGTON—The FCC this week introduced new regulations designed to improve the reliability and resiliency of mobile wireless networks during times of disasters and other emergencies. Spurred on by recent events in the past year such as Hurricane Ida, the earthquakes in Puerto Rico and winter storms in Texas and the ongoing wildfires in the West, the new rules leverage the industry-developed Wireless Network Resiliency Cooperative Framework as a starting point for introducing the commission’s "Mandatory Disaster Response Initiative". 

The commission’s actions effectively codify the Framework’s five substantive provisions as mandatory, extends the reach of the provisions to all facilities-based mobile wireless providers, expands the real-world criteria that trigger activation of the MDRI and introduces new provisions requiring providers to test their roaming capabilities and report on the performance of their implementation of the MDRI to the commission after disaster events. 

“The action we take today breaks new ground in ways that will further improve the resiliency of our communications networks in response to the record received on the Resilient Networks Notice and in light of the need to achieve near-term benefits in anticipation of future disaster events,” the FCC said in its Report and Order. “At the same time, much remains to be done to ensure that our communications networks achieve their full potential as critical lifelines for those in need during times of emergency.” 

When the Framework—which is a voluntary agreement among the nation’s largest wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile—was announced in 2016, the FCC endorsed the move in lieu of a mandatory regulatory regime at the time. It commits its participants to a five-pronged approach to enhance coordination during an emergency by:

• Providing for reasonable roaming under disaster arrangements (RuDs) when technically feasible;
• Fostering mutual aid among wireless providers during emergencies;
• Enhancing municipal preparedness and restoration by convening with local government public safety representatives to develop best practices, and establishing a provider/PSAP contact database;
• Increasing consumer readiness and preparation through development and dissemination with consumer groups of a Consumer Readiness Checklist; and
• Improving public awareness and stakeholder communications on service and restoration status, through Commission posting of data on cell site outages on an aggregated, county-by-county basis in the relevant area through its Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS).

This week’s announcement extends the Framework to all mobile wireless providers and rejects suggestions that smaller facilities be exempted. “We recognize the merits of the current Framework and agree with the commenters who argue that its provisions would be more effective if they were expanded to include entities beyond the Framework’s current signatories,” the FCC said. “We reject the views of the CCA and NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association (NTCA) that smaller providers should be excepted from today’s rules because they need to prioritize work on their own networks or lack the resources required for compliance in the midst of emergencies.  We find that, as a practical matter, such concerns can be mitigated.”

The new rules will also require each facilities-based mobile wireless provider to enter into bilateral roaming agreements with all other facilities-based mobile wireless providers from which it may expect to request roaming privileges and that such agreements be executed and in place no later than the compliance date for the MDRI.

“This advance planning will allow, for example, time for the providers subject to the agreement to undertake initial testing and confirm that the roaming functionality works as intended and/or take remediation steps to address technical issues prior to the actual onset of a disaster or emergency event, as well as to swiftly implement roaming when the MDRI is triggered,” the commission said.

The commission also agreed with NCTA and Verizon for the need for continuous testing to ensure disaster preparedness, including testing of bilateral roaming capabilities.  “We find that bilateral testing will ensure that providers spend time optimizing, debugging and diagnosing their networks well in advance of emergencies, ensuring that these networks roam as effectively as possible when a disaster strikes, ultimately saving lives and property,” the commission said.

In determining when the MDRI is to be triggered during an emergency, the FCC acknowledged the Public Safety and Homeland Security’s role in responding to state requests. 

“We find that the public interest supports a rule that the MDRI is triggered when either ESF-2 or DIRS is activated, or when the Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau announces that the MDRI is activated in response to a request received from a state in conjunction with the state activating its Emergency Operations Center, activating mutual aid, or proclaiming a local state of emergency,” the FCC said. “As such, we delegate to the Chief, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau the authority to issue a public notice effectuating the MDRI under these circumstances, and to prescribe any mechanisms for receiving such a request.” 

In terms of the financial burdens on mobile wireless carriers, the commission noted that many of the costs associated with upgrading facilities have already been undertaken and in the end, will be worth it. “We find that the incremental costs to the nation’s facilities-based mobile wireless providers for codifying the Framework in today’s MDRI rules will be minimal in many cases and, even when significant, will be far outweighed by nationwide benefits,” the commission said.  

