When people started discussing 5G 10 years ago, Mischa Dohler, Ericsson vice president-emerging technologies, said he was asked why anyone needs the next generation of wireless. Dohler, who spoke Thursday at a Competitive Carriers Association conference streamed from Palm Springs, California, said he has spent the last 10 years finding answers to that question.
The FCC "has already begun investigating the 911 multistate outages that occurred [Wednesday] night to get to the bottom of the cause and impact," Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Thursday. Authorities in affected states are asking questions, too. At least four states -- Texas, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota -- experienced 911 calling problems, said state officials and news reports.
The FCC approved Thursday waiver requests from 11 additional parties seeking permission to launch early deployments of cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology in the 5.895-5.925 GHz band. The FCC has yet to finalize rules for C-V2X in the band -- an item pending since November 2020, when the commission approved an order opening 45 MHz of the band for Wi-Fi, while allocating 30 MHz C-V2X technology (see 2011180043).
Congressional Republicans have remained relatively quiet about the FCC’s draft net neutrality order since Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel released it earlier this month (see 2404030043) but are likely to become more active in opposition when the commission adopts it as expected next week, lawmakers and observers said in interviews. Congressional Democrats have been comparatively active since the draft’s release, including sending Rosenworcel suggestions aimed at preventing loopholes that ISPs could use to circumvent regulation. Congressional Democrats highlighted that divergence in style Thursday by bringing Rosenworcel to Capitol Hill for a news conference that amounted to a preemptive victory lap ahead of the FCC’s April 25 vote on the order.
CTA is “concerned” about a joint proposal for closed caption display settings accessibility from NCTA and a number of consumer groups representing the hearing impaired, it said in comments filed this week in docket 12-108. Under the proposal (see 2403190056), caption display settings would be located in one place and accessible by a single button, key or icon, and cable operator apps on third-party devices would respect the caption setting of the host device. “The 2024 Joint Proposal, although a notable development, is limited in nature and does not provide answers to many foundational questions that remain outstanding in the proceeding,” CTA said. The proposal doesn’t specify where caption settings would be stored or how responsibility for captions should be divided among distributors, programmers, app owners, device-makers and operating systems, CTA said. It also doesn’t cover how companies should handle the privacy implications of sharing user caption setting information, the group said. Any eventual FCC rules on the matter “should be appropriately tailored to the fact that different participants in the video-display ecosystem control different elements of the user experience” and should “align responsibility accordingly,” CTA said. Any final regulations “should avoid design mandates, be forward-looking, provide a reasonable compliance period and preserve implementation flexibility” CTA said.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau sent a cease-and-desist letter to DigitalIPvoice Wednesday ordering the company to "stop serving as a gateway provider" for an apparently illegal robocall campaign regarding student loan debt. The bureau also notified U.S.-based voice service providers in a public notice that they may block traffic from DigitalIPvoice if the company fails to comply.
The Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC) asked the FCC to correct the draft net neutrality order to reflect that the group opposes and doesn’t support forbearance for Section 275 of the Communications Act. The section “generally requires nondiscriminatory conduct and the avoidance of other unfair conduct, between certain carriers and alarm security operations,” AICC said. The draft order “basically flipped the meaning of AICC’s comments,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 23-320: “AICC did not argue that excluding section 275 from forbearance would ‘actively strip’ the Alarm Industry of protections, but rather that failure to exclude section 275 from forbearance would strip those same protections.”
Axon Enterprise representatives spoke with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff, including Chief Ron Repasi, to answer questions on the company’s request for a waiver allowing it to market three investigation and surveillance devices to law enforcement agencies. These devices would operate at higher power levels than allowed under FCC rules in heavily used 5 GHz spectrum and proved controversial when the FCC took comments (see 2403080044). The representatives “answered questions about additional conditions that could be imposed on the grant of a waiver,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 24-40.
CTIA discussed concerns about how non-broadband internet access services are treated under the draft net neutrality order circulated by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. In meetings with staff for all five commissioners, CTIA asked the FCC to remove warnings not present in the 2015 order. Non-BIAS services, and network slicing, have emerged as major issues (see 2404160055). The draft “favorably references non-BIAS use cases that ‘cannot be met over the Open Internet,’ but any suggestion that an offering that can function to some extent over BIAS must be offered over BIAS would be a dramatic shift from the 2015 framework,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 23-320. The draft also says the commission “will closely monitor any services that have a negative effect on the performance of BIAS in any given moment or the capacity available for BIAS over time” and that the commission “will be watchful of services that do not require isolated capacity,” CTIA said. “The 2015 Order did not set forth any of these rigid warnings, and for good reason,” the group said: “The net effect of such guidance could restrict the offering of non-BIAS services. Customers would lose out on choice and innovation, and networks would operate less efficiently.”
AT&T urged the FCC to establish requirements for how interference is addressed in the 6 GHz band as automated frequency coordination systems open (see 2404050012). “The interference reporting and resolution system should not impose barriers or difficult validation requirements for incumbents to report interference” and “should be regularly publicized” by AFC systems to incumbents, said a filing Tuesday in docket 21-352. The reporting system should be available at all times, AT&T said: “In cases where interference cannot be narrowed to a specific AFC, AFC systems should be prepared to serially and sequentially increase the protection for the victim link in order to isolate coordination problems.”