All high-frequency bands are not equal, AT&T’s Advanced Wireless Technology Group said in a report filed at the FCC. The group compared the 28 and 39 GHz bands, two of the bands the FCC is expected reallocate for broadband at the July 14 commission meeting (see 1606240026). A licensee would need 44-66 percent more spectrum in the 39 GHz band to provide the same cell edge data rate with the same cell radius it would need in the 28 GHz band, the report said. “Between these two bands, the industry momentum currently favors 28 GHz due to the activity in Korea as related to the 2018 Olympics,” the report said. “From a propagation point of view, 28 GHz has better potential given the longer wavelengths as compared to 37/39 GHz. But there is significantly more bandwidth available in the 37/39 GHz, which makes it an attractive 5G option as well.” The report was filed in docket 14-177.

Verizon Wireless allegedly took millions of dollars from the Defense Department through fraudulently inflated billings, said a whistleblower complaint (in Pacer) unsealed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. OnTheGo Wireless, filing the complaint as a relator on behalf of the United States, said Verizon violated the False Claims Act by not honoring a promise to provide prices to DOD that are as good or better than those charged other customers. “Verizon routinely and knowingly overcharged the DOD for wireless communication services,” the complaint said. “The margin of overcharge was immense, amounting to millions of dollars each year.” Verizon senior executives knew about the overcharging, it said. OnTheGo said it knew about the scheme because Verizon retained a related entity to analyze pricing plans, including nonpublic pricing data, for many of Verizon’s customers. The relator said it was “present at meetings where Verizon acknowledged its failure to comply with the best pricing obligations it owed the government.” The complaint seeks damages and civil penalties on behalf of the U.S. Verizon didn’t comment Thursday.

Volkswagen and LG signed an R&D memorandum for development of a connected car service platform, the companies said Wednesday. They will work together on Volkswagen's Cross-Over-Platform that will offer drivers access to smart home and location-based services. They will focus on integrating the connected car and smart home and developing a notification center that delivers message intuitively and safely to drivers, they said. The platform will allow "wide integration with smart home services and adoption of open IoT connectivity technologies," said Richard Choi, head of LG’s cloud center.

Global demand for “innovative” flexible displays for wearables and other mobile devices will increase by more than 300 percent to around $15 billion in 2022, from $3.7 billion this year, IHS said in a Tuesday report. Flexible displays will generate 13 percent of total display market revenue in 2020, IHS said. LG and Samsung launched the first smartphones with flexible active-matrix OLED displays three years ago, and “inspired by these successes, other mobile manufacturers are now developing their own flexible-display devices,” it said. Though only a few suppliers “are now regularly supplying flexible displays to the market,” many more panel makers “are now attempting to build flexible display capacity, leveraging the latest AMOLED display technology,” it said.

General Communications agreed to pay $2.4 million to settle an FCC investigation into five 911 wireless service outages in parts of Alaska from August 2008 to April 2016, said the Enforcement Bureau Wednesday in a release. It said GCl also agreed to strengthen its 911 service provision procedures and "adopt robust compliance measures" to ensure adherence to FCC rules. "Americans should be able to reach 911 at any time, whether they live in New York City or a village in Alaska," said bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc. A bureau order approving a consent decree said GCI failed to (1) deploy sufficient safeguards to ensure 911 call completion, (2) timely notify emergency call centers in three outages, and (3) timely submit outage reports on four of the outages. "To settle this matter, GCI admits that it violated 911 service reliability and outage notification and reporting rules, will implement a compliance plan, and will pay a $2.4 million civil penalty. In assessing the civil penalty, the Bureau has taken into consideration the fact that four of the five outages took place in remote locations in Alaska," the order said. GCI is happy to conclude the process "after discovering, resolving, and self-reporting these wireless outages" to the commission, a spokeswoman emailed us: "All known outages have been corrected, and GCI recently completed an extensive internal audit and implemented new procedures and checks to better prepare us in detecting and repairing outages. GCI continues its commitment to work with the public safety community to ensure that 911 is reliable throughout Alaska.” The FCC said the settlement followed several major 911 enforcement actions in 2015: a $17.5 million settlement with T-Mobile in July (see 1507170031); a $16 million settlement with CenturyLink and $1.4 million settlement with Intrado in April (see 1504060050); and a $3.4 million settlement with Verizon in March (see 1503180022).