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has announced that it will begin offering its first-ever T-Mobile 5G Hotspot device on June 16. 

The portable lightweight device is designed to provide access to the carrier’s 5G network on the go. It taps into T-Mobile’s Extended Range 5G signal for broad nationwide coverage and Ultra Capacity 5G for super-fast speeds in hundreds of cities.

The launch comes at a time when cable companies and telcos are facing increased competition in the broadband sector from wireless 5G providers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.  

The Leichtman Research Group found that fixed wireless/5G home internet providers like T-Mobile and Verizon added about 530,000 subscribers in Q1, 2022. That represents nearly a five-fold increase compared to 110,000 net adds in 1Q 2021.  

The 5G Hotspot allows users to connect up to 32 devices for simultaneous connectivity. 

New and existing T-Mobile customers can pick it up for free with 24 monthly bill credits when adding a line on an eligible 50GB or 100GB Mobile Internet (MI) plan or for $99 when adding a line on an eligible 5GB MI plan, the telco explained. 

T-Mobile customers – including T-Mobile for Business customers – can also pick up the T-Mobile 5G Hotspot for $8.25/month ($0 down with a full retail price of $198) for 24 months on T-Mobile’s no-interest Equipment Installment Plan.

DURHAM, NH—Consumers who want to literally cut the final cord from their cable providers are accelerating their adoption of fixed wireless home internet services from telco competitors like T-Mobile and Verizon, according to a new report from Leichtman Research Group.

Although the latest report shows that the largest cable and wireline phone providers and fixed wireless services in the U.S.—representing about 96% of the market—logged a healthy gain of 1,065,000 net additional broadband Internet subscribers in 1Q 2022—a pro forma gain of about 1,120,000 subscribers in 1Q 2021—that number included an increase of 530,000 subscribers of fixed wireless/5G home Internet services from T-Mobile and Verizon, a nearly five-fold increase compared to 110,000 net adds in 1Q 2021.  

The top broadband providers account for about 109.3 million subscribers, with top cable companies having about 75.6 million broadband subscribers, top wireline phone companies having about 32.3 million subscribers, and top fixed wireless services having about 1.4 million subscribers.

Findings for the quarter include:

• Overall, broadband additions in 1Q 2022 were 95% of those in 1Q 2021
• The top cable companies added about 480,000 subscribers in 1Q 2022, 52% of the net additions for the top cable companies in 1Q 2021
• The top wireline phone companies added about 50,000 total broadband subscribers in 1Q 2022, compared to about 80,000 net adds in 1Q 2021—Wireline Telcos had about 480,000 net adds via fiber in 1Q 2022, and about 430,000 non-fiber net losses

Despite the increase in "cord-cutting," the very definition of the term is relative since most consumers are just dropping their TV subscriptions, but keeping their broadband services with the same pay-TV provider. The increasing adoption of using wireless 5G services to replace traditional wired broadband internet, however, is rapidly changing the face of how consumers access the internet, according to the research firm. 

“Top broadband providers added over one million subscribers in 1Q 2022, similar to last year’s first quarter, but the distribution of net broadband additions differed from a year ago,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc.  “Fixed wireless services accounted for half of the net broadband adds in 1Q 2022, compared to about 10% of the net adds in 1Q 2021.”

NEW YORK & WASHINGTON D.C.—Altice USA and T-Mobile have expanded a multi-year MVNO agreement through which T-Mobile will continue to serve as the nationwide network for Altice USA’s Optimum Mobile service.

The agreement comes at a time when mobile and broadband offerings and bundles have become increasingly important to cable operators. 

“As we continue to grow and evolve our Optimum Mobile service, we are pleased to reach a new agreement with T-Mobile that ensures our mobile customers will continue to benefit from T-Mobile’s nationwide network,” said Matt Marino, executive vice president of consumer services for Altice USA. “In addition to access to America’s largest 5G network, the agreement enables Optimum Mobile to provide more flexibility and value to our customers and, when coupled with our Optimum and Suddenlink broadband service, deliver a 360-degree seamless connectivity experience at home and on the go.” 

"We are excited to extend and expand our Altice USA partnership on the T-Mobile network with fast and reliable service to Altice USA’s Optimum Mobile subscribers,” said Daniel Thygesen, senior vice president of T-Mobile Wholesale. “By leveraging T-Mobile’s unparalleled network and platforms to serve Optimum Mobile subscribers, Altice USA remains the premier one-stop-shop for bundled mobile and broadband services for its subscribers."

