The 911 National Emergency Address Database (NEAD), an independent entity established by CTIA, selected West's Safety Services to develop and operate the NEAD Platform, the association said Tuesday. “With a NEAD operator in place, the wireless industry remains on schedule to enhance indoor 911 location accuracy by harnessing commercial technologies,” CTIA said in a news release. Public safety groups hailed the development. The database “is one crucial element of a broad-based strategy aimed at making sure that every person who calls 911 can be located quickly and accurately,” said Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association. "Getting the database online, with appropriate privacy and security controls, is a major milestone in our location accuracy agreement with the wireless carriers, and we look forward to the day when that milestone is reached.” The FCC approved rules last year aimed at improving indoor location accuracy for wireless calls to 911 (see 1501290066).

The Wireless Infrastructure Association expressed concerns about a draft standard treatment for telecom projects on federal land by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal departments and agencies. WIA released its emailed comments, which weren't posted online. “We commend the Standard Treatment Agencies for establishing best practices for the review of infrastructure siting on federal lands and properties, especially for installations that typically do not result in adverse effects on historical properties,” WIA said. “However, developing voluntary best practices does not go far enough to ensure expedited processing of broadband infrastructure siting applications.” A voluntary approach isn't in line with 2012's executive order 13616, on accelerating broadband infrastructure deployment, WIA said.

Samsung doesn’t comment on pending litigation, a spokeswoman emailed us Tuesday about the first known federal complaint filed over the Galaxy Note7 that alleges the company was negligent in shipping the smartphone it knew was susceptible to overheating and fire (see 1610030052). Samsung is “urging any Note7 owner, without the green battery icon on the corner of their screen, to power their device down and exchange it immediately,” the spokeswoman said of Samsung’s Note7 recall and exchange program website.

Broadcom has concerns about the Wi-Fi Alliance’s LTE-unlicensed/Wi-Fi test plan (see 1609210069) but is willing to compromise to get a plan in place, representatives of the company told the FCC, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-105 on meetings with aides to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Ajit Pai. “Broadcom is concerned about several of the compromises that were made by the Wi-Fi Alliance in order to complete the test plan on time (e.g., removal of instances where the LTE-U interference signal will be stronger than the desired Wi-Fi signal, removal of instances involving signals below -82 dBm),” the filing said. “A variety of scenarios important to consumers will no longer be covered by the test plan.” Broadcom said the plan is “a reasonable outcome for the multi-stakeholder process as long as it applies to all non-standard unlicensed LTE … and all aspects of the test plan are properly executed by Wi-Fi Alliance validated labs to ensure the results actually reflect channel access fairness.” The “listen before talk” (LBT) protocol for license assisted access and Wi-Fi’s Alliance’s coexistence test plan for LTE-unlicensed don’t eliminate all threats to Wi-Fi, said Joey Padden, who has worked as a CableLabs analyst, in a Friday blog post. “At least two big problems remain,” Padden wrote. “LBT addresses channel access, but it does not fully address channel occupancy issues. Second, the coexistence test plan will be of little value without a baseline data set documenting the performance of modern Wi-Fi in the wild prior to any LTE-U or LAA deployment.” Wi-Fi has become far too important not to take the issue seriously, he said. “It's not good enough to throw up our public policy hands, let new uses disrupt Wi-Fi and just chant ‘permission-less innovation’ while the Wi-Fi frog is slowly boiling in the background.”

Winnebago County, Illinois, resident Michael Taylor filed the first known federal complaint over the Galaxy Note7 when he alleged Samsung was negligent in shipping the smartphone it knew was susceptible to overheating and fire. Taylor suffered serious burns to his groin and legs when he plugged in his Note7 to recharge before going to bed the evening of Sept. 12 and woke up in the middle of the night to find the phone was “shooting flames,” said the complaint (in Pacer), filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Rockford, Illinois. Samsung sold the Note7 “in an unsafe, unsuitable, unreasonably dangerous and defective condition such that” the phone “had an unreasonable propensity to heat and catch fire during normal and foreseeable use,” said the complaint, which alleges negligence and violation of product liability laws. Samsung also violated Illinois consumer fraud laws because it engaged in “the deception of introducing a known dangerous product into the stream of commerce,” said the complaint, which included several photos depicting Taylor's injuries and damage to his mattress. Samsung didn’t comment Monday. Three days before Taylor alleges he plugged in his Note7 to recharge, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a well-publicized advisory warning to consumers to power down their Note7s and not recharge them and wait until an official recall notice was available (see 1609120044). The agency issued that recall notice Sept. 15 (see 1609150069).

