The FCC should refrain from taking a heavy-handed approach on special access rules, Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said Monday in a blog post. Spalter said the growth of the wireless industry depends on a robust fiber system to carry traffic from the cell tower to the Internet backbone. “Despite what some companies would have us believe, the market for special access is highly competitive,” he said. “Now is not the time to look backwards and devote significant resources to regulate the services of the past. Now is not the time to consider regulating fiber-based Ethernet special access services under the guise of ‘facilitating technology transitions’ Rather, the FCC should acknowledge the success of its deregulatory approach to special access and focus on our mobile future.”

The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment Monday on an application by the North Carolina State Highway Patrol to modify its private land mobile radio license by adding three new 800 MHz channels to its license for the area in and around Salisbury. “North Carolina states that two channels currently licensed at its High Peak site in Burke County, NC are ‘impacted by interference from the City of Salisbury, North Carolina’ and that ‘on-air experience showed these two channels un-useable,'" the bureau said. “Consequently, North Carolina seeks to replace the two channels receiving interference with two alternate channels. It also seeks to add a third channel to the site to compensate for ‘increased traffic.’” Comments are due Sept. 9, replies Sept. 24.

The American Bankers Association wants the FCC to revise its June 18 declaratory ruling refining rules for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 1506180046), ABA said in a petition for reconsideration. ABA asked the FCC to revise the rules providing an exemption only for calls and texts sent to “the wireless telephone number provided by the customer of the financial institution.” This condition "will limit severely the ability of banks to send, and of customers to receive, the urgent calls and texts covered by the exemptions, with no offsetting benefit to customers and without advancing the privacy rights the TCPA is intended to serve,” the ABA said. “By largely limiting exempted calls to those sent to customer-provided mobile contact numbers, this condition significantly reduces the exemptions’ value to customers, who can already receive urgent messages covered by the exemptions, on a non-free-to-end-user basis, if prior express consent has been granted.” The association asked that the exemption cover instead affected customers and money transfer recipients. “Adoption of the proposed condition would restore the exemptions’ benefits without increasing the risk that the exemptions will be abused,” said the petition posted Monday in docket 02-278.

The FCC approved an order allowing public safety agencies to use vehicular repeater systems (VRS) and other mobile repeaters in six more control and telemetry channels in the VHF band. The channels are all at 173 MHz and are not otherwise heavily utilized, the FCC said in an order, approved by the full commission, released Monday. “Public safety entities have increasingly turned to VRS as a cost-effective way to enhance the overall effectiveness of a public safety communication system at a fraction of the cost of achieving the same result using infrastructure improvements,” the FCC said. But technical and fiscal considerations “limit the choice of discrete frequencies that are available for VRS use in any given system.” In 2011, Pyramid Communications said in a filing at the agency that the FCC should begin a rulemaking on the use of 170-172 MHz spectrum, and possibly other bands, for VRS (see 1111230049). The FCC approved Pyramid’s petition, in part, in 2013 and sought comment on expanding the channels available for VRS, which led to the new rules. The FCC said in the new order it also would continue to look at the use of VRS in other bands. “However, given public safety’s stated preference for the use of in-band VRS, coupled with the fact that it is currently not possible to reduce the requisite spectral separation through filter technology, we do not believe that frequencies in other bands are useful options for mobile repeater use at this time,” the agency said. The FCC is requiring that the use of the channels be coordinated and asked the “coordinator community” to develop a consensus protocol. The FCC will allow the repeaters to operate at 5 watts effective radiated power.

Sprint and Shentel announced an agreement Monday in which affiliate Shentel will acquire Sprint wholesale partner nTelos Wireless and spin off some of its assets to Sprint. In return, Sprint will pay Shentel up to $252 million over approximately five to six years. The deal must be approved by regulators, including the FCC, Sprint said. Upon closing, Sprint gets nTelos spectrum assets covering 5.4 million people in parts of Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, Sprint said. “Shentel will terminate the existing network wholesale agreements between Sprint and nTelos, continue to upgrade the nTelos network to 4G LTE and expand coverage in the areas with at least an additional 150 sites over the next three years, using spectrum acquired by Sprint and made available to Shentel as part of the transaction.” Shentel will also have access to Sprint’s 2.5 GHz spectrum within its footprint, Sprint said. “Sprint and Shentel have a long successful relationship and this announcement will only make it stronger,” said Michael Schwartz, Sprint senior vice president-corporate and business development. “With this agreement, Sprint will grow its customer base, improve its financial performance, acquire spectrum in important markets and improve and expand 4G LTE coverage to Sprint and nTelos customers.”

Comments are due Sept. 8 on a public notice on the Land Mobile Communications Council’s proposed updated interference criteria allowing new, full-power, interstitial 12.5 kHz “offset” channels in the 809-817/854-862 MHz band (see 1505270015), the FCC Public Safety and Wireless bureaus said Friday. “Because we believe that the record in this proceeding would benefit from parties’ views on LMCC’s latest proposal, we seek comment on the revised and updated criteria,” the bureaus said in the July 24 PN.

