The FCC Wireless and Public Safety bureaus are cutting the number of paper notices the FCC sends out as part of two licensing systems, effective immediately, said an agency notice in Friday's Federal Register. “If you’re a frequent flyer in the FCC’s Universal Licensing System (ULS) or Antenna Structure Registration (ASR) system, don’t panic if you notice a sudden drop-off in hard-copy letters from the FCC,” Fletcher Heald said in a blog post. “The FCC is moving both systems to a cloud-based platform and, in preparation, it’s cleaning house before packing up for the move.” The two systems together formerly sent out 33 different paper notices. That has been reduced to 15 for ULS, three for ASR, the FCC said. It said the change is part of its ongoing process reform.

AT&T agreed to pay $450,000 and put in place a compliance plan to settle an FCC investigation of whether it operated fixed wireless stations without authorization or without filing required license modification notices. The carrier found “minor discrepancies” between FCC records and the actual operating parameters of some recently acquired licenses, a company spokesman said. “AT&T voluntarily disclosed these discrepancies to the FCC and made corrective filings. None of them had any impact on consumers or other carriers.” The FCC said AT&T reported discrepancies on a “large number of fixed microwave licenses” that it acquired between 2009 and 2011. The Enforcement Bureau initially proposed a $640,000 fine.

After recent bombings in New York and New Jersey, “as well as the heightened risk of similar events occurring in the District,” the Washington, D.C., Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) is leaning on the FCC to move forward on changes to wireless emergency alert rules. Wireless alerts “should be capable of sending messages that include pictures, links, and telephone numbers” to more granular areas “using technology that already exists in each handset,” HSEMA said in a letter to the FCC in docket 15-91. HSEMA also said alerts should be available in multiple languages. New York City officials made similar arguments to the FCC; commissioners are slated to vote on updated rules Thursday (see 1609220008). New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neil also said the FCC should change the rules, in a letter citing the recent Chelsea bombing allegedly by Ahmad Khan Rahami, a subject of WEA alerts. The name and photograph of the alleged bomber “appeared on social media, news media, via e-mail, and text messages,” the letter said. “In contrast, the Wireless Emergency Alert message only contained his name and an instruction to ‘see media for pic,” O’Neil said. “With the technology available today the suspect's photograph should have immediately appeared on people's handsets. This is a major gap in the system.” O’Neil said alerts also must be sent in languages other than English: “There are more than 200 languages spoken in New York City alone, and [the New York Police Department] takes the issue of language access very seriously.” Others filing recently in the docket supporting WEA enhancements include Houston; Los Angeles; Nassau County, New York; San Francisco; and Seattle. CTIA also filed additional comments. The FCC should not use recent requests that device-based geo-targeting be included in the upcoming wireless emergency alert order to impose new rules, CTIA said in a filing. The agency needs to seek comment first, the group said. “The Commission should absolutely move forward with a technically feasible and appropriate proposal in a Further Notice, and should make clear that nothing in the upcoming Report and Order will preclude service providers from pursuing technically feasible device-based geo-targeting methods in the interim,” CTIA said. “These filings, however, raise additional technical questions that have not been resolved or fully vetted in the record before the Commission. Therefore, using them as a basis for new rules in the forthcoming Report and Order unnecessarily raises both technical and procedural issues.”

Retailers should investigate opportunities and threats posed by smartphone indoor location technologies “or run the risk of losing control of the mobile experience in their stores,” said an ABI Research report Thursday. Companies including Apple, Baidu and Google plan to release smartphone-based indoor location technologies to developers within the next year, while location deployments in retail stores have largely been focused on infrastructure-based technologies, it said. Retailers have largely ignored the opportunities offered by mobile devices and are “in danger of repeating the mistakes they made with eCommerce,” said analyst Patrick Connolly. “The days of loyalty cards and paper coupons are ending and retailers do not seem ready,” said Connolly, saying retailers need to “take control” of digitization in their stores and put technologies like indoor location to work. Handset-based indoor location technologies allow retailers to measure marketing campaign performance, streamline in-store processes, create new advertising revenue streams, remove shopping friction and create “shock and awe” moments,” he said. Indoor location technology also lets retailers engage with more customers, said ABI. Initiatives like Google Nearby eliminate the need for in-store apps, but as those tools become available to all developers, the market will “rapidly embrace” the technology, creating opportunities for third parties to deploy location technologies in any retail store, Connolly said. He envisioned a third-party shopping app with an accurate, detailed map of a shopping outlet that could direct store offers and ads to individual customers, something that could “become a reality very soon.”

