Dish Wireless, which is building a stand-alone 5G open radio access network, received a $50 million grant from NTIA to establish the Open RAN Center for Integration & Deployment (ORCID), EchoStar said Wednesday. Echostar said the grant was the largest so far under the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. ORCHID “will serve a critical role in strengthening the global Open RAN ecosystem and building the next generation of wireless networks," said Charlie Ergen, EchoStar chairman: The center "will be uniquely positioned to test and evaluate Open RAN interoperability, performance and security from domestic and international vendors.” The center combines field and lab testing and will use Dish’s spectrum, the company said: Multi-tenant lab and field testing will happen in Dish’s Cheyenne, Wyoming facility. NTIA also announced five other grants under the program Wednesday, including $21.7 million to fund a Viavi testing lab. The company “aims to create a fully automated, cooperative, open and impartial testing-as-a-service offering that's dedicated to Open RAN interoperability, performance and security,” NTIA said. The agency awarded $2 million to Virginia Tech to explore ORAN cybersecurity. Cirrus360 gets nearly $2 million “to develop a new test method that uses a digital twin of integrated RAN components to model their implementation,” NTIA said. Northeastern University and Rice University also got funding. “The new facilities we fund with this round of grants will help move open technologies from the lab to the field,” said NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau Tuesday approved a waiver request by Alert SouthBay allowing wireless carriers to participate in a wireless emergency alert test in Los Angeles County's South Bay region. The test was scheduled to start at 11:20 a.m. PSD that day. “We are persuaded it is in the public interest to allow ... Alert SouthBay to test WEA’s performance over the County’s variety of geographic and demographic conditions, especially considering recent land movement and landslides, as well as the prevalent high fire risk,” the bureau said in post in docket 15-91. Alert SouthBay later confirmed the test took place.

T-Mobile users see 2.5 times faster download speeds than AT&T customers and triple the speeds of Verizon customers, Opensignal said in its January report: T-Mobile won both overall speed awards, retaining “Download Speed Experience” with a score of 113.1 Mbps and “Upload Speed Experience” at 12.1 Mbps, the report said. Verizon took top honors for all three 5G experiential awards it won in the previous report, “5G Video Experience, 5G Live Video Experience and 5G Games Experience,” Opensignal said. AT&T won on availability, with a score of 99.5%, the report said. AT&T beat Verizon’s by 0.2 percentage points, while T-Mobile was third with a score of 98.5%

Representatives of major trade associations stressed to the FCC that a cyber trust mark program for smart devices (see 2311130034) must remain voluntary. “The Trade Associations highlighted several factors that will be necessary in order to make the FCC’s proposed Labeling Program a success,” the reps told Public Safety Bureau Chief Debra Jordan and others from the bureau, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 22-239 from by CTA, the Connectivity Standards Alliance, CTIA, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and USTelecom. The program should “leverage” the work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and industry standards and “allow for self-attestation,” the groups said. “Preemption and safe harbors are critical to the Labeling Program’s success,” they said: The program “should be launched at the device level but should allow for expansion to the product level in the future.”

CTIA sought a 12-month extension to the FCC's current six-month deadline for carriers to implement new rules protecting consumers from SIM swapping and port-out fraud. Commissioners approved the rules 5-0 in November (see 2311150042). “CTIA seeks a targeted revision to the Order to ensure that providers have adequate time to develop the comprehensive systems and processes needed to implement the new rules and best serve the Commission’s and industry’s shared goals,” said the petition, posted Tuesday in docket 21-341. “The Order underestimates the time needed for providers to implement the new rules,” CTIA said: Eighteen months is “the minimum window needed to complete the needed changes across the varied and complex systems impacted by the Order’s new authentication, notification, recordkeeping, and other requirements as well as other new rules by the Commission that impact some of these same systems.” CTIA noted that providers “already have robust protections in place such that consumers and businesses will not be left unprotected during this transition period.” CTIA warned that the record didn't support the deadline in the order, calling the decision “arbitrary and capricious.”

One of the big wireless questions for 2024 is whether Dish Network will succeed as a fourth national wireless provider, New Street’s Blair Levin said in a weekend note to investors. Another is whether another carrier will buy USCellular, he wrote. He added: “There is a question about whether any potential buyers would face a risk of a government rejection, particularly given the views of Democratic antitrust authorities and the results of the last major acquisition to face an FCC review (T-Mobile/Sprint)." Any buyer other than AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon would likely see easy approval, he noted. “Lots of studies are in the pipeline” in the aftermath of the national spectrum strategy, but “these won’t lead to more spectrum coming online before 2025,” Levin said. No resolution appears likely soon on the lower 3 GHz band, but 12 GHz “is the one place” the FCC could authorize a new band for terrestrial use, he said: "Depending on if and how the FCC does it, it could be a boost for DISH.” Levin also predicted Congress could authorize the FCC to sell returned AWS 3 licenses. Congress could authorize a “targeted reauction” without addressing broader DOD concerns “that are blocking efforts to reauthorize spectrum auctions.”

The Wi-Fi Alliance announced Monday the launch of its Wi-Fi 7 certification program, which puts the group’s stamp on gear and verifies that it’s interoperable with other Wi-Fi 7 products. “Cutting-edge capabilities in Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7 enable innovations that rely on high throughput, deterministic latency, and greater reliability for critical traffic,” the alliance said. Smartphones, PCs, tablets and access points (APs) are expected to be earlier adopters of Wi-Fi 7, while customer premises equipment and augmented and virtual reality gear “will continue to gain early market traction,” it said. CommScope said the alliance has selected a member of the Ruckus Wi-Fi 7 AP family for the Wi-Fi 7 interoperability certification test bed.

The value of 5G in defense applications is expected to climb from $900 million last year to $2.3 billion by 2028, a compound annual growth rate of 19.9% during the period, ResearchAndMarkets.com said Monday. 5G “offers speeds up to 100 times faster than its predecessor, 4G, opening up unprecedented possibilities for individuals and enterprises alike,” the firm said: “The enhanced connectivity speeds, remarkably low latency, and expanded bandwidth that 5G provides are driving progress in societies and reshaping various industries. This transformation is greatly improving everyday experiences for people.”

Samsung Electronics America made a technical argument at the FCC in favor of approval of a waiver for a 5G base-station radio that works across citizens broadband radio service and C-band spectrum (see 2309130041). The proposed multiband radio “will not materially increase emissions” in the CBRS band, “or materially increase the CBRS noise floor, compared to two collocated standalone C-Band and CBRS radios; and it will have emissions that are lower than those permitted by the FCC’s rules,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 23-93. Key parts of the filing were redacted, including a table on measured noise levels from the composite radio. The multiband radio “will always have less emissions than a C-band radio or collocated C-band and CBRS radios operating in compliance with the FCC rules,” Samsung said.

Wisconsin’s Country WIreless asked the FCC for a six-month deadline extension to complete the removal, replacement and disposal of covered equipment and services from its network. “Country Wireless is working diligently to install a replacement network, which will enable the company to remove insecure equipment provided by Chinese manufacturers from our network,” said a filing last week: “As a small, rural operation, and through no fault of ours, we lack the financial resources to complete the project, as Congress has provided only 40% of the funds needed.”