Various applicants to become spectrum access system administrators in the 3.5 GHz shared band met with FCC staff about a proposed framework for an agreement among individual SAS administrators on how information exchanged between the administrators may be used. The agreement would also cover the responsibilities of the administrators to keep that information confidential. Representatives of Comsearch, CTIA, Federated Wireless and Google said in a filing in docket 15-319 that they met with staff from the Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology. “The framework, developed after discussions with Commission staff and through individual discussions among SAS administrator applicants, is intended to facilitate a clear understanding and agreement regarding responsibilities” of FCC certified SASs, the filing said.

Dysfunction in the texting-to-toll-free (TTF) market is harmful to consumers and businesses, said a white paper by QSI Consulting, paid for by Somos. “Although commercial relationships in the mobile-to-mobile texting market have been working well, many of the same monopoly characteristics that plagued traditional voice communications for years, requiring constant oversight by the FCC, are now affecting the TTF market and causing consumer harm,” Somos, which administers a toll-free number platform, said in a news release. Toll-free numbers are being text-enabled without the knowledge of subscribers or carriers, the paper said. An aggregator monopoly “is stifling innovation and hindering market development,” it said. Aggregator revenue sharing agreements with the major mobile carriers are also disrupting the market, the paper said. “Our study chronicles significant and demonstrable market failures in the texting to Toll-Free ecosystem,” said Jim Webber, QSI senior vice president: “For example, with little effort, we were able to duplicate a scenario in which Toll-Free numbers could be text-enabled without the authorized subscriber’s knowledge or the supporting voice carrier’s concurrence.”

An FCC order on reconsideration tweaking the agency's Project 25 compliance acceptance program (CAP) rules is in effect after being published in Thursday's Federal Register. “This Order on Reconsideration allows CAP compliance or the equivalent to be demonstrated after equipment certification but prior to the marketing or sale of that equipment,” the FCC said. “Thereby manufacturers may obtain FCC equipment authorization for equipment designed to operate on the 700 MHz narrowband interoperability channels before obtaining P-25 CAP approval or the equivalent.” The commission said its goal is to provide more flexibility to radio equipment makers interested in the marketing and selling 700 MHz equipment to public safety agencies.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency raised concerns about an FCC proposal to include URLs in emergency alerts, approved by commissioners Thursday (see 1609290060), in a filing posted that day in docket 15-91. Those concerns can be mitigated by improved geotargeting and better training for alert originators, the emergency agency said in a Wednesday letter to the FCC. Alert originators also should make sure “a URL location … is as lightweight and bandwidth-efficient as possible,” FEMA said.

Qualcomm Technologies and SK Telecom did the first over-the-air technology demo of enhanced licensed assisted access (eLAA) at SK Telecom's Corporate R&D Center in Bundang, Korea, Qualcomm said. ELAA technology “increases data speeds in both uplink and downlink by aggregating licensed and unlicensed spectrum to create a wider data pipe in both directions,” Qualcomm said in a news release. “eLAA is an evolution of LAA, which used the unlicensed spectrum to boost the data speed in the downlink direction only.” The demo used licensed spectrum at 2.6 GHz and unlicensed at 5 GHz, Qualcomm said. “When evaluating coexistence, a baseline was first established using only Wi-Fi users, of which some were then switched from Wi-Fi to LAA/eLAA while others remained on Wi-Fi,” the company said. “The trial demonstrated that the users that remained on Wi-Fi were unaffected by those that switched to LAA/eLAA. This effectively demonstrates that LAA/eLAA shares the unlicensed spectrum fairly with Wi-Fi.”