Iridium wants to keep up to 10 of its first-generation broadband constellation satellites in storage orbit while it begins installing its second-generation Next constellation. An FCC International Bureau filing Thursday said Iridium needs 30 days of special temporary authority starting Tuesday for the storage orbit at roughly 763 kilometers, 15 kilometers below mission altitude. It said the first-generation satellites will stay there as spares and eventually be deorbited on a rolling basis. The company said the first-generation satellites won't operate as part of its mission constellation while they're in storage orbit.

Seventy-eight percent of U.S. and U.K. consumers say they would prefer their ISPs to supply them with Wi-Fi gear, versus buying it themselves, in a survey commissioned by AirTies, which provides premium in-home wireless systems. Forty-three percent reported areas in their households where internet service doesn’t work and 54 percent have called their ISP to complain about their home internet or Wi-Fi. The survey was based on 1,050 responses from consumers with multiple Wi-Fi users per home and was conducted by Qualtrics, said an AirTies news release. “Notably, 74 percent of respondents said they would consider upgrading to a faster tier of Internet service if they were ensured better speed and coverage in every room of their home or apartment; and 77 percent said they would be willing to pay an extra monthly fee for better Wi-Fi.”

Sales of 4G IoT cellular modules will peak within two years when 5G modules hit the market, with the automotive market accounting for the majority of IoT cellular modules through 2025, said a Strategy Analytics report Thursday. Sales of 5G modules will reach an inflection point in 2024 when they begin to outsell 4G modules, it said. Large-scale, machine-type communications won’t be in the first release of the 5G standard, said analyst Andrew Brown, but critical components such as ultra-low latency and high reliability will be standardized in the first release and completed by 2018. Low latency and long modem battery life are some of the benefits of 5G networks that will open up possibilities for IoT cellular devices and enable use cases such as remote surgery with sense of touch and real-time video, said analyst Matt Wilkins.

Nokia Bell Labs and the University of Oulu, Finland, established a research and training center for wireless infrastructure for 5G and beyond, they said in a Wednesday announcement. An aim of the center is to train talents for the needs of a digital society and to develop future technologies for an era where networks have more capacity, energy efficiency, application awareness and built-in self-optimization, they said. Early research efforts will target new radio technologies for 5G, they said, and a project focusing on 5G radio frequency integrated circuit design, a 5G test network and system development activities has begun.

Despite the "rocky start" between President Donald Trump and Silicon Valley on the immigration order, the new administration's focus on policy, regulatory and tax changes can be "especially good" for the technology industry, said American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow Bret Swanson in a Friday blog post. He said "long overdue tax reform" will allow big tech companies to "redeploy hundreds of billions of dollars of capital" held overseas into R&D and other investments in the U.S. He said "a return to sanity" at the FCC would spur network infrastructure investment into 5G technology and help boost broadband and support future innovation like self-driving cars and digital health. The tech industry can "enthusiastically" support most of these policy changes, but Swanson said the administration can also learn a lot. "If it listens to technology firms, it will likely gain a deeper appreciation for the contributions of immigrant technologists and entrepreneurs," he wrote. "It might also pick up on a cultural strength of many technology firms, where collaboration, instead of all-out confrontation, is rewarded with positive-sum growth." He said the two sides are "unlikely to succeed without each other." Swanson didn't outright criticize Trump's executive order on the travel ban, but said the administration has shown an ability to "correct mistakes." A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday unanimously upheld a district judge's suspension of that travel ban (see 1702100042).

Cisco’s Tuesday forecast for mobile data traffic growth offers “some positive read-throughs to the telecommunications infrastructure providers, namely the tower sector,” said Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche in an email to investors Thursday. “We believe this report’s findings also have positive implications for other parts of the ecosystem including fiber players and data center companies.” Cisco said mobile data traffic’s share within total IP traffic will more than double by 2021 from its 2016 share, while average mobile data speeds will more than triple. It forecast that large-scale deployments of 5G infrastructure will begin affecting mobile data traffic in 2020-2021 (see 1702070040). The forecast for 5G “bodes well for [tower companies], especially those exposed to the small cell area” like Crown Castle, Fritzsche said. “While the formal standard of 5G will not be set until 2020, we do know the critical elements of the 5G infrastructure will be small cells and fiber.”

Gilat Satellite Networks and Airbus will jointly work on developing a Ka-band electronically steerable antenna for in-flight connectivity applications, Gilat said in a news release Thursday. Development work on the wing-embedded antenna array will include design, manufacturing and testing.

Along with the Galaxy 28, SES-3 and Telesat T12V satellites, Gogo subsidiary AC BidCo wants to add the ARSAT-2 to its pending application to modify its earth stations aboard aircraft (ESAA) license (see 1701100014). In an FCC International Bureau filing Wednesday, AC BidCo said the Argentine-licensed satellite at 81 degrees west orbit would provide coverage of North America. In a separate filing Wednesday, the company asked for 60 days of special temporary authority, starting March 1, to allow as many as 200 ESAA terminals to communicate with the satellite over the Ku-band while its license amendment application is pending.

Large-scale deployments of 5G infrastructure are likely to begin in 2020 and will begin to have an impact on mobile data traffic the following year, Cisco reported Tuesday; 4G will account for 79 percent of all mobile data traffic in 2021, while 5G will account for 1.5 percent that year. And 4G will account for 58 percent of mobile connections in 2021, up from 26 percent in 2016. Mobile data traffic will be 20 percent of total IP traffic in 2021, up from 8 percent in 2016. Mobile network connection speeds are to increase to 20.4 Mbps in 2021, up from 6.8 Mbps in 2016. Machine-to-machine connections will be 29 percent of all mobile connections in 2021, up from 5 percent in 2016, Cisco said. That increase in M2M connections will occur because of general growth in the use of IoT, it said. “With the proliferation of IoT, live mobile video, augmented and virtual reality applications, and more innovative experiences for consumer and business users alike, 5G technology will have significant relevance not just for mobility but rather for networking as a whole,” said Vice President-Service Provider Marketing Doug Webster in a news release. “Broader and more extensive architectural transformations involving programmability and automation will also be needed to support the capabilities 5G enables, and to address not just today's demands but also the extensive possibilities on the horizon.”

That 5G will support 1-Gbps data throughput rates suggests that TV and video delivery likely will become a “core capability” of next-generation 5G wireless services, Strategy Analytics reported Monday. “Combining 5G with other networking enhancements and technologies would allow operators to support TV-equivalent services” that could “eat into” the $500 billion global TV and video market opportunity currently served by pay-TV and terrestrial broadcast service providers, it said. “Data rates get the headlines, but other network technologies will also make or break the business case for 5G TV services,” it said. “The efficiency of the end-to-end network will determine whether 5G TV is possible.” But early demonstrations suggest 5G TV “will arrive sooner or later in many parts of the world,” it said.