Wireless and public safety officials updated the FCC Public Safety Bureau on their joint progress toward meeting new requirements for wireless 911 location accuracy reporting. The agency released its fourth report and order on the subject in February 2015. “Parties discussed the template the carriers intend to use when reporting live 9-1-1 call data on a quarterly basis or upon request of a Public Safety Answering Point, as required by the Order,” said a filing in docket 07-114. Representatives of AT&T Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, CTIA, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association attended.

The FCC Wireless Bureau is seeking comment on American Electric Power’s pursuit of a waiver to license seven business/industrial/land/transportation (B/ILT) channels in at Sugarcreek, Ohio. AEP needs a waiver because the channels, being vacated by Sprint, are available exclusively for licensing to public safety eligible entities until Feb. 10, 2018, said a Thursday notice. AEP is one of the largest U.S. utilities, with nearly 5.4 million customers in 11 states, the bureau said. “As a critical infrastructure industry entity, it will be eligible to apply for the requested channels only on February 10, 2018,” the bureau said. “AEP states that it needs the requested channels at the new location in order to fill in coverage gaps and increase spectrum capacity.” The utility said no other channels are available and “and no public safety eligible entities have requested channels vacated by Sprint in this area of Ohio to date.” Comments are due Oct. 24, replies Nov. 8.

Competitive carriers welcome the Wi-Fi Alliance’s release Wednesday of its LTE-unlicensed/Wi-Fi coexistence test plan (see 1609210069), said Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry Thursday. “Collaborative development and testing of unlicensed technologies is the best way to ensure both industry and consumers can maximize use of unlicensed spectrum while fostering permissionless innovation in unlicensed band,” Berry said in a news release. “Many competitive carriers welcome the test plan as a concrete step toward securing cutting-edge equipment keyed to operate over unlicensed spectrum, an increasingly important resource as carriers anticipate soaring data demand and spectrum scarcity issues.” Berry said CCA is still reviewing the plan.

Siemens agreed to pay a $175,000 fine for not disclosing two corporate felony convictions on a variety of FCC wireless license applications. The convictions stem from Siemens in 2008 pleading guilty to violating the accounting provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through bribery of foreign government officials and from a 2007 guilty plea to a federal charge of obstruction of justice in a civil matter, said the Enforcement Bureau in its order issued Thursday. The failure to disclose "is particularly troubling because the underlying acts included misdeeds involving foreign telecommunications regulators," the bureau said, saying the consent decree includes that the two Siemens subsidiaries involved -- Siemens Corp. and Siemens Medical Solutions -- corrected the wireless application submissions on their own initiative and were fully cooperative with a bureau investigation afterward. Under the consent decree, the two also will develop and implement a compliance plan aimed at ensuring accurate future filing of wireless license applications, including a compliance manual and compliance training. Siemens didn't comment.

Passengers or crew who want to bring recalled Samsung Galaxy Note7s aboard commercial aircraft need to power down the devices and disconnect them from “any charging equipment,” the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said in a “safety advisory” notice published in Thursday’s Federal Register. Users also need to “disable all applications that could inadvertently activate the phone,” protect the Note7's power switch against “unintentional activation” and avoid packing the phone in checked baggage, said the notice, which PHMSA said it issued “in conjunction with” the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Sept. 15 recall (see 1609150069). Cargo shipments of recalled Note7s require a PHSMA permit, the notice said. PHSMA's safety advisory mirrored a "safety alert for operators" directive that the Federal Aviation Administration released the day after CPSC's recall notice.

Nielsen pressed the FCC to pause implementation of a mobile safe harbor for broadband provider compliance with net neutrality transparency rules. Nielsen said the commission should seek comment on the standards for safe harbor designations before allowing mobile providers to disclose Measuring Broadband America (MBA) network performance results as a safe harbor under the rules. "While safe harbors provide certainty and clarity to providers, the mobile [MBA] program may not be capable of providing the robust disclosures that the 2015 Open Internet Order requires and that consumers and edge providers deserve," said a Nielsen filing Wednesday in docket 14-28 on a meeting with Wireless Bureau Chief Jon Wilkins and others. Mobile broadband internet access providers can "disclose their results from the mobile MBA program as a sufficient disclosure of actual download and upload speeds, actual latency, and actual packet loss of a service" if the results satisfy sample size criteria and if the MBA program has provided certain network performance metrics, said May 19 guidance from the FCC's chief technologist, Office of General Counsel and Enforcement Bureau. Nielsen said: "Carriers may feel compelled to use the mobile MBA program as the basis of their required disclosures -- despite the flaws the record reflects -- to avoid the risk of severe enforcement action." CTIA and the Competitive Carriers Association criticized the quality of the mobile MBA data (see 1606210022).