CTIA officials stressed the importance of formal contracts between licensees and the 3.45 GHz relocation payment clearinghouse, in a call with FCC Wireless Bureau staff. “Appropriate oversight of the Clearinghouse can be assured by confirming that licensees covering some reasonable proportion of the total relocation liability have negotiated contracts with the Clearinghouse,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 19-348. “Because the percentage of the 3.45 GHz transition costs that will be owed by each licensee is directly proportional to the number of licenses acquired in the auction, identifying key stakeholders among the 3.45 GHz Service licensees is relatively simple,” CTIA said: “The top three winning bidders will be responsible for more than 80 percent of the transition costs and the top five winning bidders will be responsible for more than 90 percent.” The FCC last week awarded licensees won in the 3.45 GHz auction (see 2205040057).
The Wireless Innovation Forum is seeking “individuals interested in crafting comments in response to the current” FCC notice of inquiry on receiver standards, on behalf of the forum, CEO Lee Pucker told members in an email sent Thursday. “This topic seems to come up about every 10 years, with a similar NOI on 2003,” and a public notice by the FCC’s Technology Advisory Council in 2013, he said. Commissioners approved the NOI 4-0 last month (see 2204210049). “It's just standard operating procedure within the WInnForum to pull together a group such as this in response to any new NOI related to our mission statement, but scope of what they will comment, if anything, is still very much” to be decided, Pucker emailed Friday. “If they do decide to comment, nothing will be public until it goes through the ballot process so all member organizations can weigh in,” he said.
The FCC rejected T-Mobile’s proposed changes to the list of licenses that will be offered in the 2.5 GHz auction (see 2204270062), scheduled to start July 29. “After reviewing the ex parte filing, we decline to adjust the current inventory of licenses,” said a Friday notice by the Wireless Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics. “We do not anticipate any need to publish further revisions to the inventory, except for changes that may be required by disposition of pending Rural Tribal Priority Window (RTPW) applications.” The FCC said, “Extensive review of the current license data already has been conducted, and potential bidders have been advised to conduct their own further due diligence with respect to any offered licenses that are of interest to them, especially in light of the fact that the amount of unassigned area or unassigned spectrum for some licenses is very small.”
T-Mobile has no plans to raises rate for service despite inflation, CEO Mike Sievert said Thursday. T-Mobile has been locked in a battle with AT&T to sign up smartphone subscribers and AT&T said this week it will raise rates for some older plans (see 2205030066). “Investors, customers, and employees have all been asking: when will T-Mobile raise rates?” Sievert blogged: “Our answer is Price Lock. Even as the price of everything else is going up, the Un-carrier is making a commitment to customers joining T-Mobile that we won’t raise the price of their wireless rate plans.”
Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety urged FCC action on revised rules for radars in the 60 GHz band, the subject of an NPRM last summer (see 2110180062), in a call with an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “Advocates reiterated its support for expanding operational flexibility to enable the introduction of technology into motor vehicles to address the issue of hyperthermia deaths..., in particular children who have unknowingly been left in or entered vehicles without adult supervision,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 21-264. They “noted that radar-based occupant presence detection systems may be necessary for the safety of occupants when autonomous vehicles (AVs) are introduced to the fleet. Advocates foresees the need for AVs to be able to identify seat occupancy and restraint use so that all occupants are safely restrained before initiating any movements.”