Optimum Mobile offers three data plans – 1 GB, 3 GB, and Unlimited GB – all with unlimited talk and text and delivered over the T-Mobile network.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile’s TVision is on its way out, as the mobile provider has announced that it is set to shutter its six-month-old pay-TV streaming service and replace it with new partnerships with YouTube TV and Philo.

The TVision service offered two different packages, TVision Live and Vibe. Vibe was a $10/month entertainment-only package, while Live was a more expensive, more traditional bundle of channels. T-Mobile will stop providing these services as of April 29.

Instead of offering its own TVision Live and Vibe packages, T-Mobile is making YouTube TV its premium live TV service—announcing a multi-year partnership with Google, YouTube TV’s parent company—while Philo will serve as its base live TV service. The services will be available on the TVision Hub streaming device T-Mobile provided customers.

“With our TV software provider encountering some financial challenges and with our broader, strategic partnerships with Google and Philo, we saw an opportunity to deliver unique value to our customers and strengthen the TVision initiative with the best partners,” wrote Mike Sievert, T-Mobile CEO, in a blog post.

The financial problems that Sievert mentioned refers to MobiTV, which provided the software on which TVision was based. MobiTV filed for bankruptcy in early March. T-Mobile is providing MobiTV $15.5 billion in bailout money.

Now, T-Mobile is offering deals for its TVision customers to switch over to either YouTube TV or Philo. Both TVision Live and Vibe customers can get $10 off YouTube TV ($54.99) and/or Philo ($10) every month. In addition, TVision Live customers can get a free month of YouTube TV to start and three free months of YouTube Premium. TVision Vibe customers can get a free month of Philo.

“Our experience has shown us consumers need an advocate in this space,” Sievert wrote. “They don’t want more streaming services—they want help buying and navigating these services that already exist.”

For more information, visit T-Mobile’s blog. 

Recently I got a call from Bob Gonsett concerning interference he started receiving on a TV set at his outpost in Fallbrook, Calif. Broadcast engineers in southern California know Bob and his engineering work at his firm Communications General Corp. He has been active in Southern California broadcasting for as long as I can remember, beginning with services such as the FCC-required frequency measurements for analog TV stations, as well as providing engineering for AM, FM and TV broadcast stations in the area.

While the FCC no longer specifies frequency tolerances for DTV stations—they simply have to stay within their channel and meet FCC emission mask requirements—many stations still use Bob to keep an eye on their frequency and also look out for potential interference from new co-channel stations.

Using a spectrum analyzer, Bob was able to trace the interference to a 600 MHz LTE signal. He expects this will become more of a problem for over-the-air TV viewers as wireless carriers build out small-cell distributed antenna systems that place the base station antennas very close to viewers’ homes.

He solved the problem in his house by building a simple quarter wave stub filter. With a quarter wavelength of coaxial cable, the impedance at one end is inverted at the other end. If one end is left open, the other end will present a short at the quarter wave frequency, acting as a notch filter.

I found a website that calculates the length for different types of coaxial cable (the velocity factor will affect the length) that makes it easy to design a quarter wave filter. Fig. 1 shows a picture of the filter from arcticpeak.com. A search on “quarter wave stub filter” will bring up other options. If the length of the stub becomes too short to easily work with, odd multiples of the length will also work, but there will also be a notch at a lower frequency—one-third the frequency for a three quarter wave stub, which could impact VHF Channel 12 or 13.

USING A FILTER

The majority of the licenses in the 600 MHz band belong to T-Mobile, which is moving quickly to build out its 600 MHz spectrum for 5G now that TV stations have vacated the band. The base stations transmit in the 617–652 MHz downlink band and receive signals from consumer devices transmitting in the 663–698 MHz uplink band. With the spectrum licensed in 5 MHz blocks, a quarter wave stub filter may be sufficient to notch out one 5 MHz block, but as more blocks are used, a more complicated filter will be needed.

I used an RTL-SDR and the Linux qspectrumanalyzer software to look at the 598–640 MHz spectrum at my rural location in Hawaii. The only TV station I can receive here is on Channel 36. Fig. 2 shows the spectrum, with surprising strong signals in the 600 MHz downlink band. Note the analyzer was hooked up to my vertically polarized discone antenna (with no preamplifier) so the Channel 36 signal, which is horizontally polarized, is not as strong as it is on my TV antenna with an LNA.

