Ruckus Networks said today that it has been given FCC certification for its entire portfolio of “OpenG”-branded access points designed to work in the 3.5 Ghz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum.

Having one of the telecom industry’s major vendors certified is a major step in the broader plan to have CBRS commercial deployments achieved by the end of the year. Earlier today, Federated Wireless said that it has asked the FCC for permission to move forward with commercial CBRS deployments as soon as October, the company announced.

Cable and wireless operators are exploring opportunities for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service Device band, a 150 MHz-wide portion of largely underused spectrum existing between 3.55 GHz and 3.7 GHz. CBRS will ultimately be used for private LTE networks such as airports and industrial campuses.

“This major milestone is one of the final stages before CBRS commercial deployments are made possible,” said Ian Whiting, president of Ruckus Networks, in a statement. “As a leading network provider, we are enabling organizations to deploy and manage a private LTE network, as easily as deploying a Wi-Fi network. Our OpenG LTE portfolio enables customers across a variety of different verticals to take advantage of this spectrum.”

Related: Federated Wireless Files with FCC to Start Deploying CBRS in October

Arris-owned Ruckus also announced that it has partnered with multi-family broadband provider Pavlov Media to trial CBRS 3.5 GHz LTE access points in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

Overall, Ruckus said it has conduced more than 20 CBRS trials with operators and enterprises, and it has another 30-plus trials pending. 

Taking aim at an emerging opportunity driven by today’s LTE networks and the 5G networks of tomorrow, CableLabs is establishing a Mobile Backhaul R&D Lab.

The new lab is being created to support cable’s development of mobile backhaul-over-DOCSIS networks, Jennifer Andreoli-Fang, distinguished technologist, wireless technologies, at CableLabs, noted in this blog post.

CableLabs is targeting this area as network operators seek out backhaul solutions that can support their move to dense, small cell architectures. CableLabs and others in the industry believe that hybrid/fiber coax (HFC) networks – and their trifecta of location, power and capacity – offer a great (and potentially lucrative) fit.

To that end, CableLabs and its partners have been working on specs that enable DOCSIS networks to serve as a mobile backhaul conduit, and CableLabs has posted a whitepaper from Andreoli-Fang and Belal Hamzeh, VP of wireless at CableLabs, that provides an update on those efforts.

The paper provides an overview of some advances made on that front, and the special needs of mobile backhaul, in areas such as bandwidth, latency and timing.

Of recent note, CableLabs and Cisco Systems announced that a test of a “Bandwidth Report” proposal (and an associated “pipelining” of the DOCSIS and LTE schedulers) showed that upstream latency for LTE data backhaul on a DOCSIS network could be reduced to about 1.1 milliseconds – well within the range of a latency goal of sub-5 milliseconds.

RELATED: CableLabs-Cisco Trial Successfully Extends Bridge Between DOCSIS and LTE

Though the test was focused on LTE, the proposal is designed to be extensible to future 5G networks. 

Ruckus Networks, the wireless-focused tech company acquired late last year by Arris, has introduced a new lineup of LTE-based products, including access points and a spectrum allocation server, aimed at the emerging market for the 3.5 GHz Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) band.

That portfolio, introduced ahead of the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, is entering the fray as the shared-use CBRS band – a 150 MHz chunk of spectrum in the 3.55 Gigahertz to 3.7 GHz range -- becomes a focal point for traditional mobile carriers, cable operators and neutral-host service providers.

RELATED: CBRS Spectrum to Open Windows of Opportunity for Cable Ops

Ruckus’s CBRS band LTE portfolio includes the Ruckus Q710, a 3.5 GHz indoor access point/small cell with 10,000 square feet of coverage, the Q910, a 3.5 GHz outdoor AP/small cell that can cover a 660-foot city block, and a cloud-based element management system. ts CBRS product suite also includes pro services from Arris (for network planning and deployment, the cEPC (a cloud-based evolved packet core), and the cSAS, a cloud-based spectrum allocation server that is being marketed as an optional subscription service.

