back to article Big Telco freaks out as unknown operator with great political connections vies for valuable 5G space in America

The powerful US telco lobby has come out fighting against an outsider and its efforts to snaffle tens of billions of dollars worth of much-needed 5G spectrum. In what appears to be the end-game to a two-year effort to make a fortune by grabbing bandwidth currently assigned to the Department of Defence and use it for commercial …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Two more (sour) notes

    CNN put a price tag on it, estimating that a competitive auction for the spectrum would bring in over $20b.

    The judge in the FirstNet contract dispute noted that Rivada "possesse(d) few capabilities, staff, or financial resources"; did "not itself have material experience in...building and operating a nationwide wireless network"; and lacked any experience in "supervising a project of the size and scope" of the nationwide public safety broadband network.

    It's good to be a Friend of Trump.

    1. Snake Silver badge

      Re: Two more (sour) notes

      Trump's supporters had no issue with Pai, plus their stance on net neutrality; hoping that they care about spectrum management is likely a BridgeTooFar (tm pending, Trump Corporation).

      Remember: corruption is quite OK as long as it's our corruption. Boss Tweed has left a very, very long legacy in American politics.

    2. mistersaxon

      Re: Two more (sour) notes

      This all sounds ferry familiar, and suspicious.

      1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: Two more (sour) notes

        Reminds me of when UPS stole 220MHz from the ham radio service.

        They went through the motions of a hearing, but the outcome was not in doubt. The frequencies were reassigned, and, IIRC, UPS ended up using a different band. Money talks.

      2. Rol

        Re: Two more (sour) notes

        I sea what you did there.

        I rolled on and rolled over laughing.

    3. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Two more (sour) notes

      It's good to be a Friend of Trump.

      For the next two months, at least. After that, [hopefully] it might become a liability.

  2. NetBlackOps

    What I loved was AT&T saying we, the US, has the world's best mobile networks. Yeah, in their dreams. As for the different approach here, what I've been seeing in defense land various advocates for have a separate military 5G network for military systems only, not giving it any interconnects. Which kinda/sorta makes sense as when the civilian networks are taken down, and they will be, there is a chance that the military isn't necessarily taken down as well. Most of the things that are in testing and development are extremely network dependent. It's the network, stupid.

    1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge

      What we have in the US, is 3 to 5 mediocre incompatible networks, none of which have complete coverage.

      Common hardware, shared among providers, would allow fuller coverage, and a single technology would mean users could choose any vendor at will. Yeah, like that would ever happen.

  3. Notas Badoff

    BTW:

    Thank you for having Kieren on the team. So many backgrounders and information we'd not know otherwise. Thank you.

  4. David Pearce

    3.5 GHz worth how much?

    3.5 GHz = small cell sizes, good for urban but useless in low density suburban and rural locations and not so good indoors.

    5G is supposed to be more for IoT than phones

    1. ThatOne Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: 3.5 GHz worth how much?

      > 5G is supposed to be more for IoT than phones

      5G is supposed to be more for profit than phones...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 3.5 GHz worth how much?

      5G is supposed to be about marketing and fluff until the 6G spin cycle starts

      IoT should be ipv6, except it isnt, as cheap cloned chips cant do ipv6 very well/at all, so the solution there is to hope that the real 5G (not the 4.5G currently punted as 5G) will solve that problem and that cheap cloned 5G chips can do ipv6, and that the networks upgrade there legacy crap to handle it (that will be the bottle neck due to capex of not using huiwei's shit but cheap kit, compared to the others expensive but shit kit), other wise ipv6 at the edge, nat to ipv4 on the backhaul

      Seeing as most of the same networks currently cant even support TLS 1.0 on most SIP trunks, there is bugger all chance of the core networks getting there act together and offering anything more than min specs to run as 5G

      As for bandwidth auctions, guess the DoD have been watching OFCOM...

