UScellular CEO Laurent Therivel urged the FCC to adopt a clock-auction format in the 2.5 GHz band, in a call with Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. Therivel “stressed that the information advantage enjoyed by certain potential bidders in particular cautions against a single round sealed bid format,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 20-429. UScellular previously reported (see 2202160037) a similar call with Commissioner Brendan Carr.

Counsel for Liberty Mobile Puerto Rico and Liberty Mobile USVI spoke with FCC Wireline Bureau staff on their request for a ruling that AT&T should port to Liberty 24,000 wireless numbers assigned to 16,000 customers acquired as part of Liberty’s buy of AT&T’s wireless business in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. “Counsel emphasized the narrow and limited nature of the requested ruling,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 22-68. “Liberty believes that its situation is unique and unprecedented,” the company said: “It has found no other situation in which a transferee carrier was acquiring a large number of customers with telephone numbers whose [area codes] were associated with areas outside the service area of the transferee carrier.”

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance urged revisions to a Land Mobile Communications Council petition asking the FCC to modify its Part 90 rules on sharing of TV channels 14-20 with the T-band to reflect the changes that have occurred due to the DTV transition (see 2202100041), in reply comments. EWA supports “proposals to provide incentives for licensees to partition, disaggregate, and/or lease unused spectrum to small carriers, rural carriers, and Tribal Nations,” the group said in a Wednesday news release. “Incentives could include license term and construction extensions as well as alternate benchmarks for rural-focused transactions,” the group said: “EWA also urged the FCC to adopt a different standard for private enterprise entities as these companies are responsible for most of the economic activity in the nation. They rely on private wireless networks that may be in areas or have restrictions that make commercial service not a viable option.”

Former FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein is leaving the Wireless Infrastructure Association after the Connect (X) conference in May, the group said Wednesday. Adelstein joined WIA as president in 2012, and will join DigitalBridge Group as managing director and head-global policy and public investment June 1. “A candidate search is being launched to identify his replacement,” WIA said. “WIA tripled in size and expanded its reach to all corners of the wireless industry” under Adelstein, said WIA Chairman Jeffrey Stoops, CEO of SBA Communications: “Under his leadership, WIA has become an advocacy juggernaut, racking up federal policy victories and establishing a state program that guided legislation in over 30 states to a successful conclusion.”

Harman’s Digital Transformation Solutions (DTS) business will collaborate with Microsoft Azure private multi-access edge compute to combine network functions, applications and edge-optimized services for enterprise customers, the companies said Monday. Advances in 5G can accelerate innovation across industries, said David Owens, DTS general manager. Transportation hubs are adopting emerging edge compute capabilities and private 5G connectivity, said Tad Brockway, corporate vice president-Azure for Operators. The companies' collaboration is being used at a large U.S. airport to manage cargo handling, they said, without giving details.

Ericsson North America CEO Niklas Heuveldop answered questions from FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks on supply chain and other issues in a recent call, said a filing posted Monday in docket 21-63. Starks asked “how Ericsson has been managing supply chain issues such as silicon chip shortages brought about by the COVID pandemic,” the company said: Heuveldop responded “that global component shortages are still a challenge," but Ericsson "continues to effectively mitigate the impact in close collaboration with our U.S. customers and component suppliers. Ericsson also benefits from the new USA 5G Smart Factory in Lewisville, Texas.” Starks also asked about the FCC’s rip-and-replace program for insecure network equipment and the future of open radio access network standards and products, the filing said.

U.S. carriers are falling behind much of the world on open radio access networks, said John Baker, Mavenir senior vice president-business development, in an interview. “The train has left the station,” he said: “Pretty much all of Europe,” parts of Africa and the Middle East are embracing ORAN. “The sad part of it is the U.S. has still made no more progress.” Dish Network is the only major U.S. carrier deploying ORAN, he said. “We’re waiting for the rip-and-replace monies issue to get sorted out because ORAN can save the U.S. taxpayer a lot of money,” he said. The FCC plans to announce cuts on a $1.9 billion program for removing Huawei and ZTE from carrier network in June, including proposals using ORAN (see 2202090031). Mavenir announced last year it’s working with Montana’s Triangle Communications to upgrade its network. Mavenir last week unveiled OpenBeam, a new suite of ORAN compliant radios. The company invested in “high performance areas” for radios and is working with others on radio designs, Baker said. “At the end of the day, Mavenir is a software company,” he said. “We’ve invested some of our dollars to seed the open RAN ecosystem to get this radio design, development and manufacturing going,” he said. “Hopefully this is the start of a bring-back-to-America approach of radios that can then be sold in the open-RAN community to operators on a global basis,” he said: “The U.S. has the skill set to do this, and we’ve demonstrated that.” One of the greatest needs for ORAN is radios with open interfaces that are 3rd Generation Partnership Project approved, Baker said. “The global market potentially needs tens to hundreds” of radio models, he said. Nokia and Ericsson offer an alternative to the Chinese providers, but their radios “aren’t open RAN, and they’re not willing to share, at this point, their radios with others in terms of ensuring a diverse supply chain,” Baker said.

Sennheiser urged FCC action on wireless multichannel audio systems rules, teed up in an April NPRM (see 2104220056), in a call with staff from the FCC Wireless and Media bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology. The company has a “unique WMAS design” using “only 50 mW of power, the same amount of power that a single conventional narrowband microphone utilizes, even when a large number of audio channels are connected to the base,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 21-115: “Since the power is spread over 6 MHz of bandwidth, as opposed to conventional narrowband microphones, which concentrate that power in 200 kHz, there is much lower power spectral density, resulting in less opportunity for interference and greater spectrum reuse.” The company stressed “these benefits … significantly decrease” if operated using less than 6 MHz. Sennheiser also urged the FCC to set aside a vacant UHF TV channel for wireless microphone use across the U.S. “Microphones operating on low-band UHF TV band spectrum are the only ones that can deliver the fault intolerant reliability, compact size and battery life that film, TV and theater producers demand,” the company said.

NCTA told the FCC a CableLabs analysis of a June Southern Co. report, which warned of the threat from low-power indoor unlicensed devices to electric utility operations in the 6 GHz band (see 2106240075), found numerous problems with the study. The report “(1) mistakenly equates interference-to-noise power to a measurement of harmful interference, (2) uses inaccurate Wi-Fi data, (3) appears designed to achieve a harmful interference result, (4) is based on methodologies that the Commission has already properly rejected in the 6 GHz Order, and (5) reports measurements that suggest significant flaws and inaccuracies in Southern’s testing methodology and execution,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-295. Southern didn’t comment.

The FCC accepted for filing applications for licenses to use the 3.45 GHz band from the biggest bidders in the auction, including AT&T, Dish Network, T-Mobile, Columbia Capital and UScellular. The announcement moves the providers a step closer to being able to deploy the licenses for 5G. Petitions to deny the applications are due March 7, oppositions March 14 and replies to oppositions March 21. The 23 long-form applications listed, “which reflects all long-form applications for Auction 110, have been found, upon initial review, to be acceptable for filing,” said a Wednesday notice: “The Commission may return or dismiss the applications, however, if upon further examination, they are found to be defective or not in compliance with the Commission’s rules.”