Attorney General William Barr recused himself from overseeing an eventual decision whether DOJ should block T-Mobile’s proposed buy of Sprint, industry officials said Tuesday. In a December filing with the Office of Government Ethics, Barr reported holding a T-Mobile bond valued at up to $50,000 and other T-Mobile and Sprint bonds. Barr earlier recused himself from DOJ review of AT&T/Time Warner (see 1901110028). Justice didn’t comment.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Monday on a waiver request by MiMOMax Wireless allowing its Tornado radios to use emission designator W1W. The MiMOMax narrowband radio is certified for use under parts 15, 27 and 101 of FCC rules, and the company wants certification for part 90 private land mobile radio bands, said a public notice. Comments are due May 29, replies June 13, in docket 19-122.

The FCC should modify its reconfiguration proposal to use only auctions for partial economic areas (PEA) licenses in its price index for the 37, 39 and 47 GHz auction, Verizon said in docket 14-177. “With PEA-based data available, there is no reason to develop a PEA-based price index for incumbent licenses using data from auctions of different license configurations.” Verizon urged the FCC to use data from the 24 GHz and TV incentive auction in its valuations for incumbent PEA-sized 39 GHz licenses. “The Commission has long used multiple spectrum bands to set initial valuations (through the setting of upfront payments and minimum opening bids) for licenses being auctioned,” the carrier said: “Despite claims to the contrary, the critical component of these valuations is license area, not spectrum band.”

The FCC should clear at least 300 MHz for commercial use, plus a 20 MHz guard band, the Competitive Carriers Association told aides to all five commissioners. Anything less “would be inadequate to simultaneously provide channel sizes sufficiently large for 5G deployments and generate a sufficient number of licenses in each market to promote competition and investment,” CCA said Friday in docket 18-122. CCA supports using "some of the proceeds from repurposing C-Band spectrum to incentivize current end users to pursue alternative distribution methods and to ensure that existing users are fairly reimbursed for repacking or transitioning out of the band.”

Chairman Henry Samueli and other Broadcom executives met Monday with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on the company’s “enthusiastic support” for the proposed framework for opening the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use. “An FCC decision to open the full 6 GHz band to unlicensed technologies is critical to accelerating deployment of 5G services in the U.S. and extending 5G’s reach beyond urban cores and into rural areas,” says a filing to come in docket 18-295. “Adjust the proposed framework in certain limited, but important, ways in order for the 6 GHz band to support all the benefits of Wi-Fi 6, and support 5G services in the near term. In particular, they emphasized the need for rules that allow low-power indoor operations throughout the band, and the importance of very-low-power portable operations.” The agency is examining Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use of the band (see 1903190050).

Strength in the industry’s 5G “ramp” contributed much of the 15 percent Q1 revenue growth in ON Semiconductor’s “communications end-market” sector, with networking and wireless components, said CEO Keith Jackson on a Q1 call Monday. Revenue of $259 million in the sector was 19 percent of total sales, he said. “We are seeing strong ramp in our power products in the 5G infrastructure market,” said Jackson. “We expect this ramp to accelerate in 2019 with increasing 5G deployments in a few parts of the world.” The “current indication” suggests a “better than expected rate of deployment for 5G systems in the near term,” he said. ON’s power “content” in 5G infrastructure systems is “many times” that of 4G systems, he said. “Our participation in 5G systems is expected to be significantly higher than our participation in 4G systems.”

Tests by three major wireless carriers of dispatchable location technology show it can work but isn’t ready for prime time, CTIA told the FCC, posted Monday in docket 07-114. The association said 30,090 test calls were placed on the wireless networks of the three carriers participating in the simulation: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. “These results reflect the capabilities of an emerging technology, rather than the capabilities of a complete, ready-to-deploy system,” the report said. “This campaign demonstrated the fundamental ability of Dispatchable Location technology to deliver accurate civic addresses. It also identified the current limitations of this technology at this early stage.” In tests, 82.6 percent of valid calls resulted in delivery of an address for the caller and 74 percent the correct address. CTIA and representatives of the carriers met with Public Safety Bureau staff last week to discuss results. “The wireless industry remains committed to enhancing indoor 9-1-1 location accuracy through innovative solutions,” CTIA said.

The North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation and Mobile Beacon urged the FCC to protect existing educational broadband service licensees if it makes changes to the 2.5 GHz band. Commissioners approved 4-0 last May an NPRM on ways to spark interest in the band, including a potential incentive auction (see 1805100053). The foundation and Mobile Beacon said they looked closely at proposals. "The Commission can best achieve its goals by rationalizing all existing licenses to allow operators to ‘edge out’ their networks from the current, outdated circular GSAs to standard geographic boundaries,” they said Thursday in docket 18-120. “This is the most expedient way to facilitate additional investment and deployment, empowering existing licensees and operators to deploy immediately to the areas adjacent to the current GSAs, accelerating both 5G and rural deployment.” Rural operators "support requiring a ‘local presence’ and more stringent build out standards, and urge the Commission against adopting mechanisms such as an incentive auction that may further the issue of spectrum warehousing,” filed Central Texas Communications, Coleman County Telephone Cooperative, Colorado Valley Communications, Mahaska Communication Group, Mark Twain Communications and Peoples Wireless.

IEEE says radiation risk from cellphones may be beyond what industry claims because testing doesn’t involve holding the device next to the body. The paper recommends compliance testing be updated to include body-contact positions and accounting for special vulnerability of children and pregnant women. Industry tests RF absorption at distances of 5 to 25 mm from the body, said Om Gandhi, emeritus professor at the University of Utah, and author of the paper. Gandhi tested what happens when the device is held next to the body. “The U.S. is far behind much of the industrial world in failing to test and monitor phones in the real world. My analysis confirms that currently marketed cellphones could exceed US FCC limits by as high as 11 times the 2-decade old allowable U.S. limits,” Gandhi said. “People use and carry cellphones against their bodies. It is not sufficient for manufacturers to simply state that users should keep a distance from the phone.” CTIA said consumers need not be alarmed. "We follow the guidance of the experts when it comes to health effects," it said. "Following numerous scientific studies conducted over several decades, the FCC, the [Food and Drug Administration], the World Health Organization, the American Cancer Society and numerous other international and U.S. organizations and health experts continue to say that the scientific evidence shows no known health risk to humans due to the RF energy emitted by cellphones." The evidence shows that since the introduction of cellphones in the mid-1980s, "the rate of brain tumors in the United States has decreased," the group said.

St. Croix County, Wisconsin, got an FCC waiver to add 157.450 MHz as a repeater output channel to base stations for its VHF simulcast private land mobile radio system for first responders; to use the frequency for base-to-mobile voice communications rather than for paging; and to operate a transmitter output of 100 watts. The Public Safety Bureau "received no comments in response to its public notice" on the county's request, said the bureau's Thursday order.