I’ve written before about using Channel Master’s LTE filter to block LTE signals above 698 MHz. They now offer a filter for 600 MHz interference.. Look at the spectrum plots on the web page and at the frequency range specified in the markings on the filter on the Channel Master store page (Fig. 3).

The upper pass frequency is shown as 599 MHz and the rejection starts at 600 MHz. DTV Channel 36 starts at 602 MHz, which would indicate this filter will not work in areas with a Channel 36 (like KNBC in Los Angeles) and reception may be compromised on Channel 35 stations (596–602 MHz) like WNBC in New York.

Channel Master’s technical specifications for the filter show “Frequencies Pass” as 5–609 MHz and “Frequencies Block” as 610–2,000 MHz. If this is the case, it should work fine. Since the LTE downlink band doesn’t start until 617 MHz, there is no need to have the filter reject frequencies in Channel 36.

I wanted to order one of the Channel Master filters to test the actual frequency response but Channel Master will not ship to a post office box and I wasn’t willing to spend the almost $60 they wanted for a $19 filter shipped to my physical address.

An Amazon search showed several companies selling LTE filters but most only blocked signals above 700 MHz. The Antra ATF-600 5–600Mhz 4G LTE ($15.99) looks like it might work but I could not find any detailed specs. The Amazon description also has this disclaimer: “This item will NOT work if interference signal is within 0–700 MHz,” which contradicts the description above it that says: “Removes interference above 600 MHz (CH36) that are coming from Cell Towers, Cell phones or other RF sources, purifying HDTV signals.” From the photo on the Amazon listing it appears there is also an ATF-700 filter, which has a cut-off frequency at 694 MHz. I’ve ordered the Antra ATF-600 and when it arrives I’ll hook it up to my NanoVNA and plot the frequency response.

The 600 MHz LTE interference is more likely to be a problem for TV viewers using an outdoor antenna with a preamplifier. The TV tuners in most TV sets still offer the option of scanning cable TV channels, which means they will be capable of receiving signals up to 800 MHz or higher. The newer silicon tuners offer good tracking filters but are subject to overload if the interfering signal is strong enough. The preamplifier can boost the interfering signal to the point where it can overload the TV tuner. Manufacturers of TV amplifiers have recognized this and are now selling amplifiers with 600 MHz LTE filters.

Digitenna’s preamplifiers are now available with 20–30 dB attenuation above Channel 36. The filters pass up to 610 MHz so Channel 36 reception should not be affected. Before ordering Digitenna products, verify the amplifier is one with the new LTE filter. I found another amplifier from Kitz Technologies that looks interesting. The KT-700 Amplifier includes an LTE filter that starts at 620 MHz.

Channel Master’s LTE filter product page says their “Amplify” preamplifier includes an LTE filter, but the specs show a 700 MHz cutoff, which won’t help with the 600 MHz band interference if that frequency is correct. 

CORRECTION AND UPDATE

Since my last column (“Antennas: Back to the Future,” September 2020) the reader using the HD-Stacker antenna sent me some close-up photos of the feed system and some comparisons with another antenna.

He wasn’t happy with the performance of the HD-Stacker and after contacting the manufacturer and not getting a satisfactory response, decided to try the $40 Winegard Freevision FV-30BB I’d been recommending for noncritical applications. He was surprised to find that in his location it performed as well or better than the HD-Stacker.

That’s hard to believe, but a possible reason is the size of the Winegard allowed it to be mounted in a more favorable location. The feed matching and VHF/UHF combining may have hurt performance since the high-impedance VHF and UHF driven elements are simply paralleled with a section of twin-lead with no apparent attempt to match or isolate them. Replacing that “combiner wire” with a dual input LNA would likely have significantly improved the HD-Stacker’s performance.

Another reader notified me that the https://groups.io/g/NanoVNA-V2 website I mentioned as a forum for the low cost NanoVNA-V2 vector network analyzer is an impostor website. The real forum is at https://groups.io/g/NanoVNAV2. I apologize for the error. Visiting the real website I found that the NanoVNA-V2 is now available with a case (the Plus 4) and offers measurements using the fundamental frequency of the oscillator up to 4.4 GHz.

