The FCC and the U.S. government on Wednesday asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court to hold in abeyance a challenge of the agency's Oct. 25 declaratory ruling authorizing E-rate funding for Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2312200040), pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision in another case. That SCOTUS case, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas, examines whether the Hobbs Act permits a “party aggrieved” by an agency’s “final order” to seek review in a federal court of appeals and “allows nonparties to obtain review of claims asserting that an agency order exceeds the agency’s statutory authority.” The appeal is of another case by the 5th Circuit. Maurine and Matthew Molak, concerned about unsupervised access of students to social media, brought the school bus case. Their son died by suicide at 16 after he was cyberbullied. The FCC disputed whether the Molaks had legal standing to appeal the order because they didn't participate in the FCC proceeding (see 2406040024). “The Supreme Court’s decision” in the NRC case “may invalidate petitioners’ sole basis for asserting that this Court can review their petition, and require this Court to grant respondents’ pending motion to dismiss,” the FCC said in the Wednesday filing: “To avoid a potentially needless expenditure of judicial and litigation resources, this Court should grant the requested abeyance.” The FCC noted the Molaks' argument that they had standing was predicated on the 5th Circuit’s holding in the case before SCOTUS: Should the high court conclude "that the Hobbs Act does not allow nonparties to obtain review of claims asserting that an agency order exceeds the agency’s statutory authority, petitioners will have no basis for seeking judicial review under the Hobbs Act, and this Court must grant the Commission’s pending motion to dismiss.” Oral argument in the school bus case is scheduled for Nov. 4 (see 2409260046). The Molaks, meanwhile, asked the FCC not to include Wi-Fi gear for off-premise or school bus use in its FY 2025 list of eligible services under the E-rate program. “Subsidizing off-premises use of Wi-Fi hotspots means facilitating unsupervised social media access by children and teenagers, which means enabling the very sort of destructive behavior that we all should strive to prevent,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 13-184.

CTIA mostly agrees with the FCC’s approach in the draft hearing-aid compatibility order teed up for a vote Oct. 17 (see 2409260047), but in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 23-388, it urged a few tweaks. “The Draft Order should set up a clearer path for the use of a revised volume control standard,” CTIA said: “As the Commission is aware, the HAC Task Force identified material problems in the codified testing standard for volume control, developed an interim solution, and recommended deferring long-term deployment benchmarks on volume control until a more permanent solution could be developed and approved by the FCC.” CTIA also urged "refinements and clarifications" to the proposed labeling rules. “Specifically, the new labeling rules should be implemented on the same timeline as the manufacturer deployment benchmark transition, rather than potentially before them,” the group said.

The American Petroleum Institute supports rule changes for the citizens broadband radio service band to make it more usable by API members, the group said in comments on an August FCC NPRM (see 2408160031). “In many cases without the ability to build reliable wireless infrastructure, these company operations would lack the communications necessary to operate effectively,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-258: “In general, API members have seen benefits from the existing availability of CBRS spectrum and support the Commission’s endeavor to make the use more friendly to enterprise and small business usage.” The deadline for initial comments on the NPRM had been Monday, but the Wireless Bureau recently extended it to Nov. 6 (see 2409270026).

The Mobile Satellite Services Association has inked an agreement with GSMA that will see the two "explore cutting-edge approaches" to integrating direct-to-device and IoT services via mobile satellite service satellites, they said Tuesday. Their collaboration will revolve around 3rd Generation Partnership Project standards. “Our collaboration with MSSA is based on the shared objective of reaching new benchmarks for global connectivity," GSMA Chief Technology Officer Alex Sinclair said. "By combining our strengths, we are laying the foundation for a future where satellite and terrestrial networks are fully integrated to provide unparalleled service and coverage.”

T-Mobile on Tuesday announced the launch of 5G On Demand, allowing faster launch of private 5G networks. The offering is “a complete, portable 5G private network and services solution that includes setup, teardown and network management,” the carrier said. “This new solution makes it easier and more efficient than ever to deploy 5G private networks virtually anywhere, providing all the necessary infrastructure to support data-intensive applications.” T-Mobile said the offering will be commercially available by the end of the year.

A representative of Apple, Broadcom and Meta Platforms spoke with aides to all the FCC commissioners except Anna Gomez on a proposal that the FCC extend rules for very-low power operations in the 6 GHz band across the U-NII-6 and U-NII-8 bands, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-295. The calls occurred before Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed that step last week (see 2410040055).

The American Radio Relay League requested a waiver of the commission’s Part 97 rules to communicate with military stations as part of Pearl Harbor Day commemorations Dec. 7 and 8. ARRL said it made the request on behalf of the Battleship Iowa Amateur Radio Association. “The frequencies and time periods selected will not impact any public or private communications, government or non-government,” said an undocketed filing posted Tuesday. The FCC Wireless Bureau approved a similar waiver last year (see 2311270044).

As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, the FCC Wireless Bureau on Tuesday approved waivers for Federated Wireless and Google of rules that require environmental sensing capability systems to protect federal incumbents in Florida in the citizens broadband radio service band from harmful interference. The waivers are similar to those the companies received during other recent storms (see 2409260035).

The Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) warned that some commenters may not understand what’s at stake if the FCC agrees to a Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) proposal giving FirstNet, and AT&T, effective control of the 4.9 GHz band. “AT&T/PSSA want the FCC to allow FirstNet to use the 4.9 GHz band so that the band is effectively added to AT&T’s spectrum portfolio,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 07-100. They would also “prohibit new local public-safety licensees in the band and force existing public-safety licensees to surrender spectrum so that AT&T can use the 4.9 GHz band to serve not only public safety but also AT&T’s commercial customers,” CERCI charged. The BWI Business Partnership, meanwhile, withdrew September comments opposing FirstNet use of the band (see 2409120013). “After further investigation into this matter, we realized that we were operating on an incomplete set of facts regarding this regulatory proceeding and a mistaken assumption regarding the proposal,” the group said.

T-Mobile sees limited potential for dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) in carrier networks, Egil Gronstad, senior director-technology development and strategy, said Tuesday. During an Ookla webinar, Gronstad said T-Mobile views its early move to launch a 5G stand-alone (SA) network as critical. It examined DSS and found the efficiency is “pretty bad,” he said. DSS has been “hyped a lot … and we also had high hopes for it.” T-Mobile decided “very early on” that it wanted to make a “quick pivot to SA.” He added, “We drove the chipset and ecosystem very hard from the very beginning to support SA.” Almost all the devices on T-Mobile’s network are SA-capable. That has allowed the carrier to “quickly refarm spectrum from LTE to 5G." Gronstad thought T-Mobile’s major competitors would have done more to move to SA by now. T-Mobile has also worked hard on voice-over new radio (NR), which is voice on a 5G network. “Voice-over NR was a fairly large undertaking -- almost as large as voice-over LTE back in the day.” Vendors tell T-Mobile “just a handful” of operators are moving to voice-over NR globally “and we are five years into the 5G journey,” Gronstad said. “There is a lot more to be done still.” T-Mobile considers high-band spectrum for 5G a “failure.” The carrier didn’t fall “for this millimeter-wave trap,” which was “mostly set up by academia.” Verizon “took the bait and banked on millimeter-wave.” Gronstad also underscored the importance of handset makers enabling the use of new technology in their phones. The pro versions of Apple’s new iPhone 16 support power class 1.5 and uplink multiple-input and multiple-output, “which was music to my ears,” he said. “We have been working so hard to try to get the flagship handset vendors to support this.” Those additions will improve coverage capacity and throughput, he said.