Ed Mortimer, NextNav's vice president of government affairs, said Wednesday that all indications point toward the current FCC being interested in moving forward on an NPRM that could clear the way for the proposed use of lower 900 MHz spectrum to enable a “terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).
AT&T picked up 294,000 postpaid phone net adds in Q1, with a churn rate of 0.89%, it reported Wednesday, becoming the first of the major wireless carriers to release quarterly results. CEO John Stankey told analysts the numbers show that AT&T’s approach to serving its subscribers is working. He also said the carrier is happy with its progress in retiring aging copper lines.
AI and wireless leadership are “inextricably intertwined,” CTIA CEO Ajit Pai said Tuesday at a Punchbowl News event. Everything related to AI is “happening on wireless platforms in one way or another.” The U.S. needs not just data centers, but also wireless networks that can handle an explosion in AI traffic, he said.
U.S. Supreme Court justices largely seemed to support the government’s arguments during oral argument Tuesday that the way the FCC handed down data privacy fines wasn’t a violation of the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Legal experts have warned that if the FCC loses, it could remove the commission’s primary enforcement mechanism (see 2601120047).
The FCC approved last week NextNav's request to conduct tests relative to railroad operations of its proposed use of the 902-928 MHz band to enable a “terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). Oppenheimer, meanwhile, said FCC sign-off on NextNav’s service is likely.
NCTA on Monday slammed findings in a new GSMA report that use of the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi has had “limited uptake in the five years since it was launched” and remains “very low.” The report also noted that countries representing 80% of the world’s population plan to use the upper 6 GHz band for mobile wireless and suggested that there’s “space in the 6 GHz band for both Wi-Fi and mobile to evolve.”
A few complicated issues must still be worked through before an upper C-band auction in the summer of 2027, said Tim White, a lead aviation industry engineer on the proposed auction, in a recent interview. “We’ve been on the record about where we are and where we need to go,” said White, vice president of engineering and technology at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).
Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said he took the job reluctantly last year, and his first six months have been challenging. “I was very, very happily retired,” he said last week at the Semafor World Economy conference. But as a member of the board of directors at Verizon, he said, he was concerned about the state of the company, which was losing market share and had gone from first to last among the major carriers in market capitalization. Schulman was previously CEO of PayPal and replaced longtime Verizon chief Hans Vestberg in October (see 2510060045).
Leading Chinese drone-maker DJI told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that an FCC clamp down on drones from foreign companies could cost it $1.5 billion this calendar year alone. DJI rebutted claims by the government that the appeal is premature since the commission hasn’t acted on a petition for reconsideration (see 2603090009). DJI is challenging an FCC Public Safety Bureau notice from last year that added drones and components to the “covered list” of unsecure foreign companies (see 2602230027).
The FCC is seeking broad comment on the operations of the Universal Service Administrative Co. in a public notice quietly released Wednesday. The notice, by the Wireline Bureau and Office of the Managing Director, seeks comment on “potential reforms to the operations and management” of USAC. Comments are due May 15. The notice asks more than 30 questions.