FirstNet made public its draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for the East region and plans a series of public meetings to receive comment, FirstNet said in Friday's Federal Register. The PEIS covers Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C. “All comments received by the public and any interested stakeholders will be evaluated and considered by FirstNet during the preparation of the Final PEIS,” the authority said. “Once a PEIS is completed and a Record of Decision (ROD) is signed, FirstNet will evaluate site-specific documentation, as network design is developed, to determine if the proposed project has been adequately evaluated in the PEIS or warrants a Categorical Exclusion, an Environmental Assessment, or an Environmental Impact Statement.” Comments are due on the draft PEIS by July 6, and the public safety network plans meetings in each of the region's 13 states and the District of Columbia. The first meeting is 4 p.m. May 16 in Washington, at 200 I St. SE., first floor.

The launch of service in the 3.5 GHz shared band could take several more years, even though the FCC recently wrapped up final rules for the band (see 1604280062), said Laura Stefani, wireless and technology lawyer at Fletcher Heald, Friday in a blog post. The FCC approved the initial 3.5 GHz NPRM in 2012 (see 1212130044), putting in place an experimental three-tiered access and sharing model made up of federal and nonfederal incumbents, priority access licenses (PALs) and general authorized access (GAA) users. Sharing is to be coordinated by spectrum access system administrators. “So when can you expect to fire up your shiny new 3.5 GHz equipment?” Stefani wrote. “Probably not for another few years, unfortunately. Though testing of equipment is being done by the likes of" Ericsson and Qualcomm, "the FCC still must approve at least one SAS database administrator as well as the Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) system that will be used to provide information to the SAS to protect federal radar incumbents," wrote Stefani. "The Commission will need to auction the PALs, although GAA license-by-rule use may occur before then.”

Qualcomm received FCC permission to test LTE-unlicensed working with T-Mobile, in a grant of special temporary authority. Earlier, Qualcomm got FCC permission to do similar tests with Verizon (see 1601290064). "Qualcomm continues to prove fair coexistence between LTE-U and Wi-Fi through our own testing, through third-parties and through our work with other stakeholders within the LTE and Wi-Fi industries,” said Dean Brenner, Qualcomm senior vice president-government affairs. “Qualcomm ... will continue to work with the FCC and other stakeholders to ensure LTE-U will fairly coexist with Wi-Fi. We will also continue to collaborate with the Wi-Fi Alliance to develop a coexistence test plan, and utilize that plan for joint lab and field testing.”

CTIA urged the Food and Drug Administration to work with hearing aid manufacturers and the FCC to provide information to consumers about hearing aid compatibility (HAC) ratings. In comments Friday at the FDA, CTIA said the ratings are critical to helping consumers find compatible wireless devices and hearing aids. While wireless carriers and manufacturers “take significant efforts” to provide this information about wireless devices, “consumers will continue to face challenges in understanding how to pair a hearing aid device with their wireless handset without a clearer understanding of the other half of the HAC rating system -- the HAC rating of a hearing aid device, it said.

U.S. Cellular asked the FCC to extend a June 25 75-percent coverage deadline for three of the census tracts for which it received Mobility Fund Phase I support. The carrier got support for 26 census tracts total. U.S. Cellular “has encountered unexpected deployment delays at four sites in three Census Tracts, located in the State of Washington and containing approximately 11 percent of the unserved road miles for which U.S. Cellular and its affiliates received Phase I support,” the carrier said. U.S. Cellular “has taken reasonable steps to meet the build-out requirements in the three Census Tracts, including the construction of several new cell sites that are already providing service, but unforeseen circumstances have interrupted construction of other sites,” the petition said. A grant of the petition “is the best way to ensure that 4G LTE broadband will be made available expeditiously to residents and travelers in sparsely populated areas in the three Census Tracts,” U.S. Cellular said. The petition was posted in docket 10-90.

The auto industry hopes to push a decision about unlicensed use of the 5.9 MHz band to a later administration, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said Friday. Feld took aim at a letter automakers and others sent to the White House (see 1605050022). “Yesterday, the auto industry finally crossed a line on common decency that just pisses me off,” Feld wrote in a blog post. “It is one thing to claim that your technology saves lives and that if the FCC doesn’t do what you want, people will die. It is another thing to knowingly and deliberately invoke actual, real dead pedestrians and dead cyclists you know damned well your proposed technology could not conceivably save in an effort to support your own spectrum squatting.” The dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) system the auto industry wants to put in cars would replace the “actual existing collision avoidance system you are deploying today that would save cyclists and pedestrians,” namely car radar and sensing systems that use unlicensed spectrum, Feld said.

The FCC Wireless Bureau OK'd Alaska Wireless Network’s (AWN) buy of a single lower 700 MHz A-block license from T-Mobile. The license covers 29 boroughs/census areas in the four local market areas that comprise all of Alaska, the bureau said in the Friday order. AWN already has more than one-third of the below-1-GHz spectrum in one census area of about 17,000 people “in one very rural local market area,” which meant the deal got extra scrutiny, the bureau said. “After carefully evaluating the likely competitive effects of AWN’s increased aggregation of below-1-GHz spectrum in this market area, as well as in Alaska as a whole, we find that the likelihood of competitive harm is low,” the bureau said. “Some public interest benefits are likely to be realized, such as the expansion and improvement of wireless broadband in Alaska’s many unserved or underserved areas, leading to a better consumer experience.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed a case filed by James Chelmowski against the FCC. In October, the Enforcement Bureau turned down a petition for reconsideration by Chelmowski, who accused AT&T Mobility of failing to port his phone number to a new provider in 2011, in violation of agency rules (see 1510160045). “The challenged orders of the Chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau are not final, reviewable orders,” the court ruled in dismissing the case. The court also dismissed Chelmowski’s pursuit of documents from the agency under the Freedom of Information Act, saying the U.S. District Court has jurisdiction over FOIA complaints.

The FCC Wireless Bureau is seeking comment on a request by PCS Partners (PCSP), which wants to change how it uses channel block A multilateration location and monitoring service (M-LMS) spectrum. The company wants to use its licenses for machine-type communications in addition to providing trilateration-based M-LMS using LTE, the bureau said. PCSP also seeks to extend its mid-term and final construction deadlines to 2020 and 2022, the bureau said. “By this Public Notice, we seek comment on the PCSP Construction Extension and Waiver Request, particularly with respect to any potential adverse impact on other operations within the 902-928 MHz band and in adjacent bands,” the bureau said. The proceeding is in docket 16-149.

The Competitive Carriers Association filed a letter at the FCC from “a dozen non-nationwide wireless carrier CEOs” encouraging the agency to stick with the current post-TV incentive auction repacking schedule. “The very fact that a dozen smaller carrier CEOs co-signed this letter should send a clear signal to the FCC that non-nationwide carriers are concerned about the repacking process,” CCA President Steve Berry said in a news release Thursday. “Smaller carriers with limited resources greatly depend on a smooth and timely repacking process to ensure they can gain access to the spectrum purchased during the auction as soon as possible. Any delay would negatively put smaller operators’ ability to maintain capital at risk in the interim between purchasing spectrum during the auction and receiving the assets to deploy -- which is something no small business can afford.” The FCC currently has a post-auction timeline requiring broadcasters to vacate spectrum within 39 months. NAB members have pressed the FCC to wait until after the auction before imposing a transition deadline, citing a complicated process and continuing uncertainty (see 1602250038).