Global HF Net urged the FCC to approve a waiver allowing greater use of its public-coast station system by land-based parties. As the scope and size of emergencies has expanded “and the need for public safety-related communications has grown, the use of the HF system has become an increasingly important tool in the public safety communications tool-belt,” said a filing Thursday in docket 25-255. Other companies hope to use the spectrum for non-disaster communications, Global HF Net said.
The FCC is placing recent numbering resource utilization and forecast reports, as well as carrier-specific local number portability data from other providers, in the record as it examines AT&T’s proposed purchase of lower 700 MHz and 3.45 GHz licenses from UScellular, said a notice in Friday’s Daily Digest. The $1 billion deal was announced in November (see 2411070026). The “data may assist the Commission in assessing the competitive effects of the transaction” and is subject to a protective order, the notice said.
Representatives of the Utility Broadband Alliance met with FCC Wireless Bureau staff about its members' need for data and the important role played by private networks, according to a filing posted Thursday in docket 24-99. The group said it supports a proposal for a rulemaking authorizing 5/5 MHz broadband deployments in the 900 MHz band (see 2505190025). While the earlier establishment of a 3/3 MHz broadband segment in the band “has been a tremendous success, the amount of broadband spectrum currently available to utilities for private network operations is not sufficient to meet utilities’ current and future needs.”
The Central Alabama Volunteer Exam Coordinator has been designated as a club station call-sign administrator under FCC rules, the Wireless Bureau announced Thursday. The bureau noted that volunteer organizations have been responsible for processing applications for amateur radio service club and military recreation station licenses since 1998. The Alabama group is one of five organizations that has been so designated.
The FCC is dropping parts of its 2023 robocall and robotext order rejected by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2501240067), effective Friday. The 11th Circuit vacated the part of the order that said a consumer can't consent to a telemarketing or advertising robocall unless they consent to calls from only one entity at a time and consent only to calls whose subject matter is “logically and topically associated with the interaction that prompted the consent.” The 11th Circuit remanded the order to the FCC for further proceedings.
T-Mobile on Wednesday launched SuperMobile, which uses 5G slicing to create a network slice for business, combining “intelligent performance, built-in security and seamless satellite coverage.”
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment Wednesday on a waiver request by Securaplane Technologies for a range-controlled radar system that operates in 5.8 GHz spectrum but could “radiate non-spurious emissions into the 5.35-5.46 GHz restricted frequency band.” Comments are due Sept. 26, replies Oct. 14, in docket 25-260. The system provides intrusion detection sensors installed in aircraft wheel wells “to detect movement within two to eight feet of the device,” OET said. It’s “part of a security system typically armed moments before the aircraft is parked and vacated and is automatically disabled when airborne.”
The biggest business opportunity for direct-to-device (D2D) service is underserved areas at the edge of terrestrial cellular coverage, often those between semi-urban and rural areas, the Mobile Satellite Services Association said in a white paper Wednesday. MSSA said terrestrial network subscribers in these areas often experience coverage gaps, and D2D service lets mobile network operators (MNOs) and satellite operators capitalize on that demand. A big advantage of using mobile satellite service spectrum for D2D is that it avoids the potential for interference with terrestrial mobile networks, the white paper noted, and it's feasible to reuse MNO spectrum in remote areas where there's no terrestrial usage of the same frequencies. In addition, it said there are ways of addressing interference between satellite and terrestrial reuse of MNO terrestrial spectrum near each other, but that depends on updated regulations and technological advancements.
New Dell’Oro research found signs of life in the 5G stand-alone (SA) market, with revenues from 5G core vendors up 31% in Q2 over the year-earlier quarter. The wireless industry has been “bemoaning the slow uptake of 5G SA networks” by mobile network operators (MNOs), Dell’Oro Research Director Dave Bolan blogged this week. “After all, we are in the sixth year of the 5G SA era, and with over 700 MNOs in the world, it is surprising that more 5G SA networks have not launched.”
AT&T Business and Cisco on Wednesday introduced a AT&T Secure Access Service Edge with Cisco. “Fragmented, multi-vendor solutions create complexity and security gaps,” said a news release. The offering provides a cloud-native architecture “that ensures consistent security, optimized application performance and proactive network management in a single platform.”