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.

Representatives from the ATIS Hearing Aid Compatibility Task Force met with FCC staff urging action on an agency waiver sought by the group (see 2304060053). “The HAC Task Force representatives highlighted the unanimous record support for the Waiver Request and discussed various technical details related to the consensus interim testing standard,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-285. They spoke with staff from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Wireless bureaus and Office of Engineering and Technology. The task force members said three areas of the Telecommunications Industry Association 5050 standard need further consideration: “(i) receive distortion and noise performance; (ii) acoustic frequency response; and (iii) consideration of codecs with speech bandwidth exceeding 50-7000 Hz.” They said “addressing the issues in the TIA 5050 standard will take some time, and TIA is already working to address these issues.”

CTIA representatives urged the FCC to take a cautious approach to a March robotext Further NPRM (see 2303160061), in a meeting with Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staff. The advocacy is consistent with the FCC’s comments in the proceeding (see 2305090047). “The record developed in response to the FNPRM confirms that the wireless industry’s multi-pronged, dynamic solutions are tailored to target the ever-evolving ways that bad actors seek to reach consumers,” said a filing Tuesday in docket 21-402. “The record also shows that solutions that work in the robocall context are unlikely to be effective for text messages, and that current efforts to identify and block spam texts are better equipped to address bad actors’ ever-changing and increasingly complex tactics than the ‘block upon notice’ or caller ID authentication proposals in the FNPRM,” CTIA said.

Representatives of Apple and Broadcom proposed rule tweaks for very low-power operations in the 6 GHz band, in a meeting with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. They also spoke with a staffer from the Office of Engineering and Technology. The FCC proposed in an April 2020 Further NPRM to allow VLP devices to operate in the band indoors without automated frequency control (see 2306230046). “In order to reduce the already insignificant risk of harmful interference even further … we discussed that the Commission could take two further steps,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-295. The FCC could create a transmit power control (TPC) rule for VLP equipment “that contains a specific and measurable power-reduction mandate,” the filing said: “Such a rule could state that TPC shall, on average, reduce the PSD [power spectral density] of the VLP device by 3 dB, compared to the maximum permitted PSD of VLP devices. The Commission would then permit VLP equipment makers to demonstrate during the FCC device certification process that a particular VLP device complies with this rule in order to receive authorization to operate at the maximum permitted” PSD. The FCC could also prohibit VLP devices from operating as part of a fixed outdoor installation, Apple and Broadcom said: “By doing so, the Commission would ensure that all VLP operations would be itinerant, not operating at any one set place and in any one set orientation to a FS receiver.”

T-Mobile started rolling out four-carrier aggregation on its 5G stand-alone network in limited markets, to go nationwide in coming weeks, the company said Tuesday. Peak speeds top 3.3 Gbps, T-Mobile said. The technology combines two channels of 2.5 GHz spectrum with one channel each of 1900 MHz and 600 MHz spectrum. “That’s like taking four separate highways and turning them into a massive superhighway where traffic can zoom faster than before,” T-Mobile said: “Customers with the Samsung Galaxy S23 will be the first to experience four-carrier aggregation with more devices to follow.”

Attorneys general from states led by New York raised concerns about how the FCC addresses wireless emergency alerts in multiple languages, in a filing at the FCC in docket 15-91 (see 2307240045). “We are concerned that relying on machine translation to translate WEAs from English to other languages may result in inaccurate alerts,” the AGs said in a filing posted Monday: “It is critical that alerts be accurate. We therefore urge the Commission to adopt the alternative approach of requiring installation on cell phones of translated alert templates prepared for the National Weather Service and other federal alert originators by human translators.” The AGs also questioned whether the 13 languages, other than English, proposed by the FCC are enough. AGs from Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and New York City also signed the filing. The National Weather Service said with dedicated funding it could create templates in different languages for alerts. The "long-term goal is to automatically translate all alerts and forecasts into other languages,” the service said: “Experience with Spanish translation has shown that if NWS alerts use a limited set of words and phrases, the AI/[machine learning] process can automatically provide translated products with an accuracy exceeding 97%.”

The Nebraska Department of Transportation became the latest to seek an FCC waiver allowing early cellular vehicle-to-everything deployments in the 5.9 GHz band (see 2307170049). “The Applicant requests this waiver as it is prepared to deploy and operate C-V2X on-board units and roadside units to improve roadway safety, but cannot do so absent a waiver that permits such deployment,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 19-138. The state DOT said C-V2X roadside units are already deployed along three highway segments in the Omaha area, with additional units planned in western Nebraska.

JMA Wireless launched a three-year research partnership with Muriel Medard, software science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focused on ultra-reliable low-latency (URLLC) wireless. “Historically, the industry has traded performance to achieve reliability -- making wireless URLLC impossible,” said a Tuesday news release: “MIT and JMA are working to make URLLC a reality without sacrificing performance -- delivering wirelessly what could previously only be done with a hard-wired connection.”

The FCC Wireless Bureau approved Midland Radio’s request for waiver of FCC rules for general mobile radio service devices in the 462 MHz band (see 2110120061). Midland requested a waiver to allow digital data transmission from non-handheld radios, the automatic transmission of digital data more than once within a 30-second period, and antennas to be a non-integrated part of the GMRS unit. “We find that Midland has shown that a waiver is warranted because, based on the unique circumstances, application of several GMRS provisions to this particular software application would not serve the public interest,” the bureau said Monday: “By granting a waiver, we allow increased functionality and safety for the off-road community, in support of the public interest.” The bureau said it agreed with Midland that the waiver “would serve the public interest by ensuring that critical communications and location information are available in dangerous remote locations where traditional communications infrastructure is lacking.” The approval came with conditions, including that transmitters “must not be capable of modification by end users to adjust the frequencies of operation” and that operations be restricted to the 462 MHz main and interstitial channels.