FCC Chairman Ajit Pai condemned T-Mobile’s June 15 outage as a “failure,” with the carrier not following “several established network reliability best practices that could have either prevented the outage or at least mitigated its impact.” The outage, caused by equipment failure and made worse by misconfigured network routing, lasted more than 12 hours, disrupting calling and texting, including to 911, and data in some areas, the FCC said Thursday, releasing a staff report. The Public Safety Bureau estimated at least 41% of calls failed during the outage, including 23,621 to 911. The bureau plans to release a public notice to remind companies of best practices, and will contact major transport providers to discuss network practices and help smaller providers, the agency said. T-Mobile apologized after the outage (see 2006180064). "Immediately following this incident back in June we took the necessary steps to address the issues that created the service interruption and remain committed to continual improvement," the carrier's spokesperson said Thursday.

CTA opposes any DOD move to launch a nationalized 5G network, the association told the agency. “CTA respectfully urges the Department not to substitute the tried-and-true market-based model that has worked for decades with an untested top-down framework that would place America’s 5G leadership at risk,” said comments this week in response to a controversial DOD request for information (see 2010200055). “CTA’s members and other commercial actors are best situated to invest capital and innovate to meet communications needs, and to ensure that our networks remain secure and resilient. If allowed to do so, they will maintain America’s wireless leadership in the 5G era and beyond.” Institute for Policy Innovation research fellow Bartlett Cleland blogged Thursday that a government network isn’t the key to U.S. leadership on 5G. “DoD seems to be shockingly unaware of the extent of technological innovation and progress in this country and how it came to be,” he said: “The internet, broadband, wireless, online commerce, and innovation in general have made great progress, but not because of government ‘leadership,’ military or otherwise.” FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks were critical of a DOD-nationalized 5G network during Technology Policy Institute's virtual conference Thursday (see 2010220055). Carr said the idea seems to reflect beliefs several years out of date that the U.S. is falling behind China in 5G. In the past three years, "we have turned things around," he said.

Comments on a Further NPRM clearing the 3.45-3.55 GHz band for 5G are due Nov. 20, replies Dec. 7 in docket 19-348, said Wednesday's Federal Register. FCC commissioners approved the FNPRM 5-0 in September (see 2009300034).

Verizon could be the big winner in the upcoming C-band auction, with bids in the $16 billion range, MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett told investors Wednesday: “Who is going to bid against them? AT&T doesn’t have any money. T-Mobile doesn’t need more spectrum (although perhaps they’ll bid anyway).” Moffett said the importance of midband spectrum is increasingly clear. “That’s a big part of why we’ve been so bullish about T-Mobile,” he said. “Their 2.5 GHz spectrum gives them a huge head start. But the stars may be aligning for Verizon to at least be a close second.”

Crown Castle urged the FCC to approve the draft compound expansions order, set for a commissioner vote Tuesday (see 2010060060). “Amending the FCC’s rules to allow streamlined processing under Section 6409(a) of the Spectrum Act for requests that include ground excavation or deployment up to 30 feet outside the existing site boundaries will dramatically speed up the application process for these siting expansions,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 19-250. The impact will be felt immediately, the company said. NATOA earlier raised concerns (see 2010200034) with an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr.

The Open Technology Institute at New America is disappointed the FCC didn’t propose to “authorize or require” white space databases to utilize terrain-based propagation models, such as the Longley-Rice irregular terrain model, to “take account of real-world terrain and clutter in the local area where operators request use,” the group told an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr. OTI supports authorizing fixed devices to use channels immediately adjacent to TV operations, provided they maintain 3 MHz separation from the adjacent TV channel, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 20-36: “Extensive field tests and laboratory measurements by Microsoft have demonstrated that three megahertz of separation between a fixed [white spaces] signal and a TV broadcast channel is sufficient to avoid harmful interference to TV viewers at power levels even greater than 100 milliwatts.”

Adopt 2.5 GHz auction procedures that promote price discovery and “efficient assignment of licenses” through a simultaneous multiple round (SMR) auction format, CTIA asked the FCC. The group met with Office of Economics and Analytics staff, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-120. Price discovery is especially important “in the 2.5 GHz context where the information on the value of the white spaces is limited given that much of the spectrum is subject to long-term leases and the encumbrances vary license-by-license,” CTIA said. An SMR auction would be an “effective tool for the Commission to use to auction irregularly shaped Educational Broadcast Service white spaces,” it said.

Verizon agreed to buy "certain assets" of Bluegrass Cellular, a rural wireless operator with 210,000 customers in central Kentucky, Verizon said Monday. The deal requires FCC approval and other conditions. It’s expected to close late this year or early next, Verizon said.

The Competitive Carriers Association mostly supports the proposed 5G Fund order but seeks changes, said a filing posted Monday in docket 20-32. “Requiring legacy support recipients to immediately begin deploying 5G at 35/3 Mbps in rural America in 2021 would be unreasonable, particularly as many carriers have already completed their 2021 budgets, some carriers have already placed their equipment purchases for the year, and others have already submitted network plans to states that retain [eligible telecommunications carrier] oversight authority,” CCA said: To the extent that the draft is “intended to enable legacy support recipients to have greater flexibility in spending support towards 5G during this interim period” it should be “clarified to more explicitly allow for flexible use of legacy support.” CCA spoke with aides to the Republican FCC commissioners and staff from the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force, Office of Economics and Analytics and Wireline Bureau. Commissioners vote Oct. 27 (see 2010060060).

Oppositions to petitions for reconsideration by CTIA and APCO on FCC wireless 911 location accuracy rules are due Nov. 3 in docket 07-114, replies Nov. 13, says Monday's Federal Register. Commissioners approved updated rules for finding the vertical location of wireless callers to 911 in July over a partial dissent by Jessica Rosenworcel (see 2007160055).