Verizon owns a spectrum portfolio “for the 5G-era” and is “on track” to launch 5G in 30 markets this year, CEO Hans Vestberg said Thursday during a call with analysts as the company released Q2 results. Fiber is critical to 5G and Verizon’s fiber deployment extends to more than 60 cities, he said: “It's so essential for the whole 5G play that we have to have this fiber.” Throughput speeds in 5G areas are as fast as 2 Gbps, compared with 600 Mbps with LTE, he said. Verizon estimated it will spend $17 billion-$18 billion this year on its network. Net income for the quarter was $4 billion, compared with $4.2 billion a year ago. Revenue was $32 billion vs. $32.2 billion last year. The company had a net increase of 1.2 million retail postpaid connections -- 431,000 phone and 647,000 smartphones. “Subscriber results were better than expected; financial results a little worse,” said New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin: “No change to guidance. I wouldn’t expect material changes to expectations based on these results.” Technology Business Research analyst Steve Vachon told investors that unknowns remain on Verizon’s spectrum plans. “Verizon plans on eventually deploying 5G on multiple spectrum licenses to provide nationwide coverage but a concrete timeline has yet to be disclosed beyond the company’s initial goal to offer mobile 5G services to 30 cities by the end of 2019 via millimeter wave spectrum,” he said: “Though initial 5G deployments will enable Verizon to build a presence in large metro areas, Verizon will likely trail AT&T and T-Mobile is serving smaller markets as the companies expect to provide nationwide 5G coverage in 2020 by leveraging both millimeter wave and low-band spectrum.”

The proposal on incorporating crowdsourced information into the new broadband mapping process on the agency's Thursday agenda (see 1907110071) raises some tricky issues, such as how much weight to give online speed tests, given the deficiencies of many of them, NCTA blogged Wednesday. There also must be care not to conflate deployment data that's at issue with the draft order with subscription and performance data, it said. There could be value to an accurate database of every serviceable home and business, but there are questions about how workable and expensive the broadband serviceable location fabric would be, NCTA said. It said expanding the scope of the data the FCC collects would delay production of improved broadband deployment data, which could slow deployment to unserved areas.

“The primary purpose" of the proposed final judgment on T-Mobile/Sprint "is to facilitate DISH building and operating its own mobile wireless services network by combining the Divestiture Package of assets and other relief with DISH’s existing mobile wireless assets, including substantial and currently unused spectrum holdings, to enable it to compete in the marketplace,” DOJ said in a competitive impact statement it filed as it seeks final judgment by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, approving its settlement (see 1907260071). The DOJ pleading posted Wednesday said: “The proposed Final Judgment thus obligates DISH to build out its own mobile wireless services network and offer retail mobile wireless service to American consumers.” DOJ said without remediation the combination of the two carriers would be harmful to competition in the U.S. wireless market: “The combination of T-Mobile and Sprint would eliminate head-to-head competition between the companies and threaten the benefits that customers have realized from that competition in the form of lower prices and better service. The merger would also leave the market vulnerable to increased coordination among the remaining three carriers.”

The Competitive Carriers Association, America's Communications Association and Charter Communications had a series of meetings at the FCC on their C-band proposal (see 1907020061). The plan “makes available more critical 5G spectrum faster than other current proposals” and “protects and future-proofs the delivery of pay television programming by transitioning it to fiber delivery,” they said. The plan also would return money to the U.S. Treasury, said a filing Monday in docket 18-122. The allies said they met with officials from the Wireless and International bureaus, the Office of Economics and Analytics and the Office of Engineering and Technology.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment Tuesday on a recent NTIA petition asking for an update of telecom service priority rules (see 1907170042). TSP authorizes national security and emergency preparedness organizations to receive priority treatment for vital voice and data circuits. Comments are due Aug. 30, replies Sept. 16, in docket 96-86.

About three-quarters of U.S. adults worry that their financial and personal data will be hacked (74 percent), don’t want online data being used to make content and advertising more relevant (75 percent), or for commercial purposes (76 percent), according to Internet Innovation Alliance survey released Thursday. Additionally, 72 percent favor a single, nationwide online data privacy law, it said. The survey also found the views of millennials “remarkably aligned with older adults on data privacy issues,” said Rick Boucher, IIA honorary chairman. CivicScience did the survey of more than 8,000 consumers in April.