BlackBerry is phasing out the BlackBerry Classic, said Chief Operating Officer Ralph Pini in a blog post Tuesday. “We are updating our smartphone lineup with state of the art devices,” said Pini, turning attention to BlackBerry 10 and Android devices. The BlackBerry Classic, “an incredible workhorse,” exceeded expectations but long surpassed the average lifespan for a smartphone in today’s market, Pini said. BlackBerry will give customers “something better” that maintains BlackBerry’s “legacy in security,” he said.

The FCC released a pleading cycle Tuesday on AT&T’s proposed buy of 700 MHz licenses in New Mexico from Fuego Wireless. The companies proposed that AT&T buy three lower 700 MHz B-block licenses and a single C-block license. The FCC also sent follow-up questions to both companies. “Applicants maintain that the proposed transaction would provide AT&T with additional spectrum that would enable it to increase its system capacity to enhance existing services, better accommodate its overall growth, and facilitate the provision of additional products and services in four Cellular Market Areas,” the FCC said. With the buys, AT&T would have 24 MHz of contiguous, paired 700 MHz spectrum in all but one of the 19 counties covered, the notice said. The spectrum covers Las Cruces, Catron, Santa Fe and Lincoln, all in New Mexico, the FCC said. “Post-transaction, AT&T would hold 100 to 175 megahertz of spectrum in total, including 18 to 55 megahertz of below-1-GHz spectrum, in these four CMAs,” so the deal is slated to get a more intense review, the FCC said. Petitions to deny are due July 26, oppositions Aug. 2, replies Aug. 9. AT&T must answer several pages of questions in the information request.

The launch of 5G could start a new “Golden Decade” for the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt said in a letter to the agency. Hundt said the U.S. had the first tech boom after Congress authorized spectrum auctions in 1993. Average income, productivity, GDP and labor force participation increased, he said. “Everything that was supposed to go down went down: unemployment, monopoly rents, and the federal deficit,” Hundt said. “Between 1995 and 2003 American investors put almost $1 trillion into a total rebuild of the communications platform in America.” The spectrum frontiers order before the FCC is critical, as is finding new ways to facilitate spectrum sharing, he said. “It is not inconceivable that 5G can jumpstart a similar wave of investment, innovation, and economic success,” Hundt said. "Even secular stagnation, the bête noire of macroeconomists today, can become another worry allayed. Once again ICT can lead the way to an increasing standard of living for all Americans, and from this heartland of creative destruction waves of economic growth can spread around the world.” The filing was posted in docket 14-177. The spectrum frontiers order is scheduled for a vote at the FCC's July 14 meeting (see 1606240026). Hundt has done work for Ligado Networks, which is seeking to convert satellite spectrum to terrestrial use for wireless broadband.

The FCC, at most, should impose ownership thresholds rather than hard caps in rules for high-frequency spectrum, AT&T said in comments filed Tuesday. An FCC fact sheet said the order, to get a vote July 14, will impose limits on high-frequency spectrum holdings -- imposing restrictions limiting carriers to buying 1250 MHz of spectrum in the bands in the initial auctions and a threshold of 1250 MHz for case-by-case review of secondary market transactions (see 1606240026). AT&T offered comments in a letter in docket 14-177. “While the industry needs clear guidance on what level of aggregation will be permissible in the bands -- particularly given the secondary market activity that has already been announced -- hard caps are a blunt instrument that deny the Commission the discretion to permit higher levels of aggregation where it finds no competitive harms,” AT&T said. “Caps also limit consideration of performance factors and other unique circumstances that may be relevant to the still-emerging 5G competitive landscape.”

FirstNet is evolving to serve what will be its primary customers, first responders, said Richard Reed, the new chief customer officer, in a Friday blog post. He spoke to the board earlier in the past week (see 1606290077). “To prepare for a customer-centric operating environment, we are re-designing the User Advocacy office to encompass all of our external-facing programs, responsibilities, and activities,” Reed wrote. “This new component, called the Chief Customer Office (CCO), will be the focal point for our stakeholder interactions and responsibilities going forward.” The CCO will wrap together outreach, consultation, state plans, coordination with the Public Safety Advisory Committee and communications, he said. “The office will also encompass future customer service programs that we plan to develop, such as product management, marketing, training, and more.”