Shares in Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T tumbled today after Bloomberg reported that Amazon is in talks with carriers to possibly resell low-cost or free cell phone service to Prime members.

Citing people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg said Amazon is holding discussions with Verizon, T-Mobile and Dish Network to get the lowest possible wholesale price. The negotiations, which have been ongoing for six to eight weeks, have at times included AT&T, according to the report.

T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon all told Bloomberg they were not currently in discussions with Amazon about wireless service. 

“AT&T is not in discussions with Amazon to resell wireless services,” AT&T said in a statement provided to Fierce after this story was first published.  

T-Mobile issued the following statement: “Amazon is a great partner to T-Mobile in many areas, and we are always interested in working more closely with our cross-town neighbors in new ways. However, we are not in discussions about inclusion of our wireless in Prime service, and Amazon has told us they have no plans to add wireless service.”

Similarly, Verizon denied any discussions with Amazon.

“Verizon is not in negotiations with Amazon regarding the resale of the nation's best and most reliable wireless network. Our company is always open to new and potential opportunities, but we have nothing to report at this time," the company said in a statement.  Read More Here

FCC puts out first iteration of its national broadband map

The newest version identifies another 330,000 locations unserved by broadband.

The Federal Communications Commission has released an updated version of its National Broadband Map, one that FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said reflected a “big” step in a new, iterative process that is meant to provide a more accurate and up-to-date picture of broadband access across the United States.

This version of the map, as well as continued challenge-based refinements, will be used as the basis for state allocations from the massive Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding program aimed at closing the digital divide, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The executive-branch agency added that it “is confident that with this data as a baseline, we will be able to effectively allocate [BEAD] funds by the end of June. We will continue to monitor the FCC’s updates to availability data to ensure that we make a well-informed allocation of these vital funds.”

The FCC released what it called its “pre-production” maps in late November of last year, offering unprecedented granularity at the address level of the availability of broadband services, from wireline options to satellite and both licensed and unlicensed Fixed Wireless Access—as opposed to the census-block level, which was the basis for previous mapping efforts. The census-block approach meant that if even one location within a census block had broadband service, the clock was considered “served”—which in many cases masked the fact that other people living in the same census block didn’t actually have access to a broadband service.

The new map’s first version, Rosenworcel said in a blog post, “was light years better than preceding maps because it no longer relied on census block-level reporting.” She said that the Commission has identified “over 114 million locations where fixed broadband could be installed compared to data from just 8.1 million census blocks in our prior maps.”

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Small cell scope is evolving

The concept of using low-power base stations to address coverage and capacity limitations with the macro network is not new. One of the messages we wanted to communicate at this event was that even if the definition we use at the Dell’Oro Group to classify small cells (RF output power ≤ 10W) has not actually changed much since we first started tracking pico and micro base stations in the year 2000, these low-power systems have evolved rather significantly over the past 10 to 20 years.

In addition to all the technology advancements required to support new radio interfaces and spectrum bands, the architecture and the form factor have changed quite a bit since the 2G/3G era, with a confluence of RRH, distributed, standalone, and antenna integrated low-power configurations now available.

Also, the scope continues to evolve and broaden the reach of small cells. In the current 5G era, small cells include Sub-6 GHz and mmWave solutions, higher order MIMO configurations, open RAN/proprietary RAN, and vRAN/purpose-built RAN. And perhaps more importantly, it is no longer just about operator driven mobile broadband (MBB) applications – small cells are expected to play a pivotal role advancing fixed wireless access (FWA) and proliferating 5G connectivity into enterprises and industries.



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