The FCC Wireless Bureau dismissed a petition to deny by Waimana, which opposed Verizon’s buy of seven personal communication service (PCS) licenses for Hawaii from Coral Wireless. Waimana is a Native Hawaiian corporation with an exclusive license to build and operate a broadband telecommunications network in Hawaii. “Waimana asserts in its Petition that Coral’s apparent failure to deploy wireless infrastructure or significant wireless services in the Home Lands despite having received $131.2 million of federal high-cost support possibly constitutes a violation of section 254(e) of the Communications Act,” the bureau said Monday in an order. But the bureau said Waimana lacked standing to file the petition. “The Petition’s explanation as to how Waimana might be directly injured by an assignment of spectrum to Verizon Wireless is speculative and vague,” the bureau said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau gave Los Angeles County until the end of 2016 to complete the integration of 57 UHF T-band licenses into the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System. The county had asked for an extension until Nov. 30, 2017. “Under the unique circumstances of this case, we conclude that granting the County an extension … would be consistent with the County’s goals and the Commission’s waiver criteria,” the bureau said. “The County has acted reasonably in developing a revised spectrum plan that can support the extensive user base of Los Angeles area public safety agencies while still providing a migration path to 700 MHz narrowband for its users.”

The Telecommunications Industry Association expressed official concern about the FCC’s announcement Friday that the earliest possible date for the TV incentive auction is early 2016 (see 1410240048). “Deployment of this spectrum is essential to keeping pace with exploding consumer demand for mobile broadband, and this spectrum is a key part of the FCC's plan to address the looming spectrum crunch,” TIA said Monday. The group said it's “unfortunate” that progress has been slowed by legal challenges to the auction order.

MetroPCS began offering the Alcatel Onetouch Pop 7 tablet to customers Friday, which the T-Mobile subsidiary touted as its first tablet offering. It includes a 7-inch display and uses Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The tablet costs $149 for customers who subscribe to one of MetroPCS’s new data plans. The new data plans begin at $10 a month of unlimited data and up to 1 GB of data transmission at 4G speeds. Customers get the first 3 GB of data transmitted at 4G on the $20 tier and the first 5 GB of data transmitted at 4G on the $30 tier, MetroPCS said (http://bit.ly/1FMrsWL).

While many believe 5G networks will start to be deployed around 2020, much work remains to be done, 4G Americas said in a paper released Friday (http://bit.ly/12snKCu). The 5G networks will have to take into account the Internet of Things, the group said: “To support possibly billions of IoT devices, a wireless network infrastructure is needed that’s not only highly scalable in terms of its capacity, but can also optimally handle differing service needs of various IoT verticals.” There's also some consensus that since LTE and LTE-Advanced are still being deployed, “there is considerable life left in 4G,” 4G Americas said.

The FTC commended the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for taking privacy and security concerns into account in a rulemaking on vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability for passenger cars and light trucks, in comments filed at NHTSA. In February, following extensive testing, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it was moving forward on vehicle-to-vehicle warning systems as part “the next generation” of auto safety improvements (http://1.usa.gov/1bkqG1L). The rulemaking has been of concern to the telecom industry because the spectrum band automakers will use, the 5.850-5.925 GHz band, is adjacent to a band targeted by the FCC for unlicensed use on a secondary basis (see 1409050030). The FTC said it supports “implementation of a deliberative, process-based approach to address privacy and security risks.” NHTSA appears ready to “ensure that the V2V system will contain multiple technical, physical, and organizational controls to minimize privacy risks, including the likelihood of vehicle tracking by commercial entities,” the FTC said (http://1.usa.gov/1D7RLCE). “The Commission appreciates NHTSA’s explanation of the substantial steps it took as part of its interim privacy impact assessment, and looks forward to reviewing the results of the final assessment.” NHTSA also appears to have the designed the system in a way that “limits the amount of data collected and stored to that which serves its intended safety purposes,” FTC said. “NHTSA’s attention to potential security issues is equally thorough and demonstrates a clear commitment to creating both a functional and secure communications system based on research efforts over more than a decade.” CTIA's comments said NHTSA lacks statutory authority to adopt Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for mobile devices, apps or software (http://bit.ly/1xiapWG). The comments were filed in docket NHTSA-2014-0022.

Angelo Salvucci, a California physician practicing emergency medicine, met with various FCC staffers to discuss the importance of rules on indoor wireless 911 location accuracy, said an ex parte filing. “I sought to underscore the importance of rapidly locating persons who need medical assistance and delivering that medical assistance quickly,” Salvucci said (http://bit.ly/1wwfNHf). “EMS response cannot begin until the caller reporting an emergency medical condition reaches the correct dispatcher.” Salvucci said he played a recording of a recent indoor wireless 911 call from the brother of a 24-year-old woman whose heart had stopped. “By the time the emergency responders arrived at the residence (ten minutes after the initial call was made), the patient was deceased,” he said. The filing was posted Friday in docket 07-114. The FCC is considering whether it should mandate location accuracy standards for wireless calls to 911 made indoors (see 1402210038).

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment Thursday on a proposal by Adaptrum for a test of fixed TV white space devices with antennas higher than current limits in FCC rules. Adaptrum proposed the test in a rural area in northeast Maine near the Canadian border, OET said. OET said it's reviewing the request but would welcome public comment. The Silicon Valley startup has already released two generations of white spaces devices (http://bit.ly/1wrZTfi). Comments are due Nov. 24; replies Dec. 9.

Successful data transmissions can be as important as voice communications, said 70 percent of respondents to a Motorola Solutions poll earlier this year, the company said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1xe4y4G). Researchers collected responses from more than 1,300 public safety professionals at various levels, Motorola said. While many of the agencies continue to invest in traditional voice networks, ”they have also begun planning for LTE,” the company said. “More than half of the agencies surveyed either have already migrated from an analog to a digital P25 system or are planning to within the next five years.” Motorola found that 34 percent of respondents are already making use of the cloud “to support data applications, computing and storage, or considering using one in the next three years," Motorola said.

The TV incentive auction “can’t happen soon enough,” T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham said Thursday in a blog post (http://t-mo.co/1zm6j5b). Ham emphasized the importance to competition of a favorable decision on its August petition asking the FCC to change its spectrum aggregation rules to give competitors to AT&T and Verizon a better shot at buying spectrum in the auction (see 1409260032). “As our competitors well know, arming T-Mobile with low-band spectrum is a competitive game-changer, enabling our service to penetrate building walls better and travel longer distances than we can with the spectrum we have today,” Ham said.