The FCC Wireless Bureau granted a waiver request Friday from the PTC-220 group of seven Class I freight railroads, waiving the commission’s Section 90.729(b) power and antenna height limits and Section 90.723(f) coordination limits subject to conditions meant to ensure PTC-220 operations don’t cause harmful interference to other licensees on the 220 MHz band. PTC-220 has been acquiring spectrum on the 220 MHz band and leasing it to the Southern California Regional Rail Authority and other commuter railroads to implement positive train control communications technology. The FCC said it will require PTC-220 to provide a 30-day written notice to licensees about its intent to site a PTC base station that takes advantage of the waived power and antenna height limits, meet a predicted 38 dBu field strength at the license area’s border unless all affected co-channel licensees agree to a higher field strength and meet bright-line frequency and geographic spacing requirements meant to further reduce the risk of interference. The FCC said it is also requiring PTC to provide 30-day written notice to potentially affected Phase II licensees about deployment of a planned waiver-enabled PTC transmitter when the licensee is within 200 kHz and 20 kilometers of the transmitter. The FCC noted opposition to the waiver request from the BEC and DEMCO electric cooperatives, respectively located in South Carolina and Louisiana, but said it disagree with the cooperatives’ “blanket assertion that deployment of waiver-enabled PTC transmitters will harm existing 220 MHz Band stations or limit future expansion by incumbent licensees.”

The Communications Workers of America and NAACP called on the FCC to reject bids made by two designated entities controlled by Dish Network in the AWS-3 auction. The groups sent a letter to commissioners Thursday questioning how Dish, a company with a $34.6 billion market capitalization and $14.6 billion in annual revenue, could qualify for bidding credits designed to help small businesses buy spectrum licenses. The two DEs, Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless, were the winning bidders for $13.3 billion worth of licenses for $10 billion (see 1501300051). “While the AWS-3 auction was an enormous success, DISH's unusual bidding tactics coupled with its abuse of the designated entity rules are creating a cloud over the auction,” the groups said. “We expect that the FCC will reject DISH's attempt to qualify as a small business eligible for $3.25 billion in taxpayer subsidies.” The letter was filed Thursday in docket 12-268. At Dish, "we respectfully disagree with the criticism of the Designated Entity program, and we are confident that we fully complied with the DE rules in the AWS-3 auction, which were unanimously approved by the full Commission," a Dish spokesman emailed us Friday. "The DE program has been successful in providing much smaller entities the ability to access stronger capital structures, which has facilitated their meaningful participation in an auction process from which they would otherwise be precluded. Our approach -- publicly disclosed ahead of the auction -- was based on DE investment structures that have been approved by the FCC in past wireless spectrum auctions, including structures used by AT&T and Verizon."

The FCC's net neutrality order, released Thursday, finds that mobile should be subject to the same rules as fixed broadband. In comparison to the 2010 net neutrality order, wireless is no longer “nascent,” the agency found. The “Mobile broadband marketplace has evolved, and continues to evolve,” the FCC said. “Mobile broadband networks are faster, more broadly deployed, more widely used, and more technologically advanced than they were in 2010.” The order notes the proliferation of wireless devices designed to access the Internet, with more than 127 million devices with LTE wireless connections already in the market. Wireless carriers of the past had a “well-established record” of trying to keep applications behind a carrier-controlled "walled garden,” though that is no longer the case, the FCC said. But consumers must still be protected “from mobile commercial practices masquerading as ‘reasonable network management,’” the order states. The text attempts to counter arguments made by CTIA and wireless carriers against imposing the same rules on mobile that are imposed on fixed broadband. Though Chairman Tom Wheeler had singled out T-Mobile as a supporter of the order at the Feb. 26 meeting (see 1502260043), the order specifically notes objections the carrier had filed at the agency. “Although mobile providers generally argue that additional rules are not necessary to deter practices that would limit Internet openness, concerns related to the openness practices of mobile broadband providers have arisen,” the order said. “The confoundingly complicated and confusing 400-page net neutrality rule book the FCC released today may be a windfall for Beltway telecom lawyers and lobbyists, but for the rest of us who care about the future of our open and innovative Internet, not so much,” Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said. PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein, a former Democratic FCC commissioner, also expressed concerns. “The wireless infrastructure industry’s biggest concern is how these voluminous rules impact capital expenditures, and the jobs, economic growth, and technological development that come with them,” Adelstein said. “Any reduction of wireless investment would hurt the U.S. in the global marketplace.”

