Nokia added its voice to the growing chorus of handset makers that oppose a possible FCC mandate for ATSC 3.0 reception in smartphones, though the commission hasn't proposed one. “Such a mandate would present technical challenges and disserve the public interest,” said Nokia in a letter posted Friday in docket 16-142. Nokia, which sold its smartphone business to Microsoft, joins Ericsson and Motorola in arguing that 3.0 reception in smartphones is a bad idea because it would require handset form-factor changes that consumers would reject or would degrade cellular coverage performance (see 1709150039 and 1709130050). T-Mobile was the first to cite its opposition, alleging Sinclair is oversimplifying the complexities of building 3.0 into smartphones, and a mandate wouldn't serve the public interest (see 1709120020). Sinclair denies seeking a mandate but said overcoming complexities of 3.0 in smartphones is a worthy challenge. The FCC has a self-imposed deadline of a 2017 order authorizing 3.0 as a final voluntary standard (see 1702230060). Nokia is “actively working with several carriers to supply equipment for expeditious deployment of networks” supporting the 600 MHz band, the company wrote. For smartphones to receive 3.0, they would need to operate at “additional frequencies, possibly as low as 470 MHz,” Nokia said. If the same antenna is used to receive 3.0 signals in the 470-608 MHz band in addition to the 600 MHz band, “antenna performance is likely to degrade,” it said. “This antenna performance degradation can directly translate into significant loss in the coverage benefit typically provided by these lower frequencies.” Whatever “limited physical space” exists in a smartphone “should be available for more valuable uses than ATSC 3.0,” such as MIMO operation, for which there exists “very valid business justification,” said the company. “A new antenna design” will be needed, it said. “The ATSC 3.0 chip will also need to be accommodated on the device next to the cellular circuitry. The ATSC 3.0 receiver chain will need to be isolated from the cellular receiver chain to mitigate any interference issues.”
Sony Friday lifted the wraps off its first 8K broadcast camera to include three 8K sensors. It developed the UHC-8300 with “customer input provided by NHK,” which is planning the launch of 8K commercial broadcast services in 2018 as a prelude to 8K Super Hi-Vision coverage of the Tokyo Olympics in July 2020, Richard Scott, head of media solutions at Sony Professional Europe, told a news conference webcast live from Sony’s IBC booth in Amsterdam. “We expect this camera to be used not only for 8K production, but also for 4K production.” The Sony DADC New Media Solutions business, which offers digital supply chain services and physical disc replication, is being put under the wing of the Sony Professional Solutions Group, said Adam Fry, vice president-Sony Professional Europe. The move is in keeping with Sony Professional’s strategy to convert itself from a company known exclusively as a broadcast hardware products supplier to “one offering an equal balance of hardware and services within just a few years,” Fry said: It "will accelerate Sony to being a true services company.”
Days after Sinclair struck back against a T-Mobile “technical white paper” filed at the FCC that accused the broadcaster of oversimplifying the complexities of building ATSC 3.0 reception into smartphones (see 1709130050), Ericsson came to T-Mobile’s defense. Ericsson offered “additional comments” why it thinks those complexities would make a 3.0 mandate in smartphones a bad idea, even though the commission hasn’t proposed one and few commenters in the 3.0 proceeding have. The T-Mobile paper also drew the wrath of the AWARN Alliance, which accused the carrier of flip-flopping when it called 3.0-based emergency alerting “inferior” to that of the wireless industry's wireless emergency alerts (WEA) platform.
