The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the FCC for a limited waiver of the agency's wireless emergency alert rules, allowing a national test Oct. 4. The test would start at 2:18 p.m. EDT and “involve sending a WEA message to the entire United States and U.S. territories,” FEMA said: “The 87-character test message to be displayed on cellular handsets will read: THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” FEMA said it would be the third national WEA test and “is necessary because it will determine if carrier WEA configuration, systems, and networks can and will process a National Level WEA delivering the message via all WEA enabled cell sites with minimal latency.” The FEMA letter is dated July 21 but was posted Tuesday in docket 15-91.

The 3.45 GHz Clearinghouse Search Committee submitted to the FCC Wireless Bureau documents tied to its selection of Summit Ridge Group to run the 3.45 GHz relocation reimbursement clearinghouse (see 2305030037). Parts of the documents were redacted as the committee seeks confidential treatment. “By unanimous consent, the Search Committee informs the Bureau that its selection of Summit Ridge Group, LLC for the position of the 3.45 GHz Relocation Reimbursement Clearinghouse is finalized, subject to the Bureau’s determination that the selection criteria have been satisfied,” said a filing in docket 19-348. The filing was signed by the Competitive Carriers Association, CTIA, NBCUniversal and Nexstar.

Electric utility representatives, led by FirstEnergy and the Edison Electric Institute, met with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff about FirstEnergy’s recent 6 GHz interference tests (see 2305100047). Electric companies “operate 6 GHz communications networks that are necessary for the safety of electric company personnel and to maintain the backbone of electric companies’ operations during emergencies and disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-295: “Protecting existing 6 GHz networks remains the reason for electric companies to invest their limited resources to conduct tests to evaluate the risk that unlicensed devices pose to their networks.”

The Commerce Department is allowing an additional 30 days for comment on information collection tied to the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund Grant Program, said a notice in Tuesday’s Federal Register. “With this information collection, NTIA will be able to monitor the grant recipients’ spending habits and activities. In the absence of collecting this information, NTIA would fail to evaluate the grant recipients’ progress toward the grant program priority areas and program goals,” the notice said. The program has been popular. NTIA previously said 127 applicants had requested $1.39 billion under the fund to support testing and research and development activities on open and interoperable networks (see 2306090044), which is about 10 times the amount of money available in the first round.

AT&T opposed a recent waiver request by Extreme Weather of FCC rules for low-power indoor devices for 6 GHz access points (APs), to be installed exclusively in indoor-only sports venues. The company wants to protect the APs with a waterproof enclosure “to protect the devices from beverage spills and during venue washing,” said a July 21 waiver request in docket 18-295. “As a general matter, access points in the 6 GHz band must operate using an automated frequency coordination system to avoid interference with primary Fixed Service microwave incumbents in the band,” though an exception is for points “limited to indoor operation,” which are governed by form-factor rules including that “devices cannot be weather resistant,” AT&T said, posted Tuesday. The waiver “should be denied because the form factor rules are a key component of the regulatory scheme protecting primary FS incumbents and Extreme has not justified undermining those safeguards,” AT&T said.

CTIA hired Umair Javed, a longtime adviser to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, as senior vice president-spectrum, effective immediately, the group said Tuesday. Javed is responsible for shaping and coordinating CTIA’s spectrum advocacy. “Umair brings exemplary credentials and expertise from his tenure at the FCC, and adding someone of Umair’s caliber to our senior team underscores the critical role spectrum plays in our 5G future,” said CTIA President Meredith Baker: “We need a pipeline of new spectrum auctions, and Umair will help make that a reality.” At the FCC, Javed “helped focus the agency on identifying mid-band spectrum for 5G, oversaw one of the most successful auctions in U.S. history, and launched the FCC’s Spectrum Coordination Initiative to enhance partnerships between agencies and the private sector,” CTIA said.

Some 83% of active smartphones in the U.S. support the latest standard for wireless emergency alerts, WEA 3.0, CTIA said. That’s up from about 60% a year ago, said a filing posted Monday in docket 15-91. “CTIA and its member companies appreciate the Commission’s dedication to enhancing the WEA system and are very pleased with the progress that the wireless industry and [Federal Emergency Management Agency] FEMA have made on delivering new WEA features to consumers,” CTIA said.

NCTA urged the FCC to reject a warning by FirstEnergy and other electric utilities of interference risks for incumbents in the 6 GHz band as more Wi-Fi users take advantage of the spectrum (see 2305100047). “In a series of untimely attempts to convince the Commission to reverse key aspects of the landmark 6 GHz Order, the Utilities Incumbents nonetheless persist in testing [low-power indoor] access points in unrealistic scenarios engineered to yield harmful interference results,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295: “In doing so, the Utilities Incumbents contend that the forced results of their contrived, worst-case-scenario testing -- precisely the analytical approach the Commission rejected in the 6 GHz Order -- somehow reflect ‘real world’ risk.”

Qualcomm clarified its stance on the 4.9 GHz band, the topic of an FCC Further NPRM on which the company filed comments in April (see 2304140040). “Qualcomm reiterates that the 4.9 GHz band should be used for public safety purposes primarily and any permitted secondary uses of the band must ensure public safety users have priority and preemption over such secondary uses,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 07-100: “The sidelink technology Qualcomm has discussed in this docket can operate in spectrum bands other than the 4.9 GHz bands (e.g., lower bands will have better propagation), and sidelink can operate in channel bandwidths as small as 5 MHz wide.” Qualcomm stressed it’s “not asking the FCC to allocate the 4.9 GHz band for exclusive use by sidelink.” Qualcomm said in the April filing sidelink is a technology that would “allow first responders to communicate directly with other public safety personnel and the public via voice, text, and video in all types of emergency situations, and wherever they are -- deep inside of buildings, during and after catastrophic weather events, and in remote regions of the country -- where mobile networks are unreachable or unavailable.”

The Shortwave Modernization Coalition (SMC) opposes motions for extension of time filed by Skywave Networks FlexRadio Systems (see 2307270035) on its petition seeking a rulemaking to amend the eligibility and technical rules for industrial/business pool licensees to authorize licensed use of frequencies above 2 MHz and below 25 MHz for fixed, long-distance, non-voice communications (see 2305010053). “The Commission’s rules and precedent make clear that “[i]t is the policy of the Commission that extensions of time shall not be routinely granted,’” the coalition said in a filing posted Friday in RM-11953: “Neither Motion provides a legitimate basis for the Commission to depart from that policy.” The FlexRadio motion is “untimely and procedurally defective and should be denied on those grounds alone,” the SMC said. The Skywave motion is “a pretext for gaining access to the SMC member companies’ confidential business information -- information that, in any event, is not relevant to consideration of the SMC Petition," the filing said.