TracFone met FCC Wireline Bureau staff on how to supplement Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards to show a Lifeline applicant is enrolled in SNAP. Other than participants in Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada and Virginia, “the SNAP participant’s name and account number is printed on the SNAP/Electronic Benefits Transfer card,” TracFone said Friday in docket 17-287. The company proposed “that in the states where the SNAP participant’s name and account number is printed on the SNAP card,” that card “accompanied by a receipt of a SNAP purchase within the last fourteen days would be proof of current enrollment in the SNAP program during the manual verification process for Lifeline eligibility.” Texas is also reviewing Lifeline issues (see 1903250043).

The FCC 24 GHz auction was at $1.4 billion Monday after 23 bidding rounds. Citigroup wrote investors Monday the auction is likely to end near the upper end of the firm's $3 billion forecast. The report noted that demand was withdrawn in the five largest markets once bidding reached 1 cent per MHz POP. “Activity has been concentrated in the upper portion of the band, where there are five contiguous 100 MHz licenses available, versus the lower portion which features just two contiguous 100 MHz licenses,” Citigroup said. “Bidders seem to want more than 200 MHz of contiguous spectrum.”

Commissioners unanimously rejected a September petition for reconsideration by the Critical Messaging Association of a July order deleting equal employment opportunity requirements for Part 22 licensees. The FCC said the rule was subsumed by another applying requirements to all commercial mobile radio service licensees (Section 90.168). CMA argued that with the deletion, “CMRS providers licensed under Part 22 are subject only to the annual EEO reporting obligations found in Section 1.815, which do not apply to providers, such as some of its members, with fewer than 16 employees,” the agency said. “We deny the CMA Petition as fundamentally misreading the purpose of the Commission’s EEO rules and the Commission’s intent” in the order, said Friday's order: “The Commission has long recognized the importance of having EEO rules that apply to common carriers, including all CMRS providers.” CMA didn't comment.

The FCC should reject an ARRL request for rule changes to instantly grant HF data privileges to amateur radio operators, filed Ted Rappaport, founding director of NYU Wireless at New York University School of Engineering who recently made a pitch to the agency for 6G wireless spectrum (see 1903190059). It's "a thinly disguised attempt to immediately add up to 385,000 new HF digital stations that could build upon the existing network of … relay stations that provide effectively encrypted transmissions that cannot be cannot be monitored for content by other amateur operators or the FCC,” Rappaport said in docket 16-239, posted Thursday. It would “perpetuate illegal and secure, international email service while crowding the US HF amateur bands with unintelligible wideband data traffic and intense interference,” he said. Friday, ARRL didn’t comment.

T-Mobile/Sprint and Dish Network letters at the FCC argue over which economic models better capture the effect of the proposed deal between the carriers. At issue is which numbers are better -- Cornerstone’s Nielsen Mobile Performance (NMP) data set favored by T-Mobile/Sprint or Brattle Group filed on behalf of Dish. “Brattle’s income estimates are more realistic than those used by Cornerstone, which simply assumes that all consumers in the same zip code have the same income,” Dish said in a redacted filing in docket 18-197. “Brattle’s method for estimating income (based on the income brackets reported by the majority of consumers in Cornerstone’s NMP data set, as well as other data set characteristics) was accurately and explicitly disclosed.” T-Mobile/Sprint fired back, posted Friday. “DISH now admits that the Brattle Economists ‘used an unconditional expectation of income … for both respondents and non-respondents,’” the carriers said. “In other words, DISH concedes it manufactured ‘an estimated unconditional expectation of income’ and used that ‘data’ in the place of the NMP survey.”