Motorola Mobility “overstates the complexities" associated with building ATSC 3.0 reception into smartphones (see 1709130050), said Robert Folliard, chairman of the Advanced TV Broadcasting Alliance of low-power TV interests. Folliard’s group is urging the FCC to require ATSC 3.0 reception in smartphones when 3.0 broadcasts become available to 25 percent of the U.S. population. Motorola said that policy position has the company “concerned” because mandating 3.0 smartphone functionality “without regard to consumer demand is not in the public interest,” and would involve “significant technical challenges and limitations.” But Folliard thinks “many of the same issues identified by Motorola are ones that carriers must solve in order to take advantage of the 600 MHz spectrum recently purchased in the auction,” he told us Wednesday. “Regardless, the challenge is worth unraveling since the upside to consumers is so high.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday blocking Canyon Bridge Fund’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor, supplier of smart connectivity products for Ultra HD and other applications, on national security grounds, said the White House. Canyon Bridge is a private equity fund with investors that include China Venture Capital Fund Corp., which is “owned by Chinese state-owned entities that manages industrial investments and venture capital,” said a White House statement. Trump blocked the sale under 1950's Defense Production Act, which authorizes the president to “suspend or prohibit certain acquisitions that result in foreign control of a United States business if he concludes, among other things, that there is credible evidence that the foreign interest exercising control might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States,” said the White House. Cited national security risks include “the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer,” the importance of semiconductor “supply chain integrity” to the U.S. government and the fact that the U.S. government buys Lattice products. Lattice representatives didn’t comment. The company's 8-K filing Sept. 1 at the SEC said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would recommend to Trump that he should block the deal. “Lattice remains of the view that the proposed transaction does not raise any national security concerns that cannot be addressed by the comprehensive mitigation measures that Lattice and Canyon Bridge have proposed to implement,” the company said then.
Motorola Mobility agrees with the FCC's “tentative conclusion” that the ATSC 3.0 transition needs no tuner mandate, and so is “concerned about calls from some parties (none of them equipment manufacturers)” that the commission require 3.0 receivers in smartphones, the company said in an ex parte letter posted Wednesday in docket 16-142.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration voluntary guidelines for safe deployment of autonomous vehicles, released Tuesday by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, put a lighter touch on federal oversight of self-driving cars than the guidance NHTSA issued a year ago under the Obama administration. The new report, called "Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety," makes DOT “processes more nimble by creating a flexible framework to help match the pace of private-sector innovation,” Chao told a ceremony webcast from the Mcity autonomous vehicle test center at the University of Michigan.
Building ATSC 3.0 functionality into smartphones takes more than just fast-tracking development of receiver chipsets, said T-Mobile in a “technical white paper” filed Monday at the FCC in docket 16-142. It takes aim at Sinclair plans to have 3.0 chipsets ready for commercialization in smartphones in time for the 2018 holiday selling season (see 1705210001). Sinclair's response is "we're not naive enough to believe you hand somebody a chip and suddenly you’ve got ATSC 3.0 on that phone,” Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, told us Tuesday.
The UHD Alliance will “soft-launch” for consumers ExperienceUHD.com this month as part of a broadened outreach to educate the public, Mike Fidler, new alliance president, told us at IFA. The alliance also will maintain its existing membership website. The new site will “hot-link” to each member manufacturer’s products that are certified by the alliance as Ultra HD Premium-compliant, he said. Streamed content from Amazon or Netflix won’t be on the site yet, he said. “We’re working with both our Netflix and Amazon partners as a way to identify maybe using the Ultra HD Premium logo” on their content, as both are founding alliance members, he said. Company representatives didn’t comment Monday. Tackling Ultra HD “interoperability” challenges will be an alliance priority under a new working group chaired by Sony Pictures Entertainment Chief Technology Officer Don Eklund, Fidler said. Of the 40,000 conversation threads studied, about 25 percent expressed some form of dissatisfaction with the Ultra HD experience, Fidler said. Part of the alliance’s “effort” on interoperability will be to “work across industry groups,” including the Blu-ray Disc Association, CTA, the Digital Entertainment Group and SMPTE, “to try to be sure we have a comprehensive approach,” Fidler said. The alliance estimates that consumer awareness of 4K technology is 70 percent or above, he said. “But HDR is below 50 percent.”
SiriusXM sees no “competitive issues” to block regulatory approval of paying $480 million for 19 percent of Pandora (see 1706090005), Chief Financial Officer David Frear told a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investor conference Friday. “I can't imagine why DOJ would step in the way.” Once the deal closes, under which SiriusXM will land three seats on the Pandora board, including chairman, “there are interesting strategic things that the two companies can do together,” Frear said: Most of the estimated 100 million cars on the road “are connected, and so we could engage them to the extent that there are people in those vehicles using the Pandora app and we could use that as a cross-marketing opportunity, right?”