The other NanoVNA units I mentioned, including my NanoVNA-F, use harmonics for measurements above 600 MHz, limiting their dynamic range. On the NanoVNA-F, the S11 dynamic range is 40 dB and the S21 dynamic range is 60 dB for 600–1,000 MHz. The NanoVNA-V2 Plus 4 claims 70 dB system dynamic range without averaging up to 3 GHz and 80 dB range with 5x averaging.

The NanoVNA-V2 Plus 4’s 4.4 GHz upper frequency makes it ideal for testing 5G filters for the C-band repack. The cost of the NanoVNA-V2 Plus 4 is $129, competitive with the cost of the NanoVNA-F with a similar sized screen. I’ve ordered one through Tindie and hope to have it in time to review in my next column.

As always, I welcome comments and questions. Email me at dlung@transmitter.com. If I’m busy I may not respond right away and if the email gets buried too deep I might miss it. If you don’t get a response within a week or so, email me again.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has told its customers that it will end its legacy TVision Home pay TV service, effective Dec. 30.

The move comes a little over two weeks after T-Mobile launched a multi-pronged virtual MVPD platform—confusingly carrying the TVision brand—which includes the Philo-like, 30-channel, $10-a-month TVision Vibe service, and the slightly fatter TVision Live trio of tiers, starting at $40 a month for 40 channels. 

Priced at $90 a month, the more traditional fat-bundled TVision Home service was the remnants of Denver start-up Layer3 TV, which was acquired by T-Mobile in January 2018 for $325 million. 

The resulting TVision Home service provided traditional DVR set-tops with pay-TV contracts and packaging, but it delivered its goods over the managed internet through regional contracts with broadband suppliers with the necessary throughput.

As such, Layer3—and TVision—were limited to a handful of urban markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia ,San Francisco, D.C., and Longmont, Colo. 

T-Mobile had difficulty scaling such a service, much less enticing streaming-generation customers with it. 

It’s unclear as to how many folks will be impacted by the shuttering. T-Mobile never released TVision Home customer data. Layer3 said it only had around 5,000 customers when it was purchased by the wireless carrier. 

T-Mobile is currently offering its new TVision OTT services to its post-paid wireless subscribers, with reported plans to expand the offering to pre-paid and non-T-Mobile customers next year. 

The company continues to work with its programming partners, several of whom have complained about the way the platform has positioned their channels.

WASHINGTON—The FCC’s C-band auction is less than a month away, and the full list of qualified bidders has been announced. Among the 57 companies set to take part in the auction are big names like AT&T, Cox and T-Mobile.

The C-band auction, taking place on Dec. 8, will see the sale of spectrum in the lower 3.7-3.98 GHz band to be used for the development of 5G. The current occupants of the C-band, which includes satellite operators, are going to transition to the upper 200 GHz of the C-band.

To qualify for the C-band auction, the companies’ short-form applications were deemed complete and in compliance. As a result, they are now automatically registered for the auction. The FCC says that 17 applicants did not qualify to bid.

Of the 57 companies, 22 applied and were approved for rural building credits, while 18 were granted small business credits.

The full list of 57 qualifiers is available online. 

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile is set to enter the streaming market, unveiling the TVision streaming service that aims to help eliminate the cable industry and ramp up the cord-cutting trends. “With TVision, you can cut the cord, cut the cost and cut the crap,” said Dow Draper, T-Mobile executive vice president of Emerging Products.

TVision offers three services—TVision Live, VIBE and CHANNELS—all of which are scheduled to launch on Nov. 1.

TVision Live offers live news, sports, 100 hours of cloud DVR and more than 10,000 on-demand programs, per T-Mobile, at a starting price of $40/month. There are multiple tiers of TVision Live: the basic version, TVision Live TV ($40/month) offers more than 30 channels, including ABC, Fox, NBC, Turner and ESPN; TVision Live+ adds more than 10 other channels, including The NFL Network, ESPNU, SEC Network and The Golf Channel for $50/month; TVision Live Zone runs at $60/month and adds another 10-plus channels, including NFL RedZone.

TVision VIBE offers live and on-demand programming from more than 30 channels, including AMC, BET, Discovery, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, MTV and TLC for $10/month.

TVision Channels is an a-la-carte streaming service that has Starz, Showtime and Epix among its offerings, which can all be managed in the T-Mobile app or online.

