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.

T-Mobile would be interested in any spectrum Dish Network offers for sale, CEO Mike Sievert said during a Q2 earnings call Thursday (see 2307270064): “You know we've never met spectrum we didn't like.” One thing that distinguishes T-Mobile is “when we get our hands on spectrum, we put it to work right away,” he said. “You see that in how we're deploying so ambitiously the 2.5 GHz” acquired as part of the Sprint buy, he said. “We're always on the hunt for other ways to add capacity to our network because it allows us to do amazing things like not only continue to take share and grow and meet ever rising needs of customers on their smartphones” but also expand fixed wireless access, Sievert said. T-Mobile remains on track to have as many as 8 million home internet customers by 2025, using excess spectrum capacity, he said. T-Mobile agrees to provide fixed-wireless only in areas with extra capacity, which currently means it’s available to about 50 million U.S. homes, Sievert said. Ulf Ewaldsson, president-technology, said T-Mobile remains well situated on spectrum. “We have lots of room to move ahead,” he said: “We have today 255 MHz of spectrum that is dedicated to 5G on our mid-band, and you have to remember that our low-band is all dedicated to 5G.” Other carriers are sharing spectrum between LTE and 5G, “and we're not -- we're dedicating spectrum,” Ewaldsson said. T-Mobile is deploying high-band, but in markets with “extraordinary” capacity needs, including Manhattan and Los Angeles, he said. Callie Field, president of T-Mobile Business Group, said the provider is expanding its business portfolio, adding a major global asset management firm and a “leading global bank” as new accounts in Q2. Some multiunit national retailers are replacing their wireline connections with 5G from T-Mobile, and hospitals and schools have also been seeking alternatives for campus-wide connections, she said. “The structural unattractiveness of the wireless industry has weighed on T-Mobile’s shares just as it has on AT&T’s and Verizon’s,” MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett told investors: “The only remedy will be for T-Mobile to, well, just keep putting up the numbers and buying back stock. They did both in Q2. Eventually, reticent buyers will have no choice. It’s just that it may still take some time. As ever, we’re still believers in the T-Mobile story.”

T-Mobile urged the FCC to deny MatrixSpace's petition for waiver of the U.S. table of frequency allocations and the commission’s Part 87 rules for radars mounted on drones that could provide radionavigation or radiolocation in the 24.45-24.65 GHz band. The use would be similar to use of the band by Echodyne, which the FCC OK'd in 2019 (see 1906130051). The FCC should delay approval until MatrixSpace “submits technical details regarding its proposed operations and a comprehensive interference analysis similar to the one Echodyne Corporation … performed to demonstrate that its proposed radiolocation operations will not cause harmful interference to licensed users with primary status in the band,” T-Mobile said in a filing posted Wednesday. It said it doesn’t “oppose using the 24.45-24.65 GHz band for radiolocation on a secondary basis as a general matter” and “agrees that radiolocation uses in the band can help government and private entities secure sensitive areas and protect critical infrastructure.” Comments were due Wednesday in docket 23-216 and T-Mobile was the only party to file. MatrixSpace sought the waiver in January.

Most wireless consumers are addressing problems with their service online but “nothing matches the overall customer satisfaction and experience that in-store representatives can provide,” said a J.D. Power report released Thursday. “Within other channels, customers may be dealing with a bot or an overseas call center,” said Ian Greenblatt, J.D. Power managing director-technology, media and telecom: “In a world where the use of applications is high, those chats and bots provide both speed and economy; the in-person service provides a more complete understanding of a customer’s needs and wants and, ultimately, higher satisfaction is achieved when resolving wireless issues.” T-Mobile got the top marks in the network operators segment, Consumer Cellular in the value mobile virtual network operator segment.

