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This year’s Connected America event has kicked off in Texas
The second annual Connected America event is underway at the Irving Convention Center in Texas, bringing together leaders from the telecommunications field and public-sector leaders, along with non-profits, suppliers, providers, and manufacturing leaders.
Jose Ortero, the vice president of 5G Americas, began the event with a keynote speech and reminded attendees that the country is “less than five (or) six years away from 6G.”
“One of our main commitments as an industry is to explain to the government the need that we have (with) spectrum,” Ortero said, and added that the United States needs to do more when it comes to providing mid-band spectrum.
Ortero was then joined by a panel to discuss the American mobile landscape. The panel included Karmen Rajamani, the vice president of government affairs at the Wireless Infrastructure Association, Amanda Toman, the director of the innovation fund at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Yigal Elbaz, a senior vice president and network CTO at AT&T.
During the panel, Toman laid out a roadmap to the remaining $1.3 billion that her agency is set to award to advance broadband builds across the United States.
“We’re going to have additional opportunities, two additional opportunities this calendar year, for industry to submit for funding opportunities to enhance the supply chain,” she said, and added that one funding chance would be focused on specific hardware, and the other would focus on software that can increase efficiencies.
“We hope that we get a lot of interest from industry players,” she said.
Connected America, an event that’s part of the Total Telecom portfolio, will continue until Wednesdays, March 13, when the event concludes after dozens of panel discussions that will focus on topics like middle-mile fiber builds, tribal connectivity, sustainability, what comes next after the potential lapse of the Affordable Connectivity Program, along with much more.
The event expects to bring together thousands of attendees, scores of exhibitors, and hundreds of organizations.
Those not at the event can track news and updates about Connected America by following the hashtag #ConnectedAmerica.
This article was originally published by Brad Randall (brad.randall@totaltele.com) on Total Telecom’s sister website, Broadband Communities.
Keep up with all the action on social media with #ConnectedAmerica
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