Full channel lineups are available at T-Mobile.com/TVision.

All three service are available through Android and Apple mobile devices through the T-Mobile TVision app; on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV or Google TV; or on th TVision Hub, an HDMI streaming device and remote that can connect the TVision app with other streaming apps like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and others. There does not appear to be a TVision app for Roku at this time.

TVision falls in line with other vMVPD platforms like YouTube TV and fuboTV that offer as an alternative to cable while still accessing traditional broadcast options.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—The World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays may be limited to the number of fans that can actually attend the games in person, but a collaboration between T-Mobile and Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Players will use 5G technology to provide a new type of fan experience.

Using 5G-powered cameras, fans will have the ability to stream special field-level pregame coverage of batting practice on what is being called T-Mobile 5G BP. Coverage will include 5G BatterCams, first-person point of view cameras mounted on the caps of players and coaches offering real-time coverage, and 360-degree 5G field cameras.

“Through the power of T-Mobile’s 5G service, we are excited to offer fans a bird’s-eye view of what batting practice looks like from the perspective of a Major League baseball player,” said Evan Kaplan, managing director, MLB Players Inc.

The special pre-game live stream will be available before Game One of the World Series on Tuesday, Oct. 20, on the MLB app, MLB.TV, MLB.com, Twitch, @MLB on Twitter, MLB’s official page on Facebook and the MLB VR app on Oculus, as well as T-Mobile’s Beyond the Passes page. The broadcast will feature MLB Network’s Lauren Gardner and analyst Sean Casey.

“A broadcast like this has never been done before, and it offers a glimpse at how wireless connectivity is set to transform the way we watch and interact with live sporting events and more,” said Neville Ray, president of Technology at T-Mobile.

This is another example of new ways fans can access broadcast content during these MLB playoffs. Fox previously debuted customizable broadcasts for Android users during the NLCS, which will continue during the World Series.

WASHINGTON—The revelation of additional FCC documents has shined more light on the Android TV-based CPE that T-Mobile might soon be deploying for its revamped TVision pay-TV service.

An FCC filing from Chinese vendor SEI Robotics reveals that the newly revised TVision might be based on an HDMI dongle similar to the one SEI Robotics supplies to Dish Network for the satellite TV company’s AirTV Mini Android TV-powered product. 

How similar? The user manual included in the filing is for the $80 AirTV Mini (see image below).

Last week, 9to5 Google unearthed a January T-Mobile filing that revealed a new TVision-branded remote control, one that indicates that the revised service will be based on Android TV. 

T-Mobile acquired Denver-based startup pay-TV company Layer3 TV for $325 million at the beginning of 2018. With the imminent departure of T-Mobile Chief Content Officer Lindsay Gardner, Layer3 TV’s top executives have all moved on. T-Mobile rebranded the Layer3 TV service as TVision some time ago, but it has not expanded the $90-a-month, 154-channel service beyond its limited footprint of New York, L.A., Chicago and several other big cities. 

TVision’s tech platform has reportedly been revised, and T-Mobile is said to be ready to nationally deploy its revamped TVision service as part of fixed wireless 5G service when the disruption of the pandemic lifts. 

BELLEVUE, Wash.—T-Mobile has introduced a new 5G-enabled smartphone that uses the 600 MHz it acquired from broadcasters during the spectrum auction held in 2017. The company said it plans to cover 200 million consumers with 5G on 600 MHz by the end of the year.

Pricing and availability for the new limited edition OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren “superphone” will be announced later this year, the company said. T-Mobile says it has been “building toward broad 5G on 600 MHz for two years, laying a foundation with 5G-ready equipment.” The company has been so eager to get its hands on the spectrum that it incentivized some broadcasters—including Dallas’ KXAS—to vacate its spectrum early. The company spent nearly $8 billion to acquire 31 MHz of the 600 MHz spectrum during the auctions, which yielded $19 billion total to U.S. broadcasters.

T-Mobile has already obtained approval from the DOJ and FCC to merge with Sprint, but a lawsuit by 15 state Attorneys General is holding it up.

The company recently released a video showcasing where the 600 MHz channels are showing up, including Cannon Beach, Ore., Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, Jersey Shore, Pa., Kabetogama, Minn., and Roswell, N.M. 

