The Harris County (Texas) Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management urged the FCC to encourage carriers to make more use of satellite connections in wireless emergency alerts. With “vast swaths” of the U.S. “either sparsely inhabited or completely uninhabited, the Commission should seek to encourage telecommunications providers to leverage different technologies, such as satellite, to augment terrestrial communications systems and extend the reach of WEA,” said a filing Thursday in docket 25-224.

T-Mobile expects to fully integrate UScellular assets into its network in two years, faster than its original expectation of three to four years, the carrier announced Thursday. T-Mobile finalized the $4.3 billion deal last month, giving it UScellular's wireless assets, including customers and spectrum (see 2508010012).

Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., slammed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s proposal to overturn the rule allowing schools and libraries to use E-rate funds to loan Wi-Fi hot spots to students and educators. Benton Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman criticized both that proposal and one to stop funding Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2509030064).

AT&T’s agreement to buy EchoStar spectrum for $23 billion (see 2508260005) will likely have a short-term positive effect and a long-term negative effect for tower companies, MoffettNathanson’s Nick Del Deo told investors Thursday. MoffettNathanson cut its target prices for American Tower by 3%, Crown Castle by 7% and SBA by 5%. “We continue to view the group as attractive, but not pound-the-table attractive,” the analyst said.

Airspan is revising its request for a waiver allowing it to manufacture a multiband radio device that operates across bands adjacent to the citizens broadband radio service band, the company told the FCC after CBRS proponents raised objections (see 2508190037). "Rather than expending resources to address the merits” of the CBRS out-of-band-emissions parts of its petition, “Airspan is in the process of revising its filter design,” said a filing Tuesday in docket 25-234. “This redesign process is underway and is expected to allow Airspan to resubmit a revised waiver request with the FCC, one that does not feature any OOBE in the CBRS band that is [in] excess of that permitted under current FCC rules.”

Puerto Rico Telephone Co. is seeking to reaffirm that its indirect foreign ownership is acceptable to the FCC. In a petition filed last week, PRTC said it's complying with the 2019 declaratory ruling that allows potential increases in telecom magnate Carlos Slim's family's ownership of its parent company, America Movil. The petition aims "to provide more granular information" about Slim family interests in America Movil, PRTC said. In addition, it said granting the petition won't change its ultimate control, with PRTC being indirectly controlled by America Movil, as well as Slim and members of his family, who are controlling shareholders of America Movil. PRTC said the FCC previously indicated it would allow up to 100% indirect foreign ownership investment in the company by Mexico's America Movil.

Odds are that EchoStar will continue pursuing its direct-to-device constellation plans in light of the $23 billion spectrum sale to AT&T, which was announced last week (see 2508260052), satellite and spectrum consultant Tim Farrar wrote Sunday. He said it seems likely that EchoStar is looking at other spectrum deals, and available options include AT&T swapping the 600 MHz spectrum it's buying from EchoStar with T-Mobile for that company's C-band spectrum, or Verizon buying EchoStar's AWS-3 spectrum and leasing its AWS-4 in urban areas. It's also possible that no wireless carrier ends up interested in EchoStar's spectrum at the prices it's asking, he noted. EchoStar's D2D constellation plans become moot only if T-Mobile buys all of EchoStar's midband spectrum, with some to be shared with SpaceX, Farrar said. As long as the FCC signs off on the EchoStar/AT&T deal, it "seems more likely than not that at least the first stage of EchoStar’s constellation will be built."

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.”