Infrastructure
Financials Behind Wireless Infrastructure Industry Remain Strong Despite Pandemic

June 24, 2020 — Amid general economic downturn, shares in publicly held tower companies are holding steady with 2019 levels, a trend that is expected to continue, said analysts and investors speaking at the virtual ConnectX conference of the Wireless Infrastructure Association.
While short term supply chain issues have caused problems for both carriers and infrastructure providers, disrupting rollouts and build cycles, M/C Partners Vice President Abhishek Rampuria was optimistic about long term trends.
“In general, we’ve definitely slowed down on our new investment front and are waiting to see how things shake out over the next six months,” he said. “We think there’s going to be unique opportunities of new deals that come up into the market coming out of this.”
Rampuria and other analysts were speaking during pre-recordings of the ConnectX show that originally launched in May, although new content has continued to go live on the site during the month of June.
Other panelists in the program pointed out less encouraging data, however.
“If I was to play devil’s advocate and be a bit more negative on what we’re seeing as relates to COVID-19, I’d actually made the argument that from a wireless mobile network usage perspective, usage is actually down,” said Colby Synesael, senior research analyst at Cowen.
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of carriers teaming up with the right infrastructure providers, said Bo White, vice president of global business development for the Macquarie Group.
“We’re seeing the carriers asking the infrastructure providers to really evolve beyond just steel in the air — they’re asking them to do more and more services,” White added. “That trend was developing before COVID, and we believe that that that trend is going to accelerate post COVID.”
For example, AT&T is actively looking for an increasingly holistic relationship with tower operators, Synesael said.
White predicted that most future industry changes would be an expansion of current agreements, such as altering agreements to allow infrastructure providers to provide additional services.
“The most boring but exciting thing at the same time about the tower industry is that the delta between a good year and a bad year is maybe two or three hundred basis points,” Synesael said. “It’s that limited level of volatility, that defensiveness, that obviously makes the space so attractive.”
Jennifer Fritzsche, managing director of the Equity Research department at Wells Fargo Securities, predicted that small cell deployment would continue to see growth.
“Verizon really has put the majority of their eggs in the millimeter wave spectrum basket — that is best supported with small cells,” Fritzsche said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of money flowing towards small cells.”
Funding
Treasury Department and Local Officials Tout American Rescue Plan Funds
Federal funding program prepares communities for economic turmoil.

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2023 – American Rescue Plan Act funds sets the United States ahead in economic resiliency, said experts at a Brookings Institution event Thursday.
When ARPA was passed in March of 2021, the United States Department of the Treasury was tasked with ensuring that funds would be used to build sustainable programs past the 2026 expenditure deadline as well as programs that would build capacity for future government programs, said Jacob Leibenluft of the Treasury.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, states did not have the systems in place to reach people in need of help, said Leibenluft. ARPA funds help communities invest in a strong system to provide support to community members, which sets the United States ahead of where it would have been otherwise, he said, claiming that the funds will help the country weather upcoming economic turmoil.
To take advantage of this opportunity, Leibenluft suggested that localities develop and share best practices. The most effective way to use ARPA funds is to develop the “plumbing” that connects citizens to government programs which localities can then maintain on their own budgets, he said.
“There are certain things that are just not sustainable in the absence of ARPA funds,” he continued, “what we have built is really a demonstration of programs that can be sustained through a combination of local, state and federal funds.”
Local governments need to view ARPA as one-time spending, added Tishara Jones, mayor of Saint Louis, Missouri. Saint Louis did not develop any ARPA-reliant programs that would extend beyond the 2026 expenditure deadline. Instead, the city is finding revenue in its existing budget for supporting new programs on its own.
Even so, state officials suggest that the Treasury’s 2026 expenditure deadline is too soon, claiming that not all funds necessary for broadband infrastructure upgrades will be received by that time.
The American Rescue Plan gave $1.9 trillion for direct financial assistance, education support, health programs, transportation, and state and local fiscal recovery. An estimated 10% of funds are being used to build infrastructure, including broadband deployment, according to Brookings. The program’s allocation phase is set to be complete by the end of 2024.
Broadband Mapping & Data
FCC Added Just Over 1 Million Net New Locations in Broadband Map Fabric Slated For Spring Release: Chairwoman
Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the second version of map fabric ‘largely completed.’