The spectrum allocation server is a key product component for the CBRS band's shared spectrum environment, as it ensures that new use cases for licensed and unlicensed capacity in that band do not interfere with incumbent users such as the U.S. Navy. Notably, Arris and one of its top customers, Charter Communications, are investors in Federated Wireless, a startup that specializes in spectrum allocation servers and systems and recently introduced a product interoperability program.

Ruckus said the new CBRS-focused portfolio is in trials today, with availability to come following anticipated FCC certification in the shared-use band.

RELATED: Comcast Wants to Test CBRS in Philly

Ruckus didn’t identify trial partners. In the cable world, Comcast and Charter have either started CBRS trials or have plans underway to test small cells that, for example, might be used to offset some of the network costs for mobile services that lean on MVNO agreements.

RELATED: Small Cells to Play Big Role in Charter’s Mobile Future

The CBRS/LTE access points being announced today are the first two of a larger, more comprehensive product line, as some will be capable of snapping onto existing Ruckus-made access points, according to Mark Davis, Ruckus’s senior director of product marketing.

When combined with the subscription services and other elements, the product suite is shaping up as a “CBRS in a box” solution, he said, estimating that Ruckus has more than 20 trials underway with operators of various shapes and sizes.

Ruckus also introduced a suite of Internet of Things products focused on enterprises and to address the complexities that some IoT solution vendors have created using vertically-integrated systems.

“IoT is an extraordinarily complex beast” as many of today's IoT solutions don’t talk to each other, Davis said.

The idea behind Ruckus’s approach is to consolidate the physical layer access networks into a unified IoT network. Those components include IoT-ready access points, IoT modules (based on standards such as Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee and LoRA, and IoT controller that works with the company’s existing SmartZone wireless LAN controller.

The result aims to create a common infrastructure between the wireless local area network and the IoT access network.

Ruckus also announced ecosystem partnerships with several IoT companies, including Assa Abloy Hospitality (smart security), LoRaWAN network specialist Actility, IBM (for its Watson IoT platform), Kontakt.io, TrackR, and Tile, a company that has developed an electronic beacon system that tracks a person’s belongings.

RELATED: Assa Abloy Seals Deal for August Home

Shedding more light on Charter Communications’s wireless activity, the MSO and Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday that they are working together on 5G and 4G LTE lab and field trials in various U.S. locations.

They said the 5G trial is trying out fixed use cases that use Samsung’s pre-commercial 28 GHz (mmWave) system and devices, while the 4G trials are running at 3.5 GHz (CBRS, licensed spectrum), using Samsung’s small cell technology in an outdoor environment to evaluate mobile use cases, they said.

RELATED: Charter Adds Wireless Exec Manish Jindal

Charter, which has activated its MVNO agreement with Verizon Communications, announced some details about its 5G test ambitions in February, noting then that it would possibly launch a mobile/wireless product in 2018.

Charter applied for experimental licenses to test 5G late last year. RCR Wireless News reported earlier this year that Charter was also working with Ericsson for 5G trials scoped out in Florida.

RELATED: Charter Eyes 5G, Wireless Offerings

Samsung said it’s one of the companies selected by Charter and the company progresses towards its MVNO launch sometime next year.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Samsung on these trials, which provide Charter better insight into how our advanced, powered,  high speed network—which currently passes 49 million homes and businesses—can be used to enable 5G services,” Craig Cowden, SVP, wireless technology at Charter, said in a statement. “In addition, as we move closer to the launch of a Spectrum wireless service in 2018, our work with Samsung on trials of 4G small cell technology will support our overall wireless strategy.”

“As a pioneer in small cell networks technologies, Samsung is excited to partner with Charter as they evaluate their next-generation 5G and 4G wireless network technologies,” added Mark Louison, SVP and General Manager, Networks, Samsung Electronics America. “These projects, with communications leaders such as Charter, will continue to lay the foundation for future business models and customer applications that tap the full potential of both 4G LTE and 5G.”

Samsung and Charter timed the announcement with this week’s Mobile World Congress Americas show in San Francisco.