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers joined the Intelligent Car Coalition, the coalition said Wednesday. They join AT&T and the Computer and Communications Industry Association on the steering committee for the newly formed group. "Connected cars benefit all of society by using advanced technologies to save lives, fuel, money, and carbon emissions,” said Catherine McCullough, coalition executive director. “The automotive, telecom and tech fields were separate, but now they are merging. These innovations are developing at a rapid pace, and we must engage with each other in a nimble, coordinated way to ensure that the safety, mobility, and environmental benefits of connected cars are available to everyone.”

Over 1.5 billion, or one in three, airline boarding passes will be issued via mobile devices by 2019, said a report by Juniper Research. Airports’ transition to mobile near field communication ticketing will be delayed, it said. About 745 million boarding passes will be delivered through mobile devices this year, Juniper said. Frequent flyers are more likely to use mobile boarding passes, it said. Fifty-three percent of airlines have mobile boarding passes via apps, which will increase to 91 percent by 2017, according to airline IT specialist SITA, Juniper said. Local bus and subway NFC-ticketing will increase because of the frequency of consumer purchases, it said.

The FCC made two changes to a 2013 order specifying how trunking may be accomplished in the 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz private land mobile radio bands. The amendments came at the request of the Public Safety Communications Council (PSCC), in an order released Wednesday. A trunked radio system is a computer-controlled two-way radio system that allows sharing of relatively few frequency channels among a large group of users. The FCC dropped a requirement that applicants who operate trunked stations on Public Safety Pool channels be required to demonstrate that the proposed station's service contour will not be overlapped by any incumbent station's interference contour. “We agree with PSCC that the reverse contour requirement is not necessary for the Public Safety Pool channels, and should apply only to Industrial/Business Pool channels,” the FCC said. The FCC also amended its rules on the treatment of mobile stations to clarify how to protect 150-174 MHz band mobile stations associated with a base station. The PSCC suggested that these units should be treated “analogously to unassociated mobile units by using the associated base station’s service contour as both the associated mobile unit’s service contour and interference contour,” the commission said in the order. The FCC agreed.

Additional cities have “already committed” to become interveners in a lawsuit filed Monday against the FCC’s new wireless tower siting review rules, said Best Best municipal telecom and wireless lawyer Gerry Lederer in an interview Wednesday. The suit, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Los Angeles and additional cities in California, Texas and Washington (see 1503100034), alleges that the rules, contained in the FCC October wireless facilities deployment order, are unconstitutional and misinterpret the 2012 Spectrum Act. Montgomery County, Maryland, filed an identical suit in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday. Best Best lawyer Joseph Van Eaton filed both suits, while Lederer is in charge of recruiting additional cities to join as interveners.

Rovi inked an IP-based licensing deal with Bell Mobility for the carrier's mobile TV service in Canada, the vendor said in a Tuesday news release. “Home entertainment is inevitably moving from the TV set in the living room to multiple screens and mobile devices,” said Samir Armaly, Rovi executive vice president-intellectual property and licensing. Through Rovi guide technology, Bell Mobility customers will have access to an integrated TV programming guide that enables them to see what’s playing “now and later,” Rovi said.

U.S. Cellular sold a large part of its Midwest wireless business, including its Chicago property, to Sprint in 2012, because of an inability to buy more spectrum there, CEO Kenneth Meyers said Tuesday during a presentation at a Deutsche Bank financial conference. U.S. Cellular is based in Chicago, where the company had only 20 MHz of spectrum. “We had been to about every auction trying to augment that position and we weren’t able to get it,” he said. “There’s just no way that we could have gone to LTE … from where we were on 20 MHz. The network was full and we weren’t going to be able to grow it any further.” Selling the market was “painful” but a “business decision,” he said. U.S. Cellular has been reluctant to move from CDMA to voice-over-LTE on its current network until it better understands how to make sure that customers will have an equal or better experience, Meyers said. “What we do know is that CDMA is a wonderful voice technology -- it has great, great coverage,” he said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau decided that Arizona Public Service Co. is entitled to less than half of the reimbursement APSC sought from Sprint as part of the 800 MHz rebanding. After running through a complicated analysis of arguments presented by APSC and Sprint and findings of the 800 MHz Transition Administrator (TA) mediator, the bureau approved $1.19 million in reimbursements for APSC. “We generally concur with the TA Mediator and find that, in most respects, APSC has failed to meet its burden of proof to demonstrate that its estimate of the cost to reband its 800 MHz communications system meets the Commission’s well-established Minimum Necessary Cost Standard,” the bureau said in an order released Tuesday. Among the findings, the bureau said APSC operates a Motorola system, but chose Motorola competitor Harris to reband its system. “We note that APSC is free to use Harris or whichever other vendor it wishes and can use any rebanding methodology it desires,” the bureau said. “However, the Minimum Necessary Cost Standard still applies.”