An incentive auction in the 2.5 GHz educational broadband service band would maximize the educational value of the spectrum “by converting the leasing scheme’s implicit and inefficient subsidy into an explicit needs-based subsidy for educational broadband,” Tech Knowledge said Wednesday. EBS licensees have less experience managing spectrum than wireless providers, the group said. Providing direct subsidies makes more sense than the current regime, Tech Knowledge said. “In exchange for commercial use of its spectrum, a school board whose FCC license would be worth up to $157 million at auction is currently receiving an educational use benefit that amounts to $0.02 per K-12 student per month that can only be used to buy retail wireless broadband services from Sprint."

CTIA sought a “comprehensive national vision” on spectrum, meeting an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. “Smart spectrum policies -- including setting a five-year schedule of spectrum auctions, emphasizing free market principles such as exclusive flexible-use licenses, and modernizing government policies and procedures -- will unlock the enormous promise of 5G and spur U.S. global technological leadership,” CTIA filed, posted Tuesday in docket 18-122.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment Tuesday on a waiver request by Auspion for a system that transmits wireless power over distance. The technology uses the 24 GHz industrial, scientific and medical band “to provide power to, and/or charge, receivers located at various distances from the transmitter,” OET said. Auspion says it plans to market its system “exclusively for industrial, retail and enterprise applications, such as charging industrial robots, warehouse-based drones, and smartphones in conference rooms,” OET said. Comments are due April 25, replies May 10, in docket 19-83.

There has been “significant progress” in the 3.5 GHz citizen broadband radio service, Federated Wireless said in a meeting with FCC Public Safety Bureau staff. Commercial deployment is “imminent” with “full commercial activities to follow,” Federated said in docket 07-100. The company discussed “potential benefits for protection of incumbents, increased spectrum access, and reduced equipment costs that dynamic sharing could bring to the 4.9 GHz band,” Monday's filing said.

The Mobile & Wireless Forum and the Telecommunications Industry Association met Chief Julius Knapp and others from the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology to update them on the status of international RF exposure guidelines. The groups recommended their adoption and discussed with staff technical product testing issues, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-84. Industry representatives met with OET staff at the FCC Lab in Columbia, Maryland. Among areas discussed was a proposal to allow telecom certification bodies, the labs that already certify most new products that need FCC sign off, to approve equipment without agency review.

TracFone met FCC Wireline Bureau staff on how to supplement Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cards to show a Lifeline applicant is enrolled in SNAP. Other than participants in Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada and Virginia, “the SNAP participant’s name and account number is printed on the SNAP/Electronic Benefits Transfer card,” TracFone said Friday in docket 17-287. The company proposed “that in the states where the SNAP participant’s name and account number is printed on the SNAP card,” that card “accompanied by a receipt of a SNAP purchase within the last fourteen days would be proof of current enrollment in the SNAP program during the manual verification process for Lifeline eligibility.” Texas is also reviewing Lifeline issues (see 1903250043).

The FCC 24 GHz auction was at $1.4 billion Monday after 23 bidding rounds. Citigroup wrote investors Monday the auction is likely to end near the upper end of the firm's $3 billion forecast. The report noted that demand was withdrawn in the five largest markets once bidding reached 1 cent per MHz POP. “Activity has been concentrated in the upper portion of the band, where there are five contiguous 100 MHz licenses available, versus the lower portion which features just two contiguous 100 MHz licenses,” Citigroup said. “Bidders seem to want more than 200 MHz of contiguous spectrum.”

Commissioners unanimously rejected a September petition for reconsideration by the Critical Messaging Association of a July order deleting equal employment opportunity requirements for Part 22 licensees. The FCC said the rule was subsumed by another applying requirements to all commercial mobile radio service licensees (Section 90.168). CMA argued that with the deletion, “CMRS providers licensed under Part 22 are subject only to the annual EEO reporting obligations found in Section 1.815, which do not apply to providers, such as some of its members, with fewer than 16 employees,” the agency said. “We deny the CMA Petition as fundamentally misreading the purpose of the Commission’s EEO rules and the Commission’s intent” in the order, said Friday's order: “The Commission has long recognized the importance of having EEO rules that apply to common carriers, including all CMRS providers.” CMA didn't comment.

The FCC should reject an ARRL request for rule changes to instantly grant HF data privileges to amateur radio operators, filed Ted Rappaport, founding director of NYU Wireless at New York University School of Engineering who recently made a pitch to the agency for 6G wireless spectrum (see 1903190059). It's "a thinly disguised attempt to immediately add up to 385,000 new HF digital stations that could build upon the existing network of … relay stations that provide effectively encrypted transmissions that cannot be cannot be monitored for content by other amateur operators or the FCC,” Rappaport said in docket 16-239, posted Thursday. It would “perpetuate illegal and secure, international email service while crowding the US HF amateur bands with unintelligible wideband data traffic and intense interference,” he said. Friday, ARRL didn’t comment.

T-Mobile/Sprint and Dish Network letters at the FCC argue over which economic models better capture the effect of the proposed deal between the carriers. At issue is which numbers are better -- Cornerstone’s Nielsen Mobile Performance (NMP) data set favored by T-Mobile/Sprint or Brattle Group filed on behalf of Dish. “Brattle’s income estimates are more realistic than those used by Cornerstone, which simply assumes that all consumers in the same zip code have the same income,” Dish said in a redacted filing in docket 18-197. “Brattle’s method for estimating income (based on the income brackets reported by the majority of consumers in Cornerstone’s NMP data set, as well as other data set characteristics) was accurately and explicitly disclosed.” T-Mobile/Sprint fired back, posted Friday. “DISH now admits that the Brattle Economists ‘used an unconditional expectation of income … for both respondents and non-respondents,’” the carriers said. “In other words, DISH concedes it manufactured ‘an estimated unconditional expectation of income’ and used that ‘data’ in the place of the NMP survey.”