Samsung also introduced a new small cell product portfolio for home, enterprise and outdoor service scenarios that will support CBRS (up to 150 MHz of shared spectrum in 3.5 GHz), Licensed Assisted Access (LAA), as well as a cloud managed service for deployment of small cell products.

As cellular networks pack on more capacity and become increasingly reliable, the shift to unlimited wireless service models pose a small, but still concerning, threat to cable operators and other providers of wired broadband services, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett concludes in a report published Wednesday.

RELATED: AT&T Expands Unlimited Wireless Plan

While emerging 5G-based fixed wireless options are considered a long-term risk as a substitution for wireline broadband, there are “more proximate risks” posed by current LTE services that are attached to unlimited wireless data plans, he explained.

RELATED: Verizon Exec: ‘Meaningful’ 5G Deployments to Start in 2018

Currently, there’s not much for cable operators and other traditional ISPs to worry about, as 2015 U.S. Census Bureau data shows that just 6% of total households or about 7% of Internet homes relied exclusively on mobile broadband services, Moffett found, noting that those numbers haven’t budged since 2013.

While there’s no question that some homes will “cut the cord” for broadband as some have done with pay TV, the big question is how many?

“We concluded that the risk (to wired broadband providers) of wireless substitution from the wireless industry’s new unlimited LTE data plans is lower than intuition might suggest,” Moffett wrote.

However, he added, it likewise “reasonable to expect at least some substitution around the edges from light users.”

But Moffett doesn’t expect a mass movement to wireless-only broadband, even if LTE is a sufficient option for a subset of consumers.

Though there are gaps between average speeds and average usage volumes with cellular options, “there are perhaps some customers – light users who are particularly price sensitive – for whom going ‘wireless only’ will have at least intuitive appeal.”

Based on somewhat recent usage models, Moffett said homes for which cellular broadband makes the most sense are those in which no single member uses more than 10 gigabytes of data per month on traditional PCs, and no more than 22 to 30 GB cumulatively between their traditional computers and smartphones.

That model assumes that a consumer would require 23 GB of hotspot data and 14 GB of cellular data to match their ideal bandwidth usage, the report holds, citing a somewhat recent report from Comcast that the median broadband home used 88 GB of data, with the typical person using 34 GB using Census data showing that the average home contains 2.6 people.

The rub is that most unlimited plans include just 10 GB of hotspot data and 22 to 30 GB of cellular data. “That’s about the right total amount, but the wrong distribution,” Moffett wrote.

So, to make cellular broadband a viable substitute for an average user, the consumer would have to shift a large swath of Internet usage to the mobile device.

The other tricky part with the model, Moffett explained, is determining the savings a home could achieve by dropping wireline broadband for a wireless-only play, as one would need to know the incremental cost of upgrading to an unlimited wireless plan alongside the current cost of the wired broadband service.

As for the risk posed, cable operators appear to be the least exposed, given their robust wired networks and wireless options, Moffett said.

RELATED: Comcast Unveils Xfinity Mobile

The telcos are more vulnerable especially where they have not upgraded to fiber-based offerings, and are more exposed based on how heavily they currently lean on wired broadband.

“If you believe that wireless substitution is a risk to wireline operators, CenturyLink would be the name to watch,” Moffett wrote.

Generally, he expects that lower income customers are the most likely to consider a wireless-only play.

“The very narrative of wireless substation poses a risk, even if it is a tiny issue for the actual numbers,” Moffett wrote, but stressed that “the risk is not zero.”

The completion of the first round of specs for an emerging wireless technology platform could have deep implications for future cable strategies.

The new MulteFire Alliance 1.0 specs open the door to technology that defines how LTE can operate in unlicensed and shared spectrum, and play nice with WiFi.

That, in turn, could present some potentially lucrative opportunities for MSOs interested in using LTE technology in unlicensed spectrum to operate private or “neutral host” MulteFire networks in ways similar to how they use WiFi today. Of those models, the neutral host option would use a common platform to serve customers from multiple operators and allow the use of high-capacity, high-density small cell architectures.

Importantly, MulteFire addresses a major concern that cable raised when LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U) first emerged. It was feared that LTE-U could interfere with WiFi traffic while allowing only companies that held licensed spectrum to take advantage of the technology.

