The FCC said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should find the agency did nothing wrong in rejecting a complaint by Flat Wireless of roaming rates it must pay Verizon. “Flat Wireless offered no evidence demonstrating that Verizon’s rates are unreasonable under current market conditions,” the FCC said Friday in D.C. Circuit docket 18-1271. “Based on the record before it, the Commission reasonably concluded that ‘Verizon’s offered data rates are commercially reasonable in view of existing agreements with other providers.’”
Google affiliate Loon received an FCC Office of Engineering and Technology experimental license for continued testing of parts of LTE bands 20 and 28 using balloon-mounted directional antennas to relay communications between mobile handsets and fixed ground terminals. Approval came Monday. Loon said the test area would remain within an 11 kilometer radius in Nevada.
Public TV and educational programming advocates are pushing for keeping or updating educational eligibility requirements for the educational broadband service (see 1903070062). Intensive EBS use would follow from the FCC modernizing the eligibility and usage rules, rather than eliminating them, and by rationalizing existing license areas along county lines, North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation, Mobile Beacon and Voqal told Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Mike O'Rielly, recapped a docket 18-120 ex parte posting Friday. America's Public TV Stations, on meetings with O'Rielly and an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, urged preserving existing eligibility requirements and using the priority filing windows to license remaining EBS "white space." APTS said eliminating educational eligibility requirements so licensees can sell their licenses could create hostile relationships between licensees who don't sell and the commercial operators, which provide devices, services and support, wanting to buy those licenses.
T-Mobile officials held meetings at the FCC to lobby for their proposal for a C-band incentive auction and against the proposal by the C-Band Alliance. T-Mobile officials met aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks, said a filing Monday in docket 18-122. “The 180 megahertz of spectrum that would be made available under the C-Band Alliance proposal in this proceeding is insufficient because, among other reasons, it would be unable to support the mid-band spectrum requirements of multiple providers,” T-Mobile said: “The private process by which the C-Band Alliance would select licensees of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band spectrum is contrary to the Communications Act and the public interest.” The alliance has been at the FCC in recent days to defend its plan, which also garnered satellite criticism Monday (see 1903110059).
The U.S. needs to do more work “to get our arms around the opportunities and challenges with federal spectrum,” Doug Brake, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation director-broadband and spectrum policy, told us (see 1903070061). “The fragmentation and inefficient use of federal spectrum represents a tremendous opportunity to unlock value through better governance structures.” Because of recent changes, the spectrum relocation fund (SRF) can be tapped earlier than in the past, Brake said. “But there are limits on how this money can be used for the very upfront planning,” he said. “Also the SRF is not an unlimited source of money. On top of there being no great source of funding for this work, you also have real principal-agent problems.”
Allowing T-Mobile/Sprint to go through will "unleash a disruptive and effective" home broadband competitor serving unserved areas, T-Mobile said in a docket 18-197 posting Friday updating the FCC on its proposed T-Mobile Home Internet offering. Specifics, such as how many rural households will be eligible for the service and monthly pricing, were redacted.
FirstNet’s board and committees will meet March 20 in Jackson, Mississippi. Call-in is also available, said Friday’s Federal Register.
CTIA supported the FCC's proposed "sunset" of data recording and retention rules in a rural call completion draft order scheduled for a vote at commissioners' March 15 meeting. The rules "imposed burdens without contributing to solving RCC issues," filed the group, posted Thursday in docket 13-39. A requirement that "covered" originating providers maintain a "pre-packaged set of data for rural call completion rule compliance only," as noted by the draft, is "particularly costly for covered providers," CTIA said. The draft would eliminate the rules one year after the order's intermediate carrier service-quality standards take effect.
Dialog Semiconductor agreed to buy Silicon Motion Technology’s FCI mobile communications product line for $45 million cash, it said Thursday. The FCI product range -- including SoC technology for mobile TV, smartphones, tablets and portable navigation devices -- is designed for battery-powered IoT devices. Dialog CEO Jalal Bagherli called ultra-low-power Wi-Fi a “strong strategic fit," giving it the opportunity to combine Wi-Fi and Bluetooth low-energy chips for IoT, consumer and automotive markets. Dialog has shipped more than 250 million Bluetooth low-energy SoCs for IoT applications, and ultra-low-power Wi-Fi positions the company to drive integration with “optimized combo solutions,” it said. Silicon Motion’s mobile communications unit reported about $30 million revenue last year. The deal is expected to close this year and is subject to regulatory approval.
The Commerce Department seeks a May 29 deadline to respond to VTDigger at the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on the local news publication’s appeal of its Freedom of Information Act case against FirstNet, the department said (in Pacer) Thursday. The 2nd Circuit reinstated the case last week (see 1902280081).