AT&T and Verizon will hold off on rolling out 5G within 2 miles of airports when the rest of their 5G networks go live Wednesday – a move lauded by the White House.

"As the nation’s leading wireless provider, we have voluntarily decided to limit our 5G network around airports," Verizon said Tuesday. "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and our nation’s airlines have not been able to fully resolve navigating 5G around airports, despite it being safe and fully operational in more than 40 other countries."

​AT&T expressed similar frustration.
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"At our sole discretion, we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA to provide further information about our 5G deployment, since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment," an AT&T spokesperson said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We are launching our advanced 5G services everywhere else as planned with the temporary exception of this limited number of towers.”

AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile will put down 3G for good this year. Even if you don’t have a 3G phone anymore (and chances are you don’t), the technology most certainly changed your life 

The history of the world is divided into two eras:
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B3G (Before 3G): During this time, cellphones were primarily used for talking and texting. Sure, you could load a website but you could also snowshoe from New York to Alaska in the same amount of time.

CBE (Cellular Broadband Era): Once the heavens opened and the cell towers ushered in 3G, we got it all: speedy mobile web browsing, apps that let you summon a car (or burrito) to your door and an endless stream of selfies. And it only got faster as time went on.

Starting next month, the third-generation wireless networks that served as a rocket booster for the smartphone will be turned off forever.

Consumer advocates say the 3G shutdown will leave some of society’s most vulnerable people without critical communications tools. Many devices have moved to 4G networks and newer phones are now moving onto 5G. But a motley assortment still relies on the more rudimentary 3G service and consumer advocates are urging the Federal Communications Commission to slow the change, which is set to start in February 2022. Older and low-income Americans are more likely to be affected by the shift. If they don’t upgrade in time, their phones and life-alert devices won’t be able to call 911 or other emergency services, government regulators warn. Companies have long planned to phase out 3G networks to free up valuable resources for 5G networks, which carriers say will bring faster speeds and allow more mobile devices to connect than ever before. Phone carriers have resisted slowing the transition, arguing that they have warned for years that the transition is coming and that they’ve taken extensive steps to ensure that their customers aren’t disconnected. The FCC so far has taken a largely passive approach to the transition. The commission is “reviewing the record that’s been compiled on this issue,” said Paloma Perez, a spokeswoman for the FCC. In the meantime, consumer advocates are focusing on alerting city governments about the transition and how it might disproportionately affect low-income and elderly Americans, so they can take inventory of who in their communities might need to upgrade.

​Cloud-computing giants and phone companies have decided they need each other to drive the market for 5G business services.

Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Corp. have all signed partnerships with telcos in recent months as they seek new opportunities amid slowing growth in demand for data storage. Telcos, including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., are also looking to revive flagging revenue while tapping into cloud computing's ability to make super-fast 5G networks more efficient and cheaper to run.

"The cloud companies need to reinvent themselves," said Omdia analyst Vlad Galabov.

​"Communications service providers have the same thing — everyone has a mobile phone, a network — so both have saturation."
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The parties are working together to bring computing functions such as data processing onto the 5G network, closer to where data is generated. This system, known as multi-access edge computing, or MEC, enables partners to offer enterprise services such as real-time analytics, manufacturing automation and live product tracking.

Faster speeds and improved reliability, paired with the COVID culture shift, every possible industry will shift to full or partial remote work. The only way for businesses to function virtually is through Cloud Services. Simplified Communications recommends shifting to the Cloud for:

• cloud-based phone services
• company communications and scheduling
• company file storage

Our agents are happy to chat with you about the implications, costs and logistics of using Cloud Services. Whether you make the shift now, or in the future, it will be a necessary evolution based on telecommunications trends. 

Have you noticed how it seems like your phone and online platforms are reading your mind? Every click and view is providing information to Artificial Intelligence, that's not really "mind" reading, but rather, it's reading through "mined" data to predict if you need food delivered to your office right now, or if you're ready to buy that new espresso maker. 

Technology has barely scratched the surface of what is to come in intuiting what your customers need before they even know they need it. 

Review your company's first impression online and through the phone--are you making it easy for customers to get their needs met? We can help. 

Want more details on the current and coming telecom trends? Learn more:

Simplified Communications keeps businesses up to speed with the latest in Internet and Phone trends. We simplify your business by identifying which trends should be adopted, and which trends will quickly fade. 

We will continue to see trends related to COVID-19 pushing office workers home, and consumers online.

While the coronavirus continues to spread, 5G coverage makes its rounds around the globe on schedule. This is a crucial time to step up your company's technology to keep pace with increased demands and consumer expectations. ​

This was supposed to be the year 5G went mainstream. Huge swaths of the world would be blanketed with coverage. Every major handset maker -- including Apple -- would offer a wide variety of 5G phones. After years of hype and last year's early deployments, consumers would finally start to enjoy the benefits of the super-fast wireless technology in a real way. 

Then the novel coronavirus struck. 

The virus, which causes a pneumonia-like disease called COVID-19, quickly spread across the globe, causing cities and entire countries to issue lockdowns to slow its advance. China, where COVID-19 was first detected in late 2019, shut down first, jamming up production of iPhones and other products. The rest of the world soon followed suit, and the global economy all but ground to a halt.
"In our lifetimes we've never seen a faster economic collapse," Strategy Analytics analyst Ken Hyers said.

The result is a shattering of the buoyant optimism of just six months ago. Millions of people are out of work, and the world has recorded over 10 million COVID-19 infections. But even if the coronavirus has slowed down the rollout of 5G in heavily hit areas such as the US, it's not going to stop 5G's progress. ​