Mobile Future urged the FCC to ignore suggestions from the cable industry or anyone else that the agency impose new regulations on LTE-unlicensed. LTE-U “is designed to avoid interference to existing operations,” the group said Friday in a blog post. “With hundreds of millions of consumers using devices that rely on Wi-Fi, wireless carriers would not risk undermining their customers’ wireless experience. These companies are committed to working collaboratively to find technical solutions and address any issues.” The FCC asked some important questions on LTE-U in a recent public notice, Mobile Future said. “But with technologies evolving faster than regulators can respond, key technical decisions are best made by network engineers, not through government intervention,” the group said. Meanwhile, FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp asked the LTE-U Forum a series of technical questions in a Wednesday letter posted in docket 15-105. He asked how LTE-U would utilize a “listen-before-talk” technique called carrier sense adaptive transmission (CSAT). "Though the record reflects significant testing of CSAT sharing protocol with Wi-Fi, commenters did not provide information regarding the rationale behind the selection of certain key parameters for CSAT,” Knapp wrote. “Specifically we would like to know, what was the basis for selecting the maximum permissible transmission and minimum listening periods? Some specifications seem to suggest that these parameters are implementation-dependent and may be set by operators. Please explain the decision to have CSAT transmit on a channel even if it appears to be occupied.” Knapp also asked if aspects of the control channel used in most iterations of LTE-U can be used to control or change any of the parameters of CSAT. “Will the unlicensed channel be used for downlink (one-way transmission) only, and if so, how does the LTE system know what capacity is available in the unlicensed channel and therefore how to manage the traffic between the licensed and unlicensed spectrum?” he asked Dean Brenner, Qualcomm senior vice president-government affairs. “How does the client device respond; does it only respond with acknowledgments in the licensed band? What does the licensed system assume about the availability of spectrum, for example that CSAT will find a channel no matter whether the spectrum is heavily occupied?” Knapp asked for a response within 30 days.

SouthernLINC Wireless will offer mission-critical 4G LTE Advanced data services to parent company Southern Co. utilities and to local businesses and government in the utilities' service territories, a Thursday news release from the carrier said. The first offerings will be available in Atlanta, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa in mid-2016, it said. Ericsson is providing the radio access network and evolved packet cores, and Cisco is providing the multiprotocol label switching equipment, the carrier said. In 2017, LTE data services will expand to the greater Montgomery area and across all of Georgia Power's service territory, it said. In 2018, LTE data services will be available in all service territories of Southern Co.'s electric utilities, SouthernLINC said.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a warrant is required for police to access location information from a cellphone or other mobile device. The case involved the conviction of two men for armed robbery, a conviction that relied in part on cell site location information (CSLI) obtained from Sprint. The decision in U.S. v. Aaron Graham was written by Senior Judge Andre Davis for himself and for Judge Stephanie Thacker. But Thacker also issued a concurrence and Judge Diana Gribbon Motz partly dissented. “We hold that the government conducts a search under the Fourth Amendment when it obtains and inspects a cell phone user’s historical CSLI for an extended period of time,” the court ruled Wednesday. “Examination of a person’s historical CSLI can enable the government to trace the movements of the cell phone and its user across public and private spaces and thereby discover the private activities and personal habits of the user. Cell phone users have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in this information.” The 4th Circuit said cellphone location information raises bigger privacy issues than data from tracking devices in an automobile. “Quite unlike an automobile, a cell phone is a small hand-held device that is often hidden on the person of its user and seldom leaves her presence,” the court said. “Cell phone users regularly carry these devices into their homes and other private spaces to which automobiles have limited access at best.” Motz disagreed with the majority that obtaining information from a voluntarily surrendered cellphone requires a warrant. The decision did the two defendants in the case little good, saying that since the government “relied in good faith on court orders” issued in accordance with Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or the Stored Communications Act, “the court’s admission of the challenged evidence must be sustained.” Thacker wrote separately of her concern "about the erosion of privacy in this era of rapid technological development." The "tension between the right to privacy and emerging technology, particularly as it relates to cell phones, impacts all Americans," she wrote. "As the march of technological progress continues to advance upon our zone of privacy, each step forward should be met with considered judgment that errs on the side of protecting privacy and accounts for the practical realities of modern life. At bottom, this decision continues a time-honored American tradition -- obtaining a warrant is the rule, not the exception." The Center for Democracy & Technology said the decision is significant. “The government compelled the disclosure of 221 days of cell phone location information, which included 26,659 location data points for one defendant and 28,410 for another,” a CDT news release said. “Unless reversed by the full 4th Circuit, the decision sets up a clear split in the circuits about the extent of protection of cell phone location information. As a result, this issue will likely require resolution by the Supreme Court.” Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said the case is “an important reminder that government should not have free rein to infringe on the constitutional right to due process” and called for overhaul of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). “More than 20 years after email became ubiquitous, our laws remain woefully outdated,” she said in a statement. “I urge leadership to take up ECPA reform without delay.”

Samsung is implementing a new Android security update process to fast-track security patches over the air when vulnerabilities are discovered, it said Wednesday. Security updates will release monthly, the company said. Samsung recently sent updates to Galaxy devices after reports of vulnerabilities in Google’s Stagefright media playback engine that could allow an attacker to send a media file over a Multimedia Messaging Service, it said. “With the recent security issues, we have been rethinking the approach to getting security updates to our devices in a more timely manner,” said Dong Jin Koh, Samsung executive vice president-mobile research and development. “Since software is constantly exploited in new ways, developing a fast response process to deliver security patches to our devices is critical to keep them protected,” he said. Samsung is communicating with carriers around the world to implement the new approach, and details about models and timelines will be released soon, it said.