The IoT, 5G, security and privacy were among focuses of the 20th meeting of the Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) in New Delhi last month, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions said Tuesday in a news release. The IoT “remains a key topic for standardization and attracts interest from industry, public authorities and end users,” ATIS said. “GSC members reviewed current standardization activities focused on specific applications and use cases, such as smart cities and intelligent manufacturing. They also explored how IoT can help address global challenges such as electricity access in the developing parts of the world.” GSC members also discussed “current and anticipated standardization and research activities in the 5G area,” ATIS said: “They noted the importance of engaging both regulators and businesses in the development of 5G and reiterated the need for continued collaboration among” standards groups.

The 911 Location Technologies Test Bed invited non-nationwide wireless carriers and vendors of new or emerging location information technologies to participate in the test bed. Applications are due June 10, the group said Tuesday in a request for proposals. “All testing will be funded by the participating wireless carrier or technology vendor,” it said. “The Test Bed LLC will serve as the financial administrator for both test bed stages.” The FCC approved an order in January 2015 requiring carriers to improve their performance in identifying the location of wireless callers to 911, including the creation of a test bed (see 1501290066).

The FCC Wireless Bureau is seeking comment on a waiver request by Drock Gaming to use airport terminal use (ATU) frequencies as part of its industrial/business (I/B) communications system. The bureau said Drock’s operations are within 16 kilometers of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. Drock owns the D Casino Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. “Drock states that its frequency coordinator performed exhaustive searches and located no I/B channels available for its trunked system,” the bureau said in a Tuesday notice. “It also states that these channels will be used to support the safety and welfare of its employees and resort customers.” Comments are due June 2, replies June 17.

Qualcomm told the FCC in response to a question from the agency that the single 700 MHz B-block license it hopes to sell to AT&T (see 1604180067) was purchased to help the company “research, design, and test innovative mobile broadband technologies.” The reason Qualcomm now wants to sell the license was redacted from the filing. Qualcomm said it paid $1.87 million for the license in the 2008 700 MHz auction. The license area is adjacent to the headquarters of its research and development team in Bridgewater, New Jersey, Qualcomm said. The filing was posted in docket 16-75. AT&T also filed a response to questions from the FCC on the transaction. “AT&T’s LTE deployment strategy centers around the Lower 700 MHz band, and AT&T has made deployment of LTE in 700 MHz spectrum a key priority,” the carrier said. AT&T said it has on its own enough 700 MHz spectrum in the market to provide a 5x5 LTE channel but is using the Qualcomm license on a leased basis to provide 10x10 coverage. “The benefits of such a deployment are considerable, and represent a major improvement in speed and efficiency over a 5x5 MHz LTE carrier,” AT&T said.

LG Innotek thinks the expansion of smartphone-based mobile payments will “dramatically” increase demand for fingerprint recognition technology, it said in a Monday announcement about its new under-glass fingerprint sensor. The company cited IHS saying it expects annual fingerprint sensor sales to more than triple from last year to 1.6 billion units in 2020.

The FCC is seeking comment on the next edition of its always-controversial mobile wireless competition report. Since 2010, the first wireless competition report of the Obama presidency, the FCC, in its required annual report to Congress, repeatedly has declined to say the wireless industry is effectively competitive (see 1005210135). The FCC released its last report in December over the objections of Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai and carriers who said the industry is increasingly competitive (see 1512240019). The pending report is expected to be the last of this administration. “This Public Notice seeks comment and information on competitive dynamics within the mobile wireless marketplace regarding, for example, the number of subscribers and financial indicators, such as revenue or profitability,” said a public notice released Friday. “We seek comment and information on overall industry metrics such as coverage, including by spectrum band, technology, geography, and demographics.” Comments are due May 31, replies June 15.

A report and order on the 3.5 GHz shared band takes the final steps toward establishing rules for the band, the FCC said in the order, approved Thursday (see 1604280062) and released Monday. “Facing ever-increasing demands of wireless innovation and constrained availability of clear sources of spectrum, the Citizens Broadband Radio Service is an opportunity to add much-needed capacity through innovative sharing,” the FCC said. “With this Second Order, we finalize the regulatory scheme we created in 2015, putting in place the last rules necessary for this service to become commercially available.” The order explains why the FCC rejected a request by CTIA that the agency provide license terms of five, rather than three, years for priority access licenses (PALs). Three-year license terms “already [reflect] a balance among parties that advocated for short license terms and those that prefer longer terms,” the FCC said, saying the original rules were for one-year licenses. “Based on the record, we instead adopted a longer, three-year license term and allowed applicants to apply for two consecutive terms, during the first applications window, for a total of six years,” the FCC said. “We continue to believe that ‘three-year non-renewable license terms -- with the ability to aggregate up to six years up-front -- strike a balance between some commenters’ desire for flexibility with other commenters’ need for certainty.’” The FCC said the three-year license terms are long enough to spur investment in the 3.5 GHz band. “Non-renewable, short-term licenses are an essential component of this overall framework,” the FCC said. “They allow operators to obtain PALs when and where Priority Access to the band is needed while permitting periodic, market-based reassignment of these rights in response to changes in local conditions and operator needs.”

The FCC Wireless Bureau will host its annual workshop Wednesday on environmental compliance and the historic preservation review process required for construction of wireless communications facilities, the FCC said in a public notice Thursday. The workshop will include information about construction of towers and collocation of equipment on towers and other structures. Topics include tower siting, archeology, northern long-eared bats and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The workshop will be 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the FCC meeting room and will be webcast.

The rationale last month for creating Ford Smart Mobility as a new subsidiary "to design, build, grow and invest in emerging mobility services" (see report in the March 14 issue) was to allow the new unit “to have the organization and the structure to face off with some of the tech and mobility companies in terms of acting really fast,” yet still be “connected” to Ford’s “core operations,” CEO Mark Fields said. But “it's still way too early” to discuss Ford Smart Mobility’s work in much detail, Fields said in Q&A on an earnings call. With the new subsidiary, Ford will be “very focused” in the future “on where to play and how to win” in the mobility space, he said Thursday. “We are generally using experiments and pilots to, not only test technology and customer preferences, but very importantly test the business models, because at the end of the day, you want to make money on these things. And we're doing that before we make what I would call major bets on investments, whether it's internally or externally.” Fields promised the company will have “more to say about this as our Ford Smart Mobility strategy progresses this year.” Fields thinks global automakers will reach “an inflection point as an industry over the next number of years, given the technology that's available, not only in the product itself, but how to serve the customer,” he said. But “there's a lot of cars here in the U.S.,” and “it's going to take a long time, even with breakthrough technologies, where people will change that over,” and adopt autonomous, semi-autonomous or connected cars, he said. “Just the math will show you that will take a good amount of time.” Fields thinks “it's too early to tell” what technological trends will take over, “but we're really looking at this as vehicle miles traveled,” he said. Future autonomous vehicles “will be used 24/7, they'll rack up miles sooner,” which in turn will drive “more service revenue and, ultimately, more car sales,” he said. “Our strategy, very clearly, is to continue to make the investments on the technology side and the investments on the mobility side so that we can participate in both of those revenue streams.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is scheduled to kick off a Tuesday workshop at the FCC on distributed antenna systems and small cells, a Thursday notice said. The daylong program starts at 9 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room at FCC headquarters. The workshop also includes sessions on how the micro systems were used at the 2016 Super Bowl and during last year’s papal visit in Philadelphia. Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O’Rielly also are slated to speak.