Legislation aimed at bolstering wireless coverage in rural areas advanced in the U.S. Senate last week.
The Senate Commerce Committee passed the Rural Reasonable and Comparable Wireless Access Act, which would stipulate that rural networks must meet or exceed the strength and speed of networks in major urban areas.
“While we have made progress in bridging the digital divide, there are still many rural communities that do not have access to the internet,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., in a statement.
Canadian telecom Shaw Communications said it successfully wrapped up its first 5G technical trials in its native Calgary.
The company partnered with Nokia, CableLabs and Rohde & Schwarz to conduct trials over 28GHz millimeter wave spectrum as well as 3.5 GHz spectrum.
“5G preparation is happening this year already in North America, which is sooner than many expected,” said Nokia Mobile Networks President Marc Rouanne. “We will enable Shaw to offer very high speed with extremely fast response time that will allow robots and machines to communicate between themselves at the speed of light.”
Small Cell Forum last week announced 13 winners of its 2018 Small Cell Awards at its summit in London.
The Sprint LTE Magic Box, from Sprint and Airspan Networks, received top honors for residential commercial deployment, while Nokia won for enterprise deployments in shopping malls and public buildings.
“Our breakthrough Sprint Magic Box technology continues to be recognized for its innovation, ease of deployment and cost-efficiency in expanding and improving LTE coverage indoors,” Sprint CTO John Saw said in a statement.
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