MulteFire aims to solve those issues. “For us, it means that any operator, whether they have spectrum or not, can operate and use LTE technology in unlicensed spectrum,” said Ralph Brown, senior vice president and chief technology officer of R&D at CableLabs, noting that the organization and some of its members have been participating in the MulteFire Alliance from the start.

The cable industry has also been proposing the kind of coexistence capabilities supported by Licensed Assisted Access LTE technology. LAA LTE employs a “listen before talk” approach that’s similar to one used with WiFi.

That LAA LTE proposal with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is pending, but the cable industry hopes having that coexistence functionality supported in MulteFire “will allow that path to become a bit easier for 3GPP,” CableLabs vice president of technology policy Rob Alderfer said.

“Since MulteFire is based on LAA, we are similarly more optimistic about MulteFire,” Alderfer added, but he stressed that there’s work to be done to validate that optimism.

MulteFire technology could open up some new wireless service opportunities for cable operators. An MSO, for instance, could use it to run a private mobile network on a business or enterprise campus in unlicensed spectrum, CableLabs vice president of wireless technologies Belal Hamzeh said.

What does this mean to the future of WiFi? “WiFi will be around for some time,” Alderfer said. “This [MulteFire] is about providing new technology options for a number of use cases.”

The worldwide broadband CPE market had an okay first quarter, but it didn’t blow the doors off the place either.

Total revenues hit $2.8 billion in the first quarter of 2015, up 3% year-over-year, but down 2% from the previous quarter, IHS found in a fresh report on the sector. Unit shipments, at 54 million, were flat as service providers expanded fixed broadband service capabilities.

"Overall, the CPE market remains strong, with revenue up 3 percent year-over-year. We expect both DOCSIS 3.1 and G.fast to help add momentum to the cable and DSL CPE market segments and FTTH to continue at its current pace, driven by deployments in China, North America and EMEA," said Jeff Heynen, research director for broadband access and pay TV at IHS, in a statement.

DOCSIS 3.1 is the emerging platform for HFC networks that will support multi-gigabit speeds, with initial deployments expected to start later this year. G.fast is a standard that aims to bring gigabit capabilities to DSL networks when delivered over relatively short loop-lengths and is viewed as a platform that could prolong a telco's migration to FTTP.

IHS said the the top performers in 1Q15 were EPON and fixed LTE, which both saw double-digit percentage increases in unit shipments, and noted that the firm is seeing growth in the market for mobile broadband routers, expecting unit shipments there to jump past 622,000  in 2019. 

Google announced Wednesday that it will try to shake up the U.S. mobile industry with Project Fi, a service that starts at $20 per month and will run on pre-vetted WiFi hot spots as well as Sprint’s and T-Mobile US’s 4G LTE cellular networks. 

Taking aim at mobile services encumbered with restrictive or complicated data plans, Google said the $20 per month fee will cover basics such as talk, text, WiFi tethering and international coverage in more than 120 countries, plus a flat $10 per gigabyte for cellular data in the U.S. and abroad, or 2GB for $20, 3GB for $30 per month, and so on. Customers will also get money back each month for data they don't use. 

“Since it's hard to predict your data usage, you'll get credit for the full value of your unused data,” Nick Fox, VP of communications products at Google, explained in this blog post about the new service. “Let's say you go with 3GB for $30 and only use 1.4GB one month. You'll get $16 back, so you only pay for what you use.”

In the vein of so-called “WiFi first” strategies that are being pursued by some cable operators as well as providers such as Scratch Wireless and Republic Wireless (Cablevision Systems has launched a WiFi-only service called Freewheel), Google said Project Fi will securely auto-connect customers to open WiFi hotspots (Google said it has verified more than 1 million of them "as fast and reliable") or a partner's cellular network. Taking it a step further, Project Fi aims to connect customers to the fastest available network at a given location, whether that’s via WiFi or the Sprint or T-Mobile 4G network.

Google currently is limiting Project Fi to an invitation-only Early Access Program, and will initially offer the service on the Nexus 6, a Motorola-made device that is the first to support the service’s new WiFi/cellular handoff capabilities. 

