Samsung will pre-install Microsoft services and apps on its Android devices and offer “secured mobile productivity” for consumers and businesses through a Microsoft Office 365 and Samsung Knox Business Pack, the companies said Monday. Samsung Knox enables customers to switch easily between personal and business profiles on their devices in a secure way, said the companies. For consumers, Samsung will pre-install Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on select Samsung Android tablets, they said. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will come with 100 GB of additional free cloud storage for two years through Microsoft OneDrive, they said.

Telecommunications Industry Association officials explained TIA's take to FCC staff on hearing aid compatibility (HAC) rules, in light of a recent public notice seeking comment on possible changes to the rules (see 1502230045). “TIA emphasized the need for greater clarity on the specific problems with HAC [that] warrant changes to the existing regulatory framework, and urged the Commission to adopt a notice of proposed rulemaking should it intend to make significant changes to the HAC regulations as this would ensure that there is a full record to understand and support any changes,” said the filing in docket 10-254.

The FCC and the Food and Drug Administration released an agenda on their joint all-day workshop March 31 on “Promoting Medical Technology Innovation -- The Role of Wireless Test Beds.” The workshop starts at 9 a.m. and will be at FCC headquarters. “The workshop will convene experts from industry, medicine, academia, and government to focus on the role of wireless medical test beds and their influence on the development of converged medical technology for clinical and non-clinical settings,” the agencies said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn are among those slated to speak.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau sought comment on a petition by Blackboard for clarification of Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules on calls to wireless phones. Blackboard offers a mass notification platform, Blackboard Connect, “that allows Blackboard’s customers to send notifications to parents, students, faculty, and others ‘regarding emergency weather closures, threat situations, event scheduling, or to provide other important education-related information,’” the bureau said Monday. Blackboard said systems using its service are responsible for obtaining prior consent from called parties, the bureau said. “Blackboard argues that the autodialed or prerecorded messages sent by its customers using Blackboard Connect comprise calls made for emergency purposes and are therefore permissible under the Commission’s rules without the recipient’s prior express consent.” The bureau sought comment on the various issues raised by the petition. Comments are due April 22, replies May 7.

The FCC Wireless Bureau requested comment on Motorola Solutions’ waiver request on behalf of Columbia County, New York, to permit the operation of mobile units with 50-watt transmitter power output (TPO) and 50-watt effective radiated power on VHF public coast (VPC) frequencies. Motorola seeks to partition and disaggregate VPC spectrum to Columbia County to support a private land mobile system to meet the county’s public safety-related operations. Motorola believes the proposed operations at a higher TPO “will not cause interference to maritime operations or adversely affect priority to maritime communications provided by licensees on the channels and in the geographic areas not being acquired by the County,” the FCC said Monday. Motorola claims the proposed operations will have limited antenna gain and some land loss, which it believes won’t increase the potential for interference more than other mobile systems operating under the allowable level with a gain of 3 dB. Motorola claims Columbia County’s proposed operations won’t extend to or overlap major navigable waterways. The county agreed to protect against interference to maritime operations, the FCC said. Comments on the waiver request are due April 22, replies May 8.

Sprint officials asked FCC staff to change the proposed competitive bidding rules in the TV incentive auction to provide single-block bidding, rather than a common ascending clock for what are highly heterogeneous spectrum blocks. “Overwhelmingly,” commenters on the auction rules agree that the FCC’s proposal to resolve such heterogeneity, a post-clock discount, “is at best ineffectual (as bidders merely respond by increasing the relative values during the clock phase),” Sprint said. “At worst (and more likely), the discount is liable to distort license values due to the inability of any discount metric to capture the myriad ways in which different impairments can diminish spectrum utility and value.” Sprint also urged the FCC to beef up the amount of “reserve” spectrum available to competitors to Verizon and AT&T to 40 MHz, “or at least half of the available spectrum at any given clearing target.” Sprint reported on the meetings in an ex parte filing posted by the FCC Friday in docket 14-252.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau approved waivers sought by South Carolina of the FCC’s “substantial service” showing requirements for public safety channels the state is utilizing in the public safety narrowband segment of the 700 MHz band. The state missed a deadline in June to make its substantial service showing, due to a misunderstanding of the rules, but made the required filing Dec. 12, the bureau said. The state also sought a waiver of the initial June 13 deadline. “We find that granting South Carolina a waiver … would not frustrate the underlying purpose of the rule, because it satisfied the interim benchmark by providing substantial service to more than one-third of its population and it did so prior to the deadline,” the bureau said. The public interest is served by allowing the state to retain its license, the bureau said.

Representatives of the Minority Cellular Partners Coalition told an aide to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn that AT&T has engaged in conduct that should bar it from buying DirecTV. AT&T violated Section 222(c)(l) of the Communications Act and Section 1.20003 of the FCC’s rules when it “voluntarily allowed the National Security Agency to have access to telephony and Internet metadata, and telephony and Internet content,” the coalition said. “AT&T has engaged in an established pattern of misconduct and bad behavior. Taken together, these actions should bear upon its qualifications to acquire additional FCC licenses in the proposed acquisition of DirecTV.” The coalition first raised the issue in a March 4 letter to the commission. AT&T said in a recent filing the FCC should give no weight to the charges. The FCC held in the AT&T/BellSouth merger order these very same “allegations are outside the scope of the FCC’s investigative powers,” AT&T said. The filings were in docket 14-90.

CTIA questioned whether the FCC identified any real problems that the agency needed addressed before adopting its Feb. 26 net neutrality rules. A blog post Friday by Scott Bergmann, vice president-regulatory affairs, was the fourth in a series by the association last week, making its case against the rules. “The nominal instances cited as alleged attacks on an open Internet do not reflect a pattern of behavior or any systemic issue resulting in any harm to mobile consumers,” Bergmann wrote. “In fact, the proffered examples were few and far between and quickly remedied by the consumer-driven marketplace.” The FCC order acknowledges the rapid increases in mobile speeds and data traffic and the more than 140 million people who subscribed to LTE service in 2014, he said. “Without a hint of irony, the FCC then proceeds to abandon its prior framework under which mobile broadband blossomed.”

The record bidding in the AWS-3 auction points to the need for the FCC to “re-double its efforts” to finalize rules for the 3.5 GHz band as a band for small cells and sharing, said representatives of New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge in agency meetings. The FCC also should make sure the TV incentive auction takes place next year as planned, the groups said in a filing in docket 12-269. The commission should focus on the public interest, not auction revenue, OTI and PK said: “Competition policy and consumer welfare should drive spectrum policy, not arbitrary revenue goals.”