The FCC Wireless Bureau adopted rules for a drive-test model, and parameters for the tests required of mobile providers receiving more than $5 million in annual support through the Alaska Plan. Only two providers, GCI and Copper Valley Wireless, exceed the threshold and must provide data, the Thursday order notes. Much of the item addresses various concerns raised by GCI, with some wins and losses. Only GCI filed comments responding to a notice on proposed rules. GCI expressed concerns that speed-test data "would not accurately represent the ability to place a voice call over a 2G network” and “proposed that, instead, providers demonstrate voice coverage by placing voice calls between five and 30 seconds in duration to a telephone number established for test calls,” the order says: “We find GCI’s suggestion to be a reasonable approach, and therefore we will require it. … Because GCI is the only provider subject to drive testing that has a 2G commitment and GCI’s particular 2G requirement is voice only, we agree with GCI that a test assessing the availability of voice service would be appropriate.” GCI lost on other calls. The bureau overrode GCI objections to a rule that at least 50% of drive tests must be conducted from a vehicle in motion. “GCI argues that, instead of basing frames on middle-mile and last-mile technologies, we should assign frames based only on the speeds a provider reports via its FCC Form 477 filings,” the bureau said. “We disagree. The Alaska Drive-Test Model’s integration of middle-mile and last-mile technologies is consistent with the Alaska Plan Order, the Commission’s rules, the provider performance plans that the Bureau approved, and the policy undergirding the Alaska Plan.” The bureau also asked for additional comment on a proposal to require mobile providers “subject to the drive-test requirement to submit new drive-test data consistent with the drive-test model and parameters if they fail to meet a buildout milestone and later seek to cure a compliance gap.” Comment dates will be set in a Federal Register notice. Representatives of the Alaska Telecom Association, meanwhile, spoke with aides to all four commissioners about the “importance of establishing a path forward” on the state plan. “The group discussed the success of the Alaska Plan in supporting the operation, upgrade, and expansion of both fixed and mobile telecommunication services in Alaska,” a filing said: “Plan participants have met or exceeded mid-term benchmarks and will be enabled to continue to improve services for Alaskans throughout the second half of the Plan.”
Dish Network appears to be behind schedule, both in its deployment of 5G and on its move to an open radio access network, said John Strand of Strand Consult after Dish said it's live in Las Vegas (see 2205040057). “With regard to the announcement that they made in relation to the Samsung agreement, it seems that they have had to admit that they cannot meet their deadline with OpenRAN,” Strand emailed Thursday. “They bought Samsung’s [virtual RAN] solution with a promise that it will be OpenRAN compliant at some point,” he said: “Virtualization and cloudification are the global trends. The challenge for OpenRAN players is to achieve the mix and match of vendors while ensuring performance. The OpenRAN optimization for substitutability, energy consumption, network performance, and security has yet to be proven whereas classic 3GPP [3rd Generation Partnership Project] network elements deliver that today. Dish’s story of mixing and matching vendors is not yet a reality.” Strand sees broader challenges ahead. The U.S. remains “an exciting 5G market with dynamism across the value chain,” but “there is no new US spectrum on the table and the FCC’s spectrum authority is about to expire, so policymakers need to step up if the US is to sustain its advantage,” he said.
T-Mobile acted Wednesday to broaden the appeal of its 5G fixed-wireless Home Internet product. The service will now be available for as low as $30/month for families subscribed to Magenta Max. T-Mobile will allow customers to test the service for 15 days for free and is offering to pay up to $500 to cover the cost of early termination fees when switching from another fixed provider. T-Mobile also said Home Internet will be available for all business customers in its wireless footprint. T-Mobile is also offering inducements to switch, including 50% off YouTube TV for a year. CEO Mike Sievert said “with Internet Freedom, we’re taking on Big Internet and bringing the Un-carrier movement to broadband." "The most significant announcements were about new pricing and bundling strategies for fixed wireless broadband,” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors: “The initiative will drive faster broadband growth, but with lower ARPU [average revenue per user] . Unclear whether that will be viewed as positive or negative for T-Mobile. It will be viewed as negative for Cable.” T-Mobile said last week it added 338,000 high-speed internet customers in Q1, bringing its total to just under 1 million (see 2204270061).
The Wireless ISP Association board tapped David Zumwalt, an engineer from the industry's business side, as WISPA’s new president. “Zumwalt will oversee the Association’s strategic and daily affairs, including staff for advocacy, membership, policy, and events,” WISPA said Wednesday. He replaces Claude Aiken, who was an aide to former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn before being named president in 2018. Zumwalt was chief operating officer of Broadband VI, an ISP in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Before that he was CEO/executive director of the University of the Virgin Islands Research and Technology Park Corp. He also founded and was CEO of CNet, an RF engineering and software company. “It is a crucial time in the industry, and his history of success in several different leadership roles will serve our members during this unprecedented time of broadband growth, government funding, and increased private investment,” WISPA Chairman Todd Harpest said of Zumwalt.
The Wireless Infrastructure Association supported a T-Mobile request that it be allowed to use stage 2 mobile support through a program providing emergency relief to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to pay for the deployment of distributed antenna systems (see 2204180025). “DAS-based deployments are a critical element of reliable, resilient networks because they facilitate high quality connections indoors,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-143: “Granting this simple clarification will ensure service providers on the Islands are able to use every tool available to meet the Stage 2 goals of increasing network resiliency and reliability.”