Page 147 - Light Reading News Today

Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile walked away with the vast majority of the C-band licenses up for grabs in the FCCs blockbuster midband spectrum auction. As expected, Verizon spent the most: a whopping $45.5 billion for around 3,500 total licenses. According to the financial analysts at Evercore, Verizon acquired an average of 160MHz of spectrum across the entire US. The operator announced a $25 billion loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank to help pay for the licenses. AT&T came in second by spending $23.4...

South Korea operators are successful at the start of the 5G journey.

During the waning weeks of 2020, the nations top 5G executives played what might have been the most expensive game of chance ever. They werent at the Caesars sportsbook or the Bellagio blackjack tables. No, these business titans placed multimillion-dollar bids on thousands of spectrum licenses around the country, some in the nine-figure range. These executives didnt know who they were bidding against. They only knew that, if they lost, their company might forever fall by the 5G wayside. Some ex...

This episode of the Executive Spotlight Q&A features Plume Co-founder and CEO Fahri Diner, a veteran telecom entrepreneur and investor that Light Reading has covered for several years. In this interview, we discuss Plumes origins, why it exists, and what technology advantage the company has in the market. We also talk about Plumes recent $270 million funding round, a massive Series E round that brings the companys valuation to $1.35 billion and its total equity funding to date to $397 million....

Borje Ekholm nonetheless thinks large-scale open RAN is years away.

Telecom operators have historically struggled with delivering exceptional customer service, but Windstream Enterprise (WE) hopes to right the ship with a new "WE will Commitment" to current and potential customers. In regard to customer service, Windstreams CMO Mike Flannery says: "The bar inside of the telecommunications industry isnt very high, and the pandemic has really affected employees, customers and potential customers in a way the industry probably wasnt as well prepared for, but that ...

Podcast: Whats the story with the C-band auction? 2/23/2021 Mike Dano joins the podcast to discuss the significance of the FCCs $81 billion C-band spectrum auction. Mike recently wrote that 5G in the US will become a lot clearer by the end of March, with the C-band spectrum winners soon to be revealed. On this episode, we discuss how the results of the auction are likely to shake out and what impact the spectrum allocated will have on Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobiles 5G plans going forwa...

There are growing indications that network operators in the US wont begin spending heavily on their 5G networks until 2022. "This year is not going to be the robust year that some of my colleagues are predicting," Alex Gellman, CEO of cell tower company Vertical Bridge, said during the virtual Metro Connect event Tuesday. Others agree. "Our outlook for 21 does assume a pace of activity that is increasing throughout the year, so its definitely a little bit slower is our assumption here at the b...

Revenue from RAN equipment reached record-breaking heights in 2020, driven by stronger than expected 5G NR investments in North America and China toward the end of the year.

Huawei has lost a UK legal battle against HSBC as it fights to stop the extradition of its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, from Canada to the US, where she would face charges of fraud. The Chinese equipment giant had sought access to bank documents that it believed would undermine the case against Meng. At the behest of US authorities, Meng was arrested in December 2018 on charges that include lying to HSBC about Huaweis connection to Skycom, a network equipment vendor that sold produc...