The day after confirming that M&A talks were underway, Nokia said Wednesday that it has struck a deal to acquire Alcatel-Lucent in a stock deal valued at €15.6 billion (US$16.6 billion), an agreement that should put the companied company on squarer competitive footing against Ericsson and Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

The boards of both sides have approved the terms of the proposed deal, which they expect to close by the first half of 2016. Under those terms, Alcatel-Lucent shareholders will own 33.5% of the fully diluted share capital of the combined company, with Nokia shareholders owning 66.5%.

The combined company will be called Nokia Corporation and be headquartered in Finland, while maintaining a large presence in France. Risto Siilasmaa is planned to serve as chairman, and Rajeev Suri as CEO.

The aim is to generate a complementary portfolio of fixed and mobile broadband gear, IP routing and core networks products and cloud applications and services, and to target a wide geography with “particular strength” in the U.S., China, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

They expect the combined company, which will  have about 114,000 employees, to generate operating cost synergies of about €900 million (US$953 million) annually by 2019. They anticipate combined net sales of €25.9 billion (US$27.4 billion)

The companies talked up the innovation-facing components of the deal, claiming they’ll be able to take combined advantage of Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and Nokia's FutureWorks, as well as Nokia Technologies, which will stay as a separate entity focused on licensing and the incubation of new technologies. 

“We have hugely complementary technologies and the comprehensive portfolio necessary to enable the internet of things and transition to the cloud,” Suri said, in a statement. “Together, we expect to have the scale to lead in every area in which we choose to compete, drive profitable growth, meet the needs of global customers, develop new technologies, build on our successful intellectual property licensing, and create value for our shareholders.

“The global scale and footprint of the new company will reinforce its presence in the United States and China,” added Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes.

Analysts said there are pros and cons to the proposed marriage.

“When you consider the strengths and weaknesses of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia and their product portfolios, a merger of the two businesses seems logical,” Ovum said in a statement issued Tuesday about the prospect of a Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent combo. “Nokia is a mobile-only equipment vendor, while Alcatel-Lucent’s strengths are in the fixed network business (especially core network and IP routing). It has long-struggled in the wireless business, and its attempts to become a leading player in LTE have failed. Alcatel-Lucent has also been active in SDN/NFV with CloudBand and Nuage and aggressive with small cells – areas where Nokia is perceived to be lagging behind competition.”

But Ovum said a merger is also rife with risks, as it could “plunge both businesses back into a period of introspection and restructuring” and create “significant duplication in areas such as mobile broadband and small cells.”

On the mobile end, the new company will have a global market share of 35%, behind market-leader Ericsson (40%), but ahead of Huawei's 20%, Reuters said, citing Bernstein Research. Ovum estimates that Nokia and Alcatel Lucent’s combined share of total LTE contracts was at 26% at the end of 2014, behind Huawei (36%) and Ericsson (33%).

J.P. Morgan served as financial advisor to Nokia and delivered a fairness opinion to the Board of Directors of Nokia in connection with the transaction. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Roschier, Attorneys Ltd served as legal advisors. Zaoui & Co is acting as lead M&A advisor to Alcatel-Lucent and delivered a fairness opinion to the Board of Directors of Alcatel-Lucent in connection with the transaction. Sullivan & Cromwell LLP served as legal advisor.

Sprint said Monday that it will cut 2,000 jobs as the wireless company looks to trim costs, announcing the cuts as the company reported a wider-than-expected loss in its fiscal second quarter.

Sprint said it expects to save $400 million annually on total labor costs as a result of the layoff, applying it toward the $1.5 billion in total cost reductions it’s trying to eliminate.

Sprint posted a second quarter loss of $765 million (19 cents per share) on revenues of $8.5 billion. Wall Street was expecting a loss of 6 cents per share.

Sprint said the results came amid a “transitional quarter” following the appointment of Marcelo Claure as CEO in mid-August.  Claire, on board to turn Sprint around, is the former CEO of Brightstar Corp.,  a wireless distributor and subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank, which has a controlling stake in Sprint.

