Last month, South Dakota picked up a monumental $705.5 million out of the FCC’s $5 billion rural broadband funding. And yesterday, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr was in the state getting an elevated view as to how those funds will benefit rural America. Carr climbed to the 100-foot level of a 330-foot guyed tower in Mitchell to view first-hand the installation …
Education will be harmed after contentious vote that opened up 2.5 GHz band: FCC Democrats
In a controversial 3-2 vote yesterday, the FCC agreed to free up the 2.5 GHz band of wireless spectrum for 5G services. Known as the Educational Broadband Service, the band had been used for educational purposes since the 1960s by educational institutions and nonprofits supporting education. The unused and underused mid-band spectrum will now go on the auction block. The only …
CTIA develops a new website to combat RF fear and fake news, but it can’t stop there
Commentary — Recurring headlines purporting that 5G is untested and RF radiation from cell towers could cause cancer is the ammunition being used to close down or prevent the addition of cell sites on school campuses or on adjacent properties throughout the nation. To cool down the heated campaigns, towercos and carriers simply refer opponents to the FCC’s Wireless Devices and …
Commish’s push for rural broadband was scripted 122 years ago
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the agency’s point man for encouraging why and how the country should unite in order for the US to become the world’s leader in rolling out 5G, retweeted a 122- year-old article (below) from The Daily Northwestern lamenting phone dependency, a “disease from which friends or those afflicted suffer.” Fast-forward to 2020 and the irony of …
Serious workforce shortage has the wireless industry and FCC pulling together to solve it
Although it’s difficult to assess exactly how many additional trained tower technicians America needs to build out 5G, it’s clear that there is a shortage of skilled workers and Aiken Technical College (ATC) in South Carolina is helping to fill that gap with the nation’s most successful tower and wireless installation training program. After observing the ATC program in Graniteville …
FCC to unveil breakthrough technology to replace billion-dollar spectrum bids
The nation’s media was quick to note last week that FCC Commissioners, normally incessantly microblogging their Twitter followers with FCC information and what they believe are cultural consciousness must-reads on every imaginable subject, haven’t tweeted once since last Tuesday. An exclusive report this morning by Emmet T. Witllinger of POLITICO’s Morning Tech uncovered why. The federal agency has been feverishly working on …
Blue sky wireless workforce shortage projections aren’t grounded with reliable data
No stranger to manlifts, climbing cell sites, and even ascending a 2,000-foot tower, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr joined a Vinculums crew on Wednesday to troubleshoot a cell site along a highway outside of San Jose, Calif. According to Carr, the problem turned out to be a bad connector on a sector’s transmission line. The Vinculums team, with Carr’s assistance, had it …
Industry giants CommScope and Ericsson capture FCC Commissioner Carr’s attention during Texas tours
Before Commissioner Brendan Carr provided his Monday evening keynote address at the National Association of Tower Erectors’ annual convention, NATE UNITE 2019, in Grapevine, Tex., CommScope gave him a Cook’s tour of their sprawling 10-acre manufacturing facility in Euless where he learned from engineers, product executives and other company officials of their ability to provide vertically integrated wireless products from …
Commissioner Carr ‘preaches to the choir’ at NATE UNITE 2019 keynote address
During his keynote address about 5G at NATE UNITE 2019, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said he felt like he was “preaching to the choir” since no group knows more about those topics than the National Association of Tower Erectors. “The work that tower crews do every day — from building new cell sites to maintaining 2,000 foot towers — is not easy. And that’s particularly true …