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Henry Hallan

        Re: 3.5 GHz worth how much?

        They don't need to watch OfCom. A few weeks ago the CBRS PAL auction concluded -- for the spectrum 3550-3620MHz -- and raised several billion dollars for 70MHz of spectrum.

      3. stiine Silver badge

        Re: 3.5 GHz worth how much?

        Very few IoT devices do anything well, at least, not for very long.

  5. cantankerous swineherd

    oh noes, our oligopoly is at risk.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      The telcos aren't really aware at the moment just HOW much they're at risk and from which directions

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Telcos ?

        The Telcos dont know thier elbows from their backsides or where their fingers are hidden. (clue- where the sun doesnt shine)

        Nuff said.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Price Tag $ 20 Billion

    So it seems that the Telcos have already factored that in their plans to screw the consumers, by at least that much. Depends how much of that auction money will go into lobbying and Trump's / his cronies' pockets.

    Add on the costs of borrowings, Return on Investments, Infra costs, other hardware costs, new handsets costs, et all.

    US consumers are in for a big shafting and price rises. Welcome to Capitalism, American style.

    Meanwhile in the UK, Telcos are sitting on the purchased spectrum, for how long? Without any meaningful (or postage stamp sized) launches?

    Go figure who will up end paying for all this profligacy.

    Anyone for the New Zealand model?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Load?

      New Zealand has hopefully learnt from mistakes made in the past from spectrum being under used or being left fallow. It might not be perfect, but hopefully it incentivises Telcos to get on and use their spectrum holdings.

  7. DS999 Silver badge

    What's with this persistant lie about shortage of 5G spectrum?

    Let's worry about putting the huge swathes of spectrum already allocated for 5G in the US into use before scratching for more, especially this ridiculous idea of "nationalizing 5G". That's a huge tell something shady is going on, because normally any talk of "nationalizing" anything and republicans would be screaming "SOCIALISM!" from the rooftops. But somehow they keep quiet when it comes from Trump.

    Clearly enough of the big power players in the republican party believe they will get rich off that happening that they've effectively silenced any talk about socialism when it comes to nationalizing 5G. Which is probably where the lie about "shortage of 5G spectrum" comes from, as a way of hoping to justify this nationalism that will just happen to massively enrich Trump and his cronies.

    1. Rol

      Re: What's with this persistant lie about shortage of 5G spectrum?

      Are you thinking nationalised in the sense that the UK's NHS is a nationalised resource, where all the profitable bits have been outsourced to the private sector so they might bleed the organisation of its tax paid income without the patients actually realising why the rest of the organisation is falling apart.

      No good giving the NHS an extra £10 billion, if the private sector are just going to reach in and make a grab for it.

  8. Gavin Park Weir

    Classic timing

    Classic timing: So two yanks get the Nobel Economics Prize for their work on auctions, specifically spectrum auctions and how they maximize the value/revenue the government can generate from selling/leasing it to private industry.

    Then boom - no bid deal.

    My guess is that all the cronies (either party) in the US think there is a reasonable chance the current administration won't make it so they are doing their best to make hey while the orange sun is shining.

  9. bleedinglibertarian

    really? fakenews cnn??

    I stopped reading when fakenew cnn was quoted because well.. they are a joke.

    1. HausWolf

      Re: really? fakenews cnn??

      I find that most libertarians are just republicans that like to smoke weed.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: really? fakenews cnn??

        From talking to relatives and friends, I find that most libertarians just like to tell long stories about how the other parties are corrupt, then they abdicate responsibility and don't vote. Maybe you have better acquaintances with shorter stories?

    2. whoseyourdaddy

      Re: really? fakenews cnn??

      "fakenews cnn"

      Like "Covid is a Hoax" Fox News?

      That Fox News?

      Sit down, shut up, and let the adults talk.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ugh. You know it's a mess when AT&T isn't he worst party in the fight. Hard to cheer for anyone here.

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