WASHINGTON—Despite receiving two no votes from the FCC’s Democratic commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks on Wednesday, Oct. 16, the proposed T-Mobile/Sprint merger was officially approved thanks to the commission’s three Republican commissioners previously approving the merger.

The merger between the two companies has a price tag of $26 billion and also includes a negotiated deal to sell assets to Dish Network, including Boost Mobile, as part of a mandated divestiture.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, when he first signaled his approval for the merger in August, said the deal would assist with the deployment of a 5G wireless network, improve mobile broadband services and increase the 5G infrastructure across the U.S.

However, Starks disagrees. “I believe that T-Mobile and Sprint have not proven that their merger will benefit the public interest,” he said, citing that regulating or inciting penalties against the company for any violations will prove difficult and even some penalties can be tax-deductible “voluntary contributions.”

Starks isn’t the only one to make their disapproval of the merger known. Common Cause has announced that it has filed a petition to deny the merger with the FCC.

“The majority-FCC’s vote to approve the disastrous T-Mobile/Sprint merger is a vote to raise prices, reduce innovation and price out millions of low-income and marginalized communities from wireless service,” said Michael Copps, former FCC commissioner and Common Cause special advisor. “Rather than actually conduct a thorough public interest review of the merger, the majority at the FCC signaled it would approve the deal months ago pointing to promises and commitments made by T-Mobile and Sprint. But these promises and behavioral commitments are unenforceable and riddled with loopholes that do nothing to address significant harms consumers would face from the merger.

“Fortunately, more than 14 state attorney generals have filed a lawsuit to block this merger. We support their legal effort and continue to mobilize opposition against this merger, which poses a significant danger to our democracy.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is running for president, also raised her concerns over the merger and supports state attorney generals to challenge the merger.

The Justice Department has already said that it would not sue to block the deal, citing the conditions that were added to address antitrust concerns.

A new report from Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts shows that U.S. wireless carriers are throttling online video traffic “24/7,” with AT&T and T-Mobile the biggest offenders. The claims come a little more than a year after the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules—that were designed to avoid such instances—went into effect.

Based on 650,000 tests from early 2018 to early 2019, the researchers found that AT&T throttled Netflix 70% of the time and Youtube 74% of the time. AT&T left Amazon’s Prime Video alone, however. T-Mobile U.S. throttled Amazon Prime 51% of the time but left Skype alone.

“They are doing it all the time, 24/7 and it’s not based on networks being overloaded,” David Choffnes, associate professor at Northeastern University, and one of the authors of the report, told Bloomberg.

[Read more: The Battle Over Net Neutrality]

The FCC repealed net neutrality rules in December 2017. At the time, critics warned that a repeal could lead to ISPs downgrading internet speeds that could favor their own content, a concern frequently raised in the AT&T-Time Warner merger. Attorneys General in 22 states have filed a protective petition for review against the FCC in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.

AT&T denied the claims.

“We don’t throttle, discriminate or degrade network performance based on content,” said AT&T spokesman Jim Greer in a statement. “We offer customers choice, including speeds and features to manage their data.”

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a proponent of net neutrality, issued a stern warning about what could happen when the commission voted to repeal the rules in 2017.

“As a result of today’s misguided action, our broadband providers will get extraordinary new power from this agency,” Rosenworcel said at the time. “They will have the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content. They will have the right to discriminate and favor the internet traffic of those companies with whom they have pay-for-play arrangements and the right to consign all others to a slow and bumpy road.”

WASHINGTON—FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has made his official position on the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint known to his colleagues, saying in a draft Order that he would approve the merger, subject to certain conditions.

Following a comprehensive review of the proposed merger and public interest claims of T-Mobile, Sprint and third parties, the draft Order was created and is now being circulated for the FCC’s consideration.

According to the draft Order, a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint will help to accelerate the deployment of a 5G wireless network, improve the quality of mobile broadband services for consumers and increase 5G infrastructure deployment in the U.S. The improved network quality and coverage will not only benefit consumers, but the report says it will also foster innovation in different sectors and services. It is also expected to help close the digital divide for rural areas, with one of the conditions subjected in the order being that there be 5G coverage of at 99% of Americans within six years.

The draft Order also attempts to review concerns that were raised in the record regarding competitive effectiveness of the transaction, including the potential for competitive harm. The Order stipulates that as long as there is a divestiture of Boost Mobile, as well as other conditions, price-sensitive customers in densely-populated areas will not be harmed.