Dish Network likely can absorb the $5 billion price tag of Sprint's prepaid business and spectrum licenses, S&P said Tuesday, but added it was keeping its negative outlook on the company based on the pay-TV industry pressures, uncertainty about how it plans to finance its wireless network build and the challenges of entering the competitive wireless market. It said Dish has $1.5 billion in cash on hand, but it likely will access capital markets to fund the purchase, and that borrowing "pales in comparison to the $10 billion Dish requires for its planned wireless buildout." It said bundling prepaid wireless with pay-TV has some challenges, such as thin profit margins for mobile virtual network operator agreements and that Sprint's Boost customers are mostly in urban areas while Dish's direct broadcast satellite customer base is largely rural. It said Dish's lack of wireless experience makes it difficult to compete against established players, and while IoT presents notable long-term revenue opportunities, its use cases are more than five years away. It said Dish's wireless ambitions will likely require a partner and substantial capital. Other Dish and wireless watchers also said the company faces significant challenges in becoming a competitive wireless carrier (see 1907290019).

The Supreme Court’s recently concluded term had big implications for the FCC and the future of administrative law, said Christopher Walker, professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and a member of the Free State Foundation’s academic advisers board, in a paper released Tuesday. In Kisor v. Wilkie, the court looked at whether to eliminate to eliminate Auer, or Seminole Rock deference, “the doctrine that commands courts to defer to a federal agency’s interpretation of its own regulation unless the agency’s interpretation is ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation,’” Walker wrote. In a 5-4 decision “with Chief Justice [John] Roberts casting the deciding vote on stare decisis grounds,” the court declined to overrule those long-standing doctrines, he said. But the decision limited them, he said. “Gone is the blunt, bright-line rule, first articulated in the Court’s 1945 decision in Seminole Rock, that a court must defer to any agency regulatory interpretation unless it is ‘plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation,’” he said: “Enter a new, five-step inquiry that in some ways, if taken literally, seems more searching than Chevron deference.” In Gundy v. United States, the high court considered whether a statutory grant of authority to a federal agency or executive branch official violates the nondelegation doctrine. Walker said. Gundy is “noteworthy because only four Justices were willing to continue to embrace a toothless nondelegation doctrine,” he said: Justice Samuel Alito “cast the fifth and decisive vote because ‘it would be freakish to single out the provision at issue here for special treatment.’” But Alito made clear he's willing to reconsider, Walker said. “If and when the Court does decide to reconsider the nondelegation doctrine, the Communications Act’s ‘public interest’ standard, under which so much of the FCC’s regulatory activity takes place, likely will be a candidate for scrutiny.”

The C-Band Alliance (CBA) met with multiple FCC bureau chiefs about the complexity and timing challenges of substituting fiber for the U.S.' C-band content distribution system, according to a docket 18-122 ex parte posting Monday. They also discussed technical aspects of the CBA's band-clearing plan, such as the need for more satellites and 5G rejection filters for earth stations, it said. At the meeting were agency General Counsel Tom Johnson, Wireless Bureau Chief Don Stockdale, International Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan, Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp and Office of Economics and Analytics acting Chief Giulia McHenry.

Crowdsourced data can be useful in refining the accuracy of the FCC's broadband deployment map, but that data may not be accurate about service performance and availability and there's questionable value in publishing it without verification, said NCTA, Cox Communications, GCI and Charter Communications in meetings with aides to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, according to a docket 11-10 ex parte posting Monday. The cablers said the commissioners, as part of the broadband map draft order on Thursday's agenda (see 1907110071), instead should have agency bureaus evaluate ways to ensure consumer and provider confidentiality is protected in the crowdsourcing process. NCTA said the related Further NPRM should include questions about whether there needs to be a broadband-serviceable location database or whether alternative information could achieve the same goal. The cablers also asked for some operational clarity on the mapping item, such as requiring the new filing be done on the same March 1/Sept. 1 schedule as Form 477.