Softness in demand for DRAM and NAND components, partly from the slowdown in global smartphone shipments, prompted Micron Technology’s decision to scale back production to reduce “elevated” inventories, said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on a Q2 call Wednesday. The excess inventory is “at good cost,” meaning there’s “no obsolescence issue,” he said. Next-generation “premium” smartphones introduced at Mobile World Congress “typically feature” 8 to 12 gigabytes of DRAM and 256 to 512 gigabytes of NAND, double the DRAM and quadruple the NAND of “current-generation” premium smartphones, he said. “These trends will likely cascade to lower-tier phones,” helping “re-ignite” smartphone unit sales beginning in 2020, he said. The smartphone market is spiraling toward its third straight year of declining shipments, reported IDC this month. Micron expects 5G to create a market opportunity “beyond mobile,” said Mehrotra. “We expect 5G adoption to create increased demand for memory and storage in IoT devices, wireless infrastructure and data centers.”

T-Mobile, eager to land regulatory approval of its Sprint buy, said Thursday it’s launching a pilot to help close the digital divide: a Home Internet program available to up to 50,000 existing customers, by invitation and by year-end. It expects speeds of “around” 50 Mbps with fixed unlimited wireless service over LTE, with no data caps. The $50 monthly service will be launched in rural and underserved areas, T-Mobile said. “LTE network and spectrum capacity constraints” limit the program's size, the carrier said: “But if T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint is approved, with the added scale and capacity of the New T-Mobile, the Un-carrier plans to cover more than half of U.S. households with 5G broadband service -- in excess of 100 Mbps -- by 2024.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Thursday if the Sprint buy doesn’t go through, T-Mobile may have to increase prices. “If the Sprint acquisition is approved, we would expect them to deploy Sprint’s spectrum and use the increased capacity to take share,” Chaplin wrote. “If the acquisition is blocked, they will have a choice between increasing capacity by some other means or increasing price to slow subscriber and usage growth. Increasing capacity would be their first choice, but this may not be possible, at least not initially, making higher prices necessary.”

AT&T representatives urged an incentive auction for the 2.5 GHz band, in meeting FCC Wireless Bureau staff. ”AT&T recognizes the complexity of the band but believes the best way to resolve the challenges is to hold both an incentive auction for existing licensees and a traditional auction for the whitespaces making this spectrum available for rapid 5G deployments,” AT&T said Monday in docket 18-120. The FCC sought comment last year on possible changes to rules for the band but found little consensus. The carrier said then an auction appeared inevitable (see 1809100045).

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance warned that an FCC NPRM on the 6 GHz band doesn’t pay enough attention to what will happen if interference occurs. “The NPRM devotes only a single paragraph -- five sentences -- to this critical discussion,” said a Wednesday news release. “But EWA has asked ‘who is responsible for shutting down secondary consumer devices and for the resulting liability?’ There are out-of-pocket costs incurred in identifying and resolving interference problems for which someone must be accountable.” The group also filed replies (see 1903180047).

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr confirmed he's focusing on federal rules that affect wireless infrastructure deployment, in remarks Wednesday at WISPAmerica in Cincinnati. It's expected to be a big FCC infrastructure focus (see 1902200048). “We will look to fully and faithfully implement the decisions Congress has made to streamline the deployment of next-generation technologies,” Carr said. “We will push the government to be more pro-infrastructure by eliminating needless restrictions on siting wireless facilities.” He highlighted at the Wireless ISP Association conference the work the FCC has done, including two orders and the trips he made to see deployment across the U.S. While working on the September order, “I was struck by the difference between the attitudes of civic leaders in some of our biggest coastal cities and those leaders elsewhere in the country,” Carr said. “A few of the big city mayors recognize that they have leverage over the buildout of broadband. If you’re in New York City or San Jose in Silicon Valley, you might get robust broadband service almost regardless of what the politicians do.” Carr said he's also focused on USF support for broadband and getting more spectrum in play, especially the C-band. The Carr road trip continues. Carr tweeted Wednesday about a visit to Tuf-Tug, an Ohio plant that makes safety bolts used in towers. With 5G rolling out, the company says orders are up 25 percent over the past two years, he said.