The Order also addresses Dish’s planned acquisition of Boost Mobile, saying that the acquisition, in connection with its planned 5G deployment, would be in the best interest of the public. Associated extensions, commitments and modifications has been delegated to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau for processing and implementation with procedures set forth in the Communications Act and the draft Order.

“After one of the most exhaustive merger reviews in Commission history, the evidence conclusively demonstrates that this transaction will bring fast 5G wireless service to many more Americans and help close the digital divide in rural areas,” said Pai. “Moreover, with the conditions included in this draft Order, the merger will promote robust competition in mobile broadband, put critical mid-band spectrum to use and bring new competition to the fixed broadband market.”

Insight TV, the world’s leading 4K UHD HDR broadcaster and producer of native UHD content, has signed a distribution deal with major telecoms operator, T-Mobile B.V. Subscribers across the Netherlands will have access to Insight TV’s thrilling and authentic HD content via T-Mobile’s popular Thuis (Home) service.

T-Mobile Thuis customers, will be able to watch Insight TV’s ground-breaking shows including: Travel With a Goat, Road to Gymkhana GRiD, King of the Hammers, THRU, Breaking Limits, DarkFEST and many more.

Robert de Lint, TV Content Manager T-Mobile Netherlands said, “We are proud to be able to add Insight HD to our T-Mobile Thuis Entertainment package: this Dutch channel with an international look-and-feel delivers original and challenging content, which fits our profile perfectly. To celebrate this introduction we offer Insight HD to all of our T-Mobile Thuis with digital television customers for free this month.”

Natalie Boot, Director of Media Sales, Insight TV adds, “Insight TV strives to provide high quality content to viewers across the world via linear, SVOD and AVOD platforms. We are delighted to announce this latest partnership with T-Mobile Netherlands and look forward to sharing further distribution deals in the coming weeks.”

WASHINGTON--On Friday, Nov. 30, broadcasters in the first of a 10-phase post incentive auction repack must have completed their move to new channels and ceased broadcasting on their pre-transition channels. Phase two begins Dec. 1.

According to the FCC, more than 140 TV stations in over 20 markets will have moved frequencies when phase one is over, which includes stations that moved from later phases to phase one because they were ready early (see below), but does not include some original phase one stations that asked and got permission to move to later phases. The FCC built such flexibility into what is a Rubik's cube-like repack of stations.

For example, in just the last week the FCC granted requests from four stations to move from phase one to a later phase.

At press time, 94 stations across all 10 phases had gotten permission to move to another phase, both earlier and later, with more such requests in the pipeline, according to the FCC.

The commission has been keeping a log of those changes, so to check out just what a complicated and challenging exercise the repack is, go here.

Most of a thousand TV stations are being repacked in a process that extends to July 3, 2020, the deadline for the last phase to be completed in the 39-month process, though it could go longer since there is an extension available for up to 180 more days if, "despite all reasonable efforts, the station is unable to complete construction of its new facility on time due to circumstances that were either unforeseeable or beyond its control."

[Read: Repack Begins, Deadlines Tight]

Some of the stations that had already moved before the phase one deadline were paid by T-Mobile to exit sooner than scheduled so it could get earlier access to broadcast spectrum it won in the auction. Many hurricane-affected stations in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico were allowed to move to "phase zero" as well—rather than have to re-rebuild on their old channels then turn around and re-fit them for new channels.

Some argue that phase one was actually phase two given the early moves by many stations, but "phase zero" was more of an informal moniker for all the stations asking to make their switches before the phase one deadline.

Stations were required to move after 175 broadcasters relinquished rights to 70 MHz of spectrum in the broadcast incentive auction and the FCC needed to squeeze the remaining stations into smaller space to free up clean swaths of spectrum for wireless broadband companies like T-Mobile.

Stations moving to new channels have to modify their facilities—antennas, towers, transmission lines—to transmit on a different channel, then test that equipment (phase one testing began Sept. 14), all while remaining on the air and serving their local communities. Many had to coordinate with one or more other stations to prevent interference during testing.

The FCC is compensating broadcasters for their moves—and some MVPDs for re-tuning headends to the new channels—out of a congressionally mandated repack fund of a couple billion dollars.

For all the latest news and insight on the repack, visit our repack silo.