Pivotal Commware Applauds Bipartisan Bill to Support U.S. Telecommunications Innovation
Posted on February 6, 2020 | Pivotal Commware
Pivotal champions U.S.-led 5G innovation and is pleased that its voice was heard in a series of discussions over the past year with members of the White House Administration, Senate, Congress, and government agencies about the importance of U.S. telecommunications innovation amid mounting competition among global superpowers. Pivotal supports the resulting bipartisan bill introduced to legislation on January 14 to encourage and support U.S. telecommunications innovation.
The Utilizing Strategic Allied (USA) Telecommunications Act – sponsored by Senators Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), John Cornyn (R-TX), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) – would require the FCC to direct at least $750 million from new auctioned spectrum licenses to create an O-RAN R&D Fund to spur movement towards open-architecture, software-based wireless technologies and funding of innovative “leap-ahead” technologies in the U.S. mobile broadband market. It would also create a $500 million Multilateral Telecommunications Security Fund available for ten years to accelerate the adoption of trusted and secure equipment globally and to encourage multilateral participation and require reports for Congress on use of proceeds and progress against goals to ensure ample oversight. The bill also calls for increasing U.S. leadership in international standards efforts, harmonization of new commercial spectrum allocations, and O-RAN interoperability.
Pivotal’s support for the bill does not diminish its interests in collaborating and participating in the global telecommunications ecosystem, especially with those who share its goal of building open, interoperable networks. To that end, Pivotal is actively involved with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the global standards body that develops and governs protocols for mobile telephony, and recently led efforts to secure the 3GPP’s formal adoption of standard open beam modeling specifications. The new specification enables operators, network equipment vendors, and technology providers to implement standardized, open and interoperable AI and machine learning driven optimization routines as well as specialized, value-added optimizations while maintaining interoperability. In addition, Pivotal is a working member of the O-RAN Alliance – a worldwide group of mobile operators, vendors, and research institutions whose mission is to lead the industry towards intelligence, open, virtualized, and fully interoperable networks, where it led efforts to introduce “beam attributes” to preserve multi-vendor network interoperability.