“We have started a transformational journey,” Claure said, in a statement. “While the company continues to face headwinds, we have begun the first phase of our plan and are encouraged with the early results. Every day we are focused on improving our standing with consumers, improving our network and controlling our costs.”

Sprint disclosed last month that it would take a $160 million charge in its fiscal second quarter to cover costs for an ongoing workforce reduction that began on September 30. At the time, Sprint employed about 33,000 people.

Sprint said its 4G LTE network now covers 260 million people, while its 2.5 GHz LTE deployment, a an enhanced LTE effort called “Spark,”  now covers 92 million people, and is on track to reach 100 million by the end of the year.

Sprint said it drove 590,000 net additions in the quarter, coming way of 35,000 prepaid net adds and 827,000 wholesale net adds (thanks to MVNO deals), offset by postpaid net losses of 272,000.

FreedomPop, a startup that sells “free” mobile voice and data services to cost-conscious consumers and claims to have held discussions with U.S. cable operators, has booted up its own brand of Android-powered products that carry sub-$100 price points.

In a move that complements the company's distribution of refurbished Sprint devices and aims to fill the gap on low-cost Android mobile gear, the initial FreedomPop-branded product to ship is the Liberty (pictured), a 7-inch, 4-Gigabyte, Android-based WiFi-only phablet that sells for $89. The company notes that the Liberty is larger and less expensive than Apple’s first phablet product, the iPhone 6 Plus, which sports a 5.5-inch screen, and the Samsung Galaxy Note and its 5.7-inch screen. FreedomPop made the Liberty WiFi only to keep costs down, but said customers can tap into cellular by pairing it with $49 FreedomPop hotspot that supports 500 megabytes of free data per month.

FreedomPop will follow next month with the Frenzy, a $99 phablet that’s the same size as the Liberty, but adds LTE capabilities.

In the coming months, FreedomPop, which rides Sprint’s wireless network, will also introduce an $89 LTE Android phone, expanding on a higher-end lineup that already includes the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Note 3.

FreedomPop said all devices come with its free text and voice service – up to 200 voice minutes and 500 texts per month before tiered pricing plans apply.

In another cost-cutting move, all of these new FreedomPop-branded devices will not support a 3G fallback. But LTE availability is “now good enough that you’ll get ubiquitous coverage in most major markets,” said Stephen Stokols, FreedomPop’s CEO, noting that the company adds software that auto-connects users to WiFi when they are in the presence of a hotspot.

“The idea is to be ahead of the curve on LTE-only [products],” he said, estimating that FreedomPop has an 18-month lead on other carriers that are considering LTE-only offerings.

FreedomPop, founded in 2011, doesn’t disclose specific customer figures, but “it’s in the several hundreds of thousands, and growing pretty fast,” Stokols said. FreedomPop is on a trajectory to break the 1 million customer market sometime in 2015, he added.

Stokols told FierceWireless last month that FreedomPop has conducted M&A talks with a publicly traded telecom company that isn’t among the Tier 1 U.S. wireless carriers (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile US), but that the company’s preference is to build toward an IPO.

Cable Talks

U.S. cable operators don’t have access to their own cellular networks, but many have been aggressively deploying metro WiFi networks, possibly setting the stage for so-called “WiFi-first” wireless voice services that use cellular as a fallback.

Stokols said FreedomPop has held some discussions with cable operators, but notes that MSOs are interested in pursuing strategies that are disruptive and can scale up rapidly. But many MSOs are concerned that moving into wireless too aggressively will be a drag on their ARPUs, he said.

“There’s board-level sensitivity around that,” Stokols said. “But 12 months from now, I’d be shocked if a cable operator doesn’t do a WiFi First service.”

Alaskan service operator GCI said it will launch its 1-Gbps ‘fiber re:D’ broadband service to Juneau before the end of 2016, expanding on  initial plans announced late last year to bring 1-Gig to Anchorage by 2015.

Taking a page from the Google Fiber playbook that has been growing in popularity among other ISPs that are teeing up 1-Gig services, GCI will also target fiber re:D initially to areas within Anchorage and Juneau that demonstrate the most consumer demand.

