AT&T CEO John Stankey is optimistic that the FCC under new Chairman Brendan Carr will make more spectrum available for full-power, licensed use, though the business leader sounded a note of caution about the round of tariffs that President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday.
With Congress fighting over whether DOD spectrum will be reallocated for commercial use (see 2502270064), experts agreed Wednesday that putting a value on federal spectrum remains difficult.
The FCC will focus on making GPS and 911 calls more reliable at its March 27 open meeting, Chairman Brendan Carr announced Wednesday. The meeting will be the second with Carr at the helm. Draft meeting items are expected to be posted Thursday.
The satellite industry hopes for a better reception from President Donald Trump's administration than it got under former President Joe Biden concerning satellite broadband as a part of the BEAD program (see 2412130011), Boston Consulting Group’s Mike French said Wednesday. His comments came as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick promised a “rigorous review” of the BEAD program (see 2503050067).
The antitrust policies of President Donald Trump's second administration continue to take shape, though it's expected that the FTC and DOJ will be less aggressive in rejecting mergers compared with Joe Biden's administration, experts said Tuesday during an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation webinar.
The move to open radio access networks (ORAN) is happening, but it will require continuing focus on interoperability and scale, O-RAN Alliance Chair Abdurazak Mudesir said Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. “If we’re not able to scale the commercial deployment,” ORAN won’t “be worth the effort,” said Mudesir, group chief technology officer at Deutsche Telekom. The alliance held a separate event as part of MWC.
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) and other users of the 1675-1680 MHz band raised interference concerns in response to a January notice from the FCC (see 2501080067). The agency is seeking to refresh the record on the future of the band for shared use between federal incumbents and nonfederal fixed or mobile operations. It initially received comment in 2019 on reallocating the band for 5G, as urged by Ligado (see 1905090041). Comments were posted Monday in docket 19-116.
The FCC and two groups that support FirstNet asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to stay the FCC’s order giving use of the 4.9 GHz band to the FirstNet Authority, and indirectly AT&T. The briefs were filed in response to the request for a stay by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), the National Sheriffs' Association and the California State Sheriffs' Association.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr told the Mobile World Congress on Monday that he will push to simplify the regulatory regime that carriers face in the U.S. The FCC also must make enough spectrum available for 5G so that “billions and billions of dollars” are invested in networks, he said. “We need more certainty both in America and Europe."
The FCC posted Friday its notice of inquiry concerning the upper C band and the NPRM asking questions in preparation for an AWS-3 auction, both of which commissioners approved 4-0 on Thursday (see 2502270042). As indicated during the meeting, the NPRM now contains a section on a possible tribal priority window that wasn’t proposed in the draft.