Tech companies are wrong that radio local access network devices can safely share the 6 GHz band indoors, at low-power levels, without automatic frequency control, the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition told the FCC. Apple and other tech groups said the opposite (see 1910080036). The FWCC “opposes non-AFC-controlled RLANs on the ground that some are statistically certain to cause harmful interference,” said a filing in docket 18-295, posted Friday: “When they do, there will be no way to turn them off.” The group noted about 97,000 fixed links are licensed to use the band.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Friday on a New York University petition for a declaratory ruling that section 97.113(a)(4) of FCC rules prohibits the transmission on amateur radio frequencies of “effectively encrypted or encoded messages, including messages that cannot be readily decoded over-the-air for true meaning.” The use of encrypted Winlink Global Radio Email by amateur radio operators has been a long-standing, sometimes heated dispute (see 1904010034). NYU sought clarification in a petition last month. Comments are due Dec. 2, replies Dec. 17, in docket 16-239.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau approved a waiver T-Mobile sought (see 1910250027) of wireless emergency alert rules so it can do testing. A new geo-targeting requirement for WEA messages takes effect Nov. 30. T-Mobile asked to do “live testing of network and device geo-targeting capabilities” before the deadline. “The Commission has previously recognized that compliance with enhanced geotargeting necessitates testing, and we find that there is good cause to grant T-Mobile’s request for a waiver,” said a Friday order in docket 15-91: “We are persuaded that the means by which T-Mobile proposes to conduct its test would serve the public interest. T-Mobile’s test is narrowly designed to affect a limited subset of the public, while still providing T-Mobile with the data necessary to evaluate its implementation of enhanced geotargeting.”

Federated Wireless demonstrated a fully functional automated frequency coordinator (AFC) prototype for unlicensed services in the citizens broadband radio service band "while ensuring protection of existing services,” said Chief Technology Officer Kurt Schaubach and others in FCC meetings. An AFC can “enable new unlicensed services in the 6 GHz band as quickly as possible.” Federated discussed “potential coexistence issues at the C-Band/CBRS band edge, and the opportunity to leverage automated spectrum access tools to accelerate deployment of new terrestrial broadband services in the C-Band,” said a filing in docket 17-258, posted Friday. Federated met aides to Commissioners Mike O’Rielly, Brendan Carr and Jessica Rosenworcel and Wireless Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology staff, it reported. "Industry has coalesced around the need for an AFC for a wide variety of use cases.”

Advertisers urged the Supreme Court to take up CTIA’s challenge of an RF disclosure law by Berkeley, California (see 1910030056). By upholding the law that requires the wireless industry warn about possible dangers of overexposure to wireless frequencies, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals “disregarded bedrock First Amendment requirements,” the Association of National Advertisers wrote in an amicus brief Thursday in case No. 19-439. The appeals court contradicted the Supreme Court’s “growing recognition of greater protection of commercial speech and improperly assumes all compelled commercial disclosures necessarily receive the most relaxed level of constitutional scrutiny,” ANA said. It "permits compelled commercial speech as a remedy to serve any governmental interest so long as it is ‘more than trivial,’ and supports any disclosure that is arguably factual, regardless of the overall impression created.” The 9th Circuit denied First Amendment protections to the wireless industry, agreed the Pacific Legal Foundation in a Wednesday brief: That decision “promotes both over-warning and senseless mandatory labeling that ultimately harm consumers and the public interest.”

Rights of way and pole access present “a difficult problem with novel issues and unclear federal law,” Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center emailed Thursday (see 1910300027). “Providers are itching to deploy 5G and fiber networks everywhere but city leaders have to ensure orderly construction and adequate fees for use of rights of way property. With millimeter wave and mid-band spectrum coming online, carriers want to deploy new cellsites and gain access to roadside infrastructure. The problem is that there are a small number of actors on both sides who poison future negotiations by overreaching. Things will be sorted out eventually but delays help no one.”

The FCC said four of 39 companies that filed short-form applications to bid in the auction of high-band spectrum in the upper 37, 39 and 47 GHz bands never qualified. Six others now qualified after providing additional information (see 1910070058), it said Thursday. The four bidders not making the cut after a review based on “completeness and compliance” are Cordova Telephone Co-op, Peter Goesseringer, Alton Jones and Zebra Microsystems. Docomo Pacific, Nsight Spectrum, Union Telephone and Windstream are among those now qualified. The auction starts Dec. 10.

Sony smartphone sales dwindled to 600,000 units in Q2 ended Sept. 30, 63 percent down from the year-ago quarter, it reported Wednesday. It expects to sell 3.5 million smartphones for the year, a 74 percent reduction from the 13.5 million two years earlier.

The fight over the first responder market is heating up. AT&T unveiled pricing plans Wednesday, effective Sunday, including a 25 percent discount for first responders and their families on eligible wireless plans, including the new Unlimited Starter plan. Monday, T-Mobile launched “the best discount in wireless for first responders and their families, with 50 percent off family lines.”

Metrom Rail submitted technical information to the FCC on the company's proposal to operate ultrawideband positive train control systems in the 3.272-5.014 GHz band (see 1809200041). The proposal has been before regulators for more than a year. NCTA and America’s Communications Association told the FCC in April Metrom should have to provide a detailed technical analysis demonstrating its proposed operations won't interfere with C-band downlinks (see 1904020058). Metrom said it’s providing “a detailed summary of the system characteristics of the Metrom AURA system. In particular, the technical summary provides details on how the sensors and wayside points could be configured as well as details on how the system would manage any harmful interference from licensed services.” The filing was posted Wednesday in docket 18-284.