“For more than 30 years, GCI has been committed to providing Alaskans with the latest communications technology, and providing Juneau with the fastest possible broadband speeds through our fiber re:D service will be another example of that,” Paul Landes, GCI’s SVP and GM of consumer services, said in a statement.

Earlier this month, GCI rolled out a free upgrade for its “re:D” broadband service that doubled upload speeds to 10 Mbps and increased the downstream to 250 Mbps, or 25%, in several markets.

GCI also touted a third-party study from Score Technologies showing that GCI’s Juneau LTE network averaged download speeds that were 47% higher than AT&T’s LTE and 76% higher than Verizon’s LTE. GCI recently inked an LTE roaming deal with T-Mobile.

GCI talked up the coming 1-Gig expansion and the LTE speed study at GCI Tech Quest, a local event and scavenger hunt held in partnership with several local businesses. GCI said the event gave away prizes totaling $15,000, a haul that included five Apple iPhone 5s, five Samsung Galaxy S5s, nine Apple iPad Air devices, and five round-trip airline tickets from Alaska Airlines.  

GCI of Alaska said the reach of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network is getting extended thanks thanks to a new roaming deal with a “national wireless operator” that the company confirmed is T-Mobile.

Calling it the “nation’s first LTE roaming partnership,” GCI said the agreement will provide its wireless subs with access to LTE “from Fairbanks, Alaska to Miami, Florida.” GCI did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

“GCI is committed to meeting the growing technology needs of Alaskans, and now our capabilities of providing top data speeds on a LTE network is extended across the country,” said Paul Landes, GCI senior vice president and general manager of consumer services, in a statement. “Alaskans want access to the LTE network whether they’re at the Alaska State Fair or at CenturyLink Field in Seattle cheering the Seahawks, today, we can provide that.” 

GCI ended the second quarter of 2014 with 143,400 total wireless lines in service, and generated total wireless revenues of $69 million, a figure comprised of wholesale wireless ($25 million), roaming and backhaul ($30 million) and USF support ($14 million).

T-Mobile U.S., which has about 50.5 million customers, says its 4G LTE network currently reaches 233 million people in 325 metro areas.

Verizon Communications continues to be a champion of LTE multicast, viewing the technology as “pivotal” to the mobile distribution of video and other forms of data, company EVP and CFO Fran Shammo said Tuesday at the Oppenheimer 17th Annual Technology, Internet & Communications Conference in Boston.

Although the technology is about a year out for Verizon, as it starts to embed it in chips in the fourth quarter of this year, it has the potential to deliver video to “millions of customers” without gobbling up all of the carrier’s spectrum and network capacity, he said, according to a transcript of his Q&A at the event.

“Multicast technology…is really, I think, the pivotal point that starts to change the way content is delivered over a mobile handset, which opens up content into the wireless world,” Shammo said.

On Verizon’s second quarter call last month, Shammo said Verizon Wireless plans to “go commercial” with an LTE multicast product as early as next year. LTE Multicast can deliver live TV signals wirelessly to mobile devices more efficiently than unicast delivery because multiple users can watch the same multicast stream being delivered from a cell site. Verizon demonstrated LTE Multicast in January in New York in the week leading up to the Super Bowl matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos.

Shammo said Verizon has 98% of the country covered with LTE, noting that 55% of customers are now on it and generate almost 79% of data usage. Verizon Wireless, he said, still has about 42 million customers that rely on 3G technology.

“That in itself is an engine for ourselves and other carriers to upgrade those customers into a 4G environment to experience the video,” he said.

Shammo also addressed Verizon’s wireline activities, including its ongoing process of converting customers from copper to fiber, a project that got underway more than two years ago. He estimated that Verizon’s completing about 300,000 copper-to-FiOS conversations a year, with another 1 million homes left to convert between now and into 2015.

Among benefits, the conversions are reducing t ruck rolls, providing faster Internet speeds, and generating between $13 to $15 more per month in revenue, Shammo said. “So it is a quick payback when we do each one of these conversions.”