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2023 – The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that the commission added just over one million net new broadband serviceable locations after processing challenges and improving data models in its second round of data collection that ended March 1.
In a mapping update blog post, chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel noted that the net additions to the map – where fixed broadband could be installed – came after it added 2.96 million new locations and removed 1.92 million locations from the first version of the fabric released in November.
The chairwoman also said the second version of the fabric, which underpins the broadband map, is “largely completed” and is slated for a release later this spring. The map will be used by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to spread among the states by June 30 the $42.5 billion from its Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.
“In the past four months, our mapping team has processed challenges to availability data for over 4 million locations,” Rosenworcel said in the post. “In other words, on average, we are addressing availability challenges to tens of thousands of locations every single day. Every two weeks, our public map is updated to reflect all availability challenges that have been resolved. In other words, the system is working.”
The chairwoman noted that the one-million-location difference suggests that the net adjustment from the last version of less than one percent in the number of serviceable locations “says that, on balance, the November pre-production draft of the National Broadband Map painted a helpful picture of where high-speed Internet service could be available.”
Previously, the chairwoman said challenges that sought corrections to the data corresponded to less than one percent of the total number of locations identified.
Rosenworcel also noted Thursday that important corrections and additions to the data were made, including “data refreshes to more sophisticated tools” that helped remove structures like garages and sheds. The most significant additions were in Alaska, U.S. territories and tribal lands, she said.
The challenge process led to nearly 122,000 new location additions, she noted, but also added that the majority of location adds were due to the updates and dataset model refinements by the agency’s contractor CostQuest.
“While over time we expect future versions of the Fabric to require fewer refinements,” Rosenworcel added, “these ongoing efforts to improve the Fabric outside of the challenge process will continue and will remain an important tool for the improvement of the National Broadband Map.”
Spectrum
Industry Dissent on Whether Spectrum Sharing is Sustainable
Experts disagree on the capabilities of spectrum sharing, particularly the CBRM model.

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2023 – Industry leaders disagreed on the capabilities of spectrum sharing and its future in the United States at a Federal Communications Bar Association event Wednesday.
Dynamic spectrum sharing – a technology that allows for 4G, LTE, and 5G wireless to be used in the same frequency bands – is essential to a successful national spectrum strategy, said Jennifer McCarthy of Federated Wireless.
Establishing a combination of access points for one frequency band can open its availability for all prospective users, she continued, touting the success of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service established by the Federal Communications Commission in 2012.
CBRS is the spectrum in the 3.5 GHz to 3.7 GHz band which is shared through a three-tiered framework. Access to the spectrum is managed by a dynamic spectrum access system where incumbent users have protected access, priority access users enter through competitive auction, and general authorized access is given to a broad pool of users when not in use by others.
Representative of T-Mobile, John Hunter, disagreed, claiming that dynamic spectrum sharing means there is less power available for technologies, particularly on higher frequencies that don’t propagate very far despite power disparities. As such, deploying the CBRS framework at scale across the country is not cost-feasible, he said.
We should not conclude to share just for the sake of sharing, he said, particularly because it will decrease utility of the band so much that it will decline quality of networks down the line. “In many cases, sharing just outright won’t work,” said Hunter.
Colleen King, vice president of regulatory affairs at Charter Communications, pushed against the argument that dynamic sharing’s lower power will stop providers from providing great service, claiming that it instead allows for more carriers to provide great service. In fact, the CBRS auction had 228 winning bids, 10 times the amount of other spectrum auctions, she said.
The FCC’s Communications Marketplace Report showed that in one market where Verizon is using the CBRS framework, the company is providing “much faster speeds” than its other markets, King cited. Charter will use the CBRS system for its spectrum uses, she said.
Panelists nevertheless agreed on the importance of maintaining US leadership in the spectrum space by developing a national spectrum strategy to address sharing issues.
The panel followed considerable debate over spectrum allocation, sharing, and expansion. Earlier this week, industry leaders suggested that the allocation process be updated in preparation for future disputes. Additionally, debate continues over whether 5G operations can be shared on the 12 GHz spectrum with satellite service providers.
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