T-Mobile added 760,000 net postpaid customers in Q2, besting AT&T and Verizon, it reported Thursday. That’s up from 538,000 in Q1. T-Mobile also picked up a net 509,000 customers for its home internet service, which it said is “more than AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Charter combined.” Postpaid churn hit a record low for the carrier of 0.77%. Service revenue of $15.7 billion was up 3% year-over-year and net income was $2.2 billion, compared with a net loss of $108 million last year. T-Mobile raised its guidance for the year in several areas and is now projecting 5.6 million-5.9 million postpaid net customer additions, compared with prior guidance of 5.3 million-5.7 million. T-Mobile said 285 million POPs are covered by T-Mobile’s Ultra Capacity 5G network, which uses its 2.5 GHz spectrum. Consumers are starting to “take notice” of T-Mobile’s 5G network “as we’re winning prime network seekers in the top 100 markets,” CEO Mike Sievert said on a call with analysts. In small markets, T-Mobile is capturing 30% of customers who switch networks, he said. Sievert said T-Mobile’s integration of Sprint is now “substantially complete, with both the billing migration and retail rationalization done ahead of a year-end target. The deadline has passed for Dish Network to exercise an option it got as part of a complicated arrangement on T-Mobile’s buy of Sprint to acquire the company’s 800 MHz spectrum for $3.4 billion (see 2304280049), Sievert said. Dish asked for additional time from the DOJ to consider what it would do “and we did not object to that,” he said. Dish has until Aug. 11 before T-Mobile will terminate the offer, Sievert said: “But, in fact, we’re in discussions with Dish about whether or not there might be a win-win that’s different from their initial privilege … But that deadline is coming.”

Representatives of Google and Qualcomm addressed questions from the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology on the possibility of subjecting very-low-power (VLP) devices to exclusion zones in the 6 GHz band, as proposed by some band incumbents. “If the Commission were to require some system of exclusion zones, it could ensure that VLP exclusion zones would be no larger than a 6 GHz automated frequency coordination system would have computed for a device at the same power level,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-295. “At the very least these exclusion zones should account for 3 dB of polarization mismatch loss, up to 3 dB of feeder loss (depending on the Fixed-Service radio), and a Fixed-Service receiver noise figure of 4.0-4.5 dB, depending on frequency,” they said. The FCC proposed in an April 2020 Further NPRM to allow VLP devices to operate in the band indoors without use of AFC (see 2306230046).

An American Radio Relay League (ARRL) representative spoke with an FCC Wireless Bureau staffer on the group’s long-standing request that the agency address limits on the symbol, or baud, rate for amateur communications (see 1907160016). “Removing the limitation on symbol rate would measurably improve spectrum efficiency and incentivize innovation by allowing more data to be transmitted within each signal without increasing bandwidth from that currently used,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-239. “Doing so also would open up spectrum capacity for other users by shortening the time needed to transmit each message,” ARRL said.

The FCC may be violating the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to issue 2.5 GHz licenses to T-Mobile, which it won in a 2022 auction, Free State Foundation Director-Communications Policy Studies Seth Cooper blogged Thursday. The FCC faced growing pressure to award the licenses but maintains it doesn’t have the authority to do so following the March expiration of its auction authority (see 2307070042). Section 706(1) of the APA “authorizes courts to ‘compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed,’” Cooper wrote, but he said he’s not arguing litigation is necessary to force the FCC to act. “T-Mobile reasonably relied to its detriment on the Commission's rules, the 2019 [2.5 GHz] order, and the agency's auction procedures,” he said: “T-Mobile is materially prejudiced by the agency's indefinite withholding of licenses worth $304 million, as it is being denied the benefit of using the spectrum to offer 5G services to consumers. Thus, all the elements for mandamus relief based on a claim of agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed are present.”

PCTEL announced release of a new tri-band omnidirectional antenna targeting industrial IoT, enterprise and mining customers. “PCTEL’s new tri-band antenna platform offers top-of-the-line performance in a rugged, low-profile design and can operate in the full Wi-Fi 7 frequency range, allowing simultaneous support of multiple Wi-Fi standards in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands,” the company said Wednesday.