Audible safety warnings delivered via a driver’s mobile device would “enact a more widespread and effective behavioral approach initiative” than is currently under consideration in voluntary guidelines for technology meant to allow drivers safe and limited use of mobile devices while a vehicle is in motion, Vesstech Co-Founder Marty Olson said in comments filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (http://1.usa.gov/1jb1S4I). NHTSA had been collecting recommendations on best practices for its voluntary guidelines. Comments were due at midnight Monday. NHTSA in part wants to recommend targeted media messaging and legislation to modify driver behavior (CD March 13 p11). Audible verbal safety warnings are now possible on cellphones, while similar warnings are possible on other mobile devices through additional technology, Olson said. Verbal warnings played “at the start of the first drive of the day, or other timely moments, will provide a contextual warning to encourage the driver’s attention to the road and the driving task,” he said. The safety warnings should be between five and 10 seconds long and should “use the power of the human voice to convey a sense of urgency related to the potential perils,” Olson said. Vesstech recommends that NHTSA include verbal warnings in its recommendations and that automobile manufacturers and their device partners should immediately begin implementing warnings in their systems. Life Apps Co-Founder Ted Chen told NHTSA it should encourage the use of background apps that would “simply wake up and deter distraction though the use of lock screens and other technology available today.” NHTSA should also create a transition program that would “bridge the gap” between current driver use of mobile devices and desired behavior by encouraging use of these background apps by requiring their installation when a driver renews a driver’s license or car insurance, Chen said (http://1.usa.gov/1omK60h).

Los Angeles got an extension to May 30 to submit a cost estimate for the reconfiguration of the city’s 800 MHz communications system, under an FCC Public Safety Bureau order (http://bit.ly/1nB2RgC) Monday. L.A.’s Wednesday extension request said the city operates duplicate systems that complicate engineering and cutover planning issues. Extensions were also granted Friday for California’s Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council (http://bit.ly/1iKZkc7) to June 30, and to Orange County (http://bit.ly/RIopKA) to July 14, to submit cost estimates.

Wireless mics are already under increasing pressure to do more with less spectrum, and options under consideration for the devices after the incentive auction don’t fit the sector’s needs, a group representing a broad cross section of wireless mic interests said in an FCC filing. Under the latest development, the FCC is considering a uniform 11 MHz duplex gap in the 600 MHz band, with 4 MHz set aside for wireless mics (CD May 9 p8). “Critical wireless microphone operations cannot be supported in small swaths of spectrum (e.g., 2 MHz or 4 MHz) and where such spectrum abuts adjacent wireless services, the utility of the spectrum will be greatly reduced,” the group said (http://bit.ly/1saYbLN).

The Department of Justice “has properly withheld” docket information from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosures to the American Civil Liberties Union for prosecutions in which the government had obtained cellphone tracking data without a warrant and the defendant had been either acquitted or had the charges dismissed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1kXq2Lw). The court had said in its original 2011 decision in the case that Justice needed to disclose the docket information to the ACLU in cases in which the defendant was convicted (CD Sept 7/11 p6). The court’s 2011 decision did not touch on whether DOJ needed to also disclose that information when the cases ended in acquittal or dismissal. The court now believes Justice could withhold that information in those cases “given the substantial privacy interest individuals have in controlling information concerning criminal charges for which they were not convicted,” said Judge David Tatel in the majority opinion for the three-judge panel. Judge Janice Rogers Brown dissented, noting in her opinion that “the right to be left alone, once forfeited, is gone for good. An individual who is indicted and tried has no privacy interest that can protect the public record of prosecution from disclosure -- even if the ultimate outcome was acquittal or dismissal.” The ACLU believes the D.C. Circuit erred in its majority opinion, said ACLU of the Nation’s Capital Legal Director Arthur Spitzer, who argued the case. “The idea that someone who’s been publicly indicted in federal court has any real privacy interest in that fact seems unrealistic to us,” he said, noting that docket information in those cases is easily searchable over the Internet.

The FCC should tighten rather than loosen restrictions on AT&T and Verizon bidding in the incentive auction, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition said in a filing at the commission, posted by the FCC Friday. “In light of the dramatic expansion of the spectrum screen contemplated by the Commission in the Mobile Spectrum Holdings proceeding, further opening the door to future acquisitions and consolidation by AT&T and Verizon, the current proposal to hold approximately 30 MHz (depending on the amount of spectrum that is reclaimed) in reserve for non-dominant carriers constitutes the bare minimum needed to promote competition,” the group said (http://bit.ly/1sv0HPb). AT&T and Verizon have “launched an all-out attack on even this modest proposal to ensure that competitive carriers have a chance to obtain low-band spectrum,” PISC said, but “have raised no new arguments."

Oceus Networks supports the proposal for Globalstar to establish a low-power terrestrial service (CD May 8 p18). Such a service would meet the specialized needs of Oceus’s federal and public safety customers, commented the wireless broadband solutions provider in docket 13-213 (http://bit.ly/1jjPrCI). These users require solutions that offer more control, Oceus said. End users of the low-power service have a wide selection of equipment they could use, it said. This dramatically decreases an end-user’s costs “and accelerates the time-to-market of this new service, helping users realize this new service’s benefits more rapidly than with a completely greenfield service,” it said. The commission should follow through with its proposal to provide an exception to its integrated services rule, which is critical “to allowing existing, software-modified WiFi enabled devices to be used with the new service,” it said.

Incentive auction revenue would be maximized if the FCC increases the number of reserved spectrum blocks and allocates an odd number of unreserved spectrum blocks, said a paper by University of Maryland economist and auction expert Peter Cramton. The reserved blocks would only be available to carriers without a dominant low-band spectrum position in an individual market, under the FCC’s proposed aggregation rules (CD May 8 p1). The Competitive Carriers Association filed the paper Thursday at the FCC, the group said in a news release. “Professor Cramton’s declaration clearly shows that the FCC is on the right path with its proposed auction framework,” said CCA President Steve Berry. “Reserving spectrum at a certain point for carriers without nationwide market … is absolutely <essential, />

Certainty going in is key if the FCC wants to ensure a successful TV incentive auction, Verizon representatives said in meetings at the FCC with Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman and aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “In the context of the incentive auction, Verizon stated that the more certainty the rules provide, the more broadcasters and wireless providers will participate, and the more spectrum will be repurposed for use by all providers to meet the needs of consumers and businesses for broadband,” said a Tuesday ex parte filing from the carrier. “Verizon stressed that the best way to promote a successful incentive auction is to ensure the widest possible participation from broadcasters and robust competition between wireless carriers.” Verizon also slammed a Sprint filing asking the FCC to scrap proposed spectrum aggregation rules in favor of a weighted spectrum plan (CD May 5 p4). “Sprint’s eleventh-hour proposal replacing its previous weighting scheme with an even more arbitrary one should be seen for what it is: a self-serving proposal designed to give Sprint preferential treatment in future transactions,” Verizon said. “It bears no semblance to rational spectrum policy and should be promptly rejected.”

Consumer Federation of America Research Director Mark Cooper now will call unlicensed spectrum “public access” spectrum, at the suggestion of House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-California, said Cooper at a WiFiForward event Tuesday (CD May 7 p1). Cooper spoke Wednesday at a New America Foundation event. (See separate story above in this issue.) “I will never use the word unlicensed again,” Cooper said. “When CFA and Darrell Issa agree on something, that ought to be a no-brainer for the FCC."

The FCC rechartered its 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee for two more years, said a Federal Register notice published Wednesday. The WRC-15 committee, which offers industry perspective on WRC policy calls, was extended through April 25, 2016 (http://1.usa.gov/1npcMDf).