Shammo was also asked if Verizon will follow Windstream Communications and perhaps spin ome of network assets, such as copper lines in more rural areas, as a real estate investment trust (REIT), a move that give the carrier some potentially significant tax breaks.

Shammo called it a “really nice transaction for Windstream, but believes it’s a “more complex” strategy for Verizon to pursue. “We actually have looked at that in detail. We continue to look at that,” he said.

Say you’re mingling in a room full of people, enjoying a tasty beverage. It’s a polite room of people who listen and respond during pauses. (So you’re in Canada!)

Out of nowhere, a mass of large, loud people enters the room, shouting instructions to each other. It’s like they’re oblivious to anyone who isn’t them.

In wireless protocols, the Canadians are WiFi. The Large Louds are LTE.

Here’s what happens next: The Canadians still want to converse. Their only option? Talk louder. The volume in the room goes up, and up, and up. The loud people keep piling in the door, with no signs of leaving. Suddenly, it’s not such a good time anymore.

This is one way to think about a red-hot topic touching WiFi people, known as LTE-U. The “LTE” stands for Long Term Evolution, a term mobile carriers use for fast, wireless broadband. The “U” stands for “unlicensed.”

Consider: About 200 Megahertz of spectrum exists for WiFi transmissions, including the extra 100 MHz in the 5-Gigahertz band granted by the Federal Communications Commission in March. Right now, that spectral slice is carrying 50% to 60% of the Internet’s traffic.

Mobile carriers, by contrast, maneuver their traffic over some 600 MHz of spectrum — licensed spectrum, which means they paid for it. (Dearly.) Some 2% to 3% of the Internet’s traffic moves within that slice.

So, right off the bat, WiFi is moving 30 times the load in one third of the space. That brings us to how WiFi works, and the fact that just because its spectral zone is unlicensed doesn’t mean it’s unregulated.

WiFi is built for spectrum-sharing. It waits to talk and adjusts its transmit power as part of a design goal that purposefully wants to be a good neighbor all of the time — partly because of regulations that govern things like transmit power and sharing.

LTE is different. For starters, it uses “tunneling protocols.” That means that when a device connects, a secret tunnel is instantly established between it and the carrier’s LTE network. Each data packet is both encrypted and encapsulated; the only visible parts are the packet’s source (who am I?) and destination (where am I going?).

Meanwhile, the LTE “control plane” — the servers and software that handle signaling and routing — is ceaselessly talking, back and forth, making sure everything’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

The concern is that LTE traffic will deliberately dump into the unlicensed territories, offloading giant blobs of traffic that can’t see or hear what’s already there — such as anything moving over WiFi.

Is this a real problem? Not yet. Could it be? Definitely. (O, Canada! We stand on guard for thee.)

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis at www.translation-please.com or multichannel.com/blog.

FreedomPop, a startup that targets cost-conscious consumers with a range of “free” mobile voice and data plans, said it has shifted to Sprint’s speedier Long Term Evolution network with the launch of an LTE-powered phone lineup that includes the Samsung Victory, Galaxy S3, and the Galaxy S4.

Like FreedomPop’s earlier 3G-focused service, the new LTE options will also feature a free component that provides 500 megabytes of data, 200 voice calls and 500 texts per month before tiered pricing plans apply.

FreedomPop also supports the iPhone 5 and a number of other Android smartphones and WiFi hotspot devices. FreedomPop’s first supported LTE device was the FreedomSpot 5580, a mobile hotspot that was launched last August.

In tandem, FreedomPop has launched a $20 per month “Unlimited Everything” plan that provides all-you-can eat talk, text and data, plus a free tethering feature that lets customers turn their LTE phones into mobile WiFi hotspots. The catch is that after a customer gobbles up 1 Gigabyte of data for the month, the device will shift down to 3G speeds.

Additionally, FreedomPop has unleashed a free, over-the-top communications app on Android that takes advantage of its free voice and text services, and allows users to port an existing phone number.

FreedomPop’s has more than 250,000 subscribers. Founded in 2011, FreedomPop has raised about $16 million.