The Competitive Carriers Association asked the FCC to tweak rules for a 3.45 GHz auction to provide smaller licenses than were proposed in the draft, set for a commissioner vote March 17 (see 2102240063). CCA representatives met with aides to Commissioners Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks, said a posting Thursday in docket 19-348. "Adopt 10-megahertz channels rather than the proposed 20-megahertz channels,” CCA urged: “With only 100 megahertz of spectrum available, ten-megahertz licenses would encourage broader participation from smaller providers and create more opportunities to win licenses, while still allowing larger carriers to acquire up to 40 megahertz of spectrum.” CCA also urged licensing the band by county rather than larger partial economic areas.
El Paso retuned its 800 MHz radios last week, and “all public safety retunes across the entire country have now been completed,” T-Mobile told the FCC. The process, begun in 2005, “is now virtually complete,” the carrier said in a report posted Wednesday in docket 02-55. T-Mobile last week asked the FCC to declare this done (see 2103010029).
UScellular CEO Laurent Therivel sought a 3.45 GHz auction with similar rules as the C-band auction, but with smaller license sizes, in a call with FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. “Adopt 10X10 MHz licenses as opposed to 5X20 MHz,” said Wednesday's posting in docket 19-348: That “provides more opportunities for more competitors to win licenses.” Therivel urged county-sized licenses.
More Wi-Fi advocates defended the FCC's April 6 GHz order, in an amicus brief (in Pacer) Tuesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in docket 20-1190. Commission "engineers spent years assessing technical analyses and arguments from parties on all sides,” said Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Microsoft, NCTA and the Wi-Fi Alliance. “The [6 GHz] Order embodies a careful, conservative decision, based on a massive technical record, to unlock the benefits of next-generation unlicensed technologies while protecting licensed users from harmful interference.”
Ericsson North America CEO Niklas Heuveldop cited the importance of the proposed 3.45 GHz auction and making midband spectrum the agency’s top 5G focus, speaking with acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Heuveldop supported open radio access networks, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 21-63. “The policy of the U.S. should continue to be technology neutral,” Ericsson said: “The U.S. has clearly demonstrated that open and intense competition, not government mandates, is the most effective way to mobilize the telecom industry.”
Aerospace representatives have concerns about the draft order on shared use of the 3.1-3.55 GHz band, set for a vote March 17 (see 2102240063), they told an aide to acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Industry needs access to nonfederal experimental licensees in the 3.45-3.55 GHz band after a proposed auction, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-348. “A solution put in place before the auction commences is critical to ensure that all parties bidding will have full information regarding the coordination framework,” said the Aerospace Industries Association, Ball Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and others: Make clear “good-faith coordination requires parties using the spectrum to accommodate the other party when planning operations so as to minimize impacts on the other party while taking into account the parties’ relative priority of spectrum access.”
Network “slicing” will be a “crucial enabler” of new business models and a “key concept to empower the potential of 5G,” reported ABI Research Tuesday. Communications service providers can use network slicing to offer “varied service levels of network availability, throughput, latency, level of security, and several other performance indicators,” it said. “This lays the groundwork for a more controllable and flexible connection environment without modifying the underlying infrastructure's properties that provide the raw network capabilities.” It projects 5G network slicing will generate $20 billion in global revenue by 2024. 5G slicing “enables vertical partners to bring to market a wider range of business services based on network slices that are customized in line with required service-level agreements and network key performance indications,” said analyst Don Alusha.
China Telecom Americas asked the FCC for an administrative hearing on the decision to revoke its Communications Act Section 214 authorizations, in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 20-109. “The process that the Commission proposes to follow in this case ignores the Commission’s own rules and precedents, and deprives CTA of a property interest in its authorizations without the due process of law required by the Constitution,” the carrier said. “Until now, the Commission has consistently interpreted its own rules as requiring that issues in revocation proceedings be designated for hearing, and the Order neither acknowledged that precedent nor offered any rationale for departing from it.”
Broadcom, Cisco, Facebook, Intel and Qualcomm proposed an FCC “compromise” for very-low-power portable operations throughout the 6 GHz band. They proposed that devices must meet an out-of-band emissions level of -37 dBm/MHz, measured by root mean square at 5925 MHz and prioritize operations in channels above 6105 MHz, said their filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-183.
Public safety agencies using FirstNet grew from 9,000 in FY 2019 to 13,000 in FY 2020, and connections doubled to 1.5 million, it reported to Congress. The network covered 54% of Americans in rural areas, said the report, posted Monday. The authority said it invested $200 million in the network, beyond the work of AT&T.