Two Reports Remind How the US Can Continue Its Wireless Supremacy
An exchange from the classic cinematic experience known simply as “Jaws”:
Hooper: Well, uh, it doesn’t make much sense for a guy who hates the water to live on an island either.
Brody: It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.
Hooper: That makes a lot of sense.
Hooper delivered that last line sarcastically. But what Brody said does make a lot of sense. In life, nearly everything is a matter of perspective.
I moved from the US to Belize in December 2022. Now that I’m looking from the outside in? The changes to the way I look at the US have been profound.
It is also why you should listen to trusted others. You can get WAY inside your own head - which clouds your thinking. (Guilty, Your Honor.) Having someone else provide their perspective on yours can be a very good thing.
Despite some recent hiccups in the relationship, I certainly think Britain is a nation in whom we can place some real trust. Certainly when it comes to things from which they gain no advantage in lying to us.
And so it is with their recently generated Mobile Market Index (MMI):
“(A) comprehensive assessment of the environment facing Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in the United Kingdom, benchmarked against nine international peers: the United States, Germany, France, Spain, South Korea, Australia, Norway, Singapore and Hungary.
“The MMI measures the conditions under which operators invest and operate, and assesses how those conditions translate into outcomes for consumers and the wider market.
“The MMI separates four Operating Environment pillars from a fifth Consumer & Market Outcomes pillar, allowing the relationship between operating conditions and their consequent outcomes to be examined directly.”
Of course, our main competitor in the race to wireless Fifth Generation (5G) networks and beyond is China - and China is not included in the MMI. My guess is because China is China - and not very into sharing the deep-dive data the MMI analyzes.
But if we want to continue to lead China? We should take what the MMI says to heart:
“South Korea and Singapore lead a ten-nation mobile benchmarking study released this week, outperforming the United States, Germany, and every European market on both the quality of their operating environments….
“On Operating Environment, Singapore leads with a score of 0.698, South Korea second at 0.667, the United States third at 0.639….
“Consumer and Market Outcomes reshuffles the order significantly. South Korea leads at 0.747, Singapore second at 0.734, Norway third at 0.702. France climbs from ninth to fourth at 0.632. Germany holds fifth at 0.579. Spain rises to sixth at 0.473. Australia and the United States, both strong on operating environment, slip to seventh and eighth at 0.469 and 0.460….”
Our 8th spot in “Consumer and Market Outcomes?” Ain’t entirely our fault:
“The United States sits third on operating environment and eighth on consumer outcomes, a gap of five positions that is almost entirely explained by its size.
“Covering 3.8 million square miles of varied terrain - mountain ranges, plains, forests, and approximately 2 million square miles of territory with population densities under one person per square mile - at comparable quality to Singapore’s 277 square miles of dense urban landscape is not a policy failure.
“It is a physics and economics problem with no regulatory solution.”
But we did only place 3rd in “Operating Environment.” Which is the phrase the MMI uses to describe the regulatory environment.
By my math? 3rd isn’t 1st. Or even 2nd. There is always room for improvement. There is definitely room here in the US.
That is not to say we haven’t improved of late. We absolutely have.
I wasn’t a general fan of the 2025 Big Broke - oops, I mean Beautiful - Act (BBA). But it did specifically reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to auction off the wireless spectrum we need to continue to lead the planet in network development.
That was a huge improvement in our “Operating Environment.” But nowhere near huge enough.
We now return to the friendly confines of the US for further perspective. Behold a domestic entity - American Compass. Which just recently released…:
U.S. Needs More Commercial Spectrum to Lead on AI and Reindustrialization
In which they recommend…:
“The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)… requir(es) the auction of at least 800 MHz of licensed spectrum by 2034. (This is) inadequate for U.S. businesses to meet the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) and reindustrialization….
“The Trump administration should focus on transferring spectrum held by the federal government to the private sector and set an ambitious new goal to auction 1,000 MHz by January 2029.”
Yes, please.
All of that would be a dramatic improvement of the US’s “Operating Environment.”
And undoubtedly increase our chances of continuing to stay ahead of China in the perpetual wireless race.
Listening to friends - of the foreign or domestic variety - helps considerably with one’s perspective.
And in life, nearly everything is a matter of perspective.