CTIA stood by its claim that extending the local number portability administrator contract beyond the June 2015 expiration date would cost $40 million per month, in a letter sent to the FCC and posted on the group’s webpage Monday. Neustar had asserted the claim was “wrong on its face" (see 1412030046), but “provides no explanation for disputing the accuracy of the calculation,” CTIA said. CTIA urged the commission to confirm Telcordia as the LNPA by the end of this year. CTIA's claim "ignores the undisputed fact that the alternative to the monthly cost of extending the contract is not an expenditure of $0 per month," a Neustar spokeswoman replied in an email. "Neustar has demonstrated that the expected costs of transition -- $60 million per month in the first year alone -- dwarf the annual difference between the proposals.”
The U.S. market for drones will reach $15 billion in 2020, said an Information Gatekeepers study released Monday. That’s compared with $5 billion in 2013, it said. Commercial applications for drones include agriculture, real estate and electrical utilities. The drone market is expected to have “significant growth” in 2015 after the Federal Aviation Administration rules on drone access for national airspace, it said.
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) raised objections to an application by Recco, which sought a waiver of FCC rules permitting the equipment authorization and licensing of Recco’s avalanche rescue system using spectrum at 902.85 MHz (see 1410140175). ARRL, which represents amateur radio operators, questioned Recco claims that device does not pose an interference risk. ARRL said its members make frequent use of the same spectrum. “ARRL is supportive of the use of the technology similar to that advocated by RECCO, provided that the system is compatible with incumbent licensed uses of the band,” the group said in a filing in docket 14-176. “However, there are questions relative to compatibility that are left unanswered by the RECCO Petition, and ARRL has concerns about the RECCO Petition that call for resolution before the Commission should grant a permanent waiver to RECCO.”
“Common sense should prevail” and Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules shouldn't apply to isolated, immediate, one-time responses to consumer-initiated requests for text offers, a lawyer for the Retail Industry Leaders Association said in a call with Mark Stone, deputy chief of the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. RILA sought clarity on TCPA rules in a 2013 petition. “If a consumer sends a text to an entity requesting particular information, the entity sending a one-time response with the precise information requested by that consumer should not be subject to TCPA liability,” the group said in a filing in docket 02-278, posted by the FCC Friday.
The FCC should approve TracFone’s petition for a rulemaking on whether to allow Lifeline subscribers to show they’re using the program by sending a text, Sprint and the Lifeline Reform 2.0 Coalition said in comments posted Friday in docket 11-42. Lifeline providers can be reimbursed under the program only for subscribers who use the service within the previous 60 days, Sprint said in its comments. While texting is not a Lifeline service, sending a text using a Lifeline-supported wireless phone “demonstrates that the subscriber did not abandon” the service “and is not engaging in waste, fraud or abuse,” Sprint said. The commission should allow Lifeline broadband and data services as proof of usage, as well, said the coalition, which is made up of Blue Jay Wireless, Global Connection of America and Telrite. Failing to recognize text messaging, broadband and data services “impermissibly discriminates against Lifeline subscribers with various disabilities for whom text messaging or certain smartphone applications may be the preferred or only accessible method of communication,” the coalition's comments said. “Such discrimination impermissibly flies in the face of the goals of the Lifeline program and the disabilities access requirements of the Communications Act,” the filing said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler sent letters, as promised Thursday, to wireless carrier CEOs requiring them to lay out steps they will take by the end of Q1 to combat smartphone theft (see 1412040049), FCC officials confirm. The letters weren't posted by the commission. Wheeler asks the CEOs to describe specific steps they're taking to ensure all phones can be locked, wiped and restored, to protect unique identifiers for every device and to improve “the timeliness, accuracy and availability of data about smartphone theft for use by law enforcement,” said one of the letters made available to media. “I would also ask you to take appropriate steps to ensure that employees in your retail and authorized reseller affiliates understand the importance of their role in preventing mobile device theft by checking the appropriate database to ensure that every device they initialize for service has not been reported lost or stolen.” Wheeler said he would send the letters, in remarks Thursday to the FCC Technological Advisory Council. CTIA supports FCC efforts to curb smartphone thefts, said Jamie Hastings, vice president-external and state affairs, in a statement. But Hastings questioned the deadlines in the Wheeler letter, which were not part of the TAC’s stolen phone report. “We must all work together to achieve our shared objectives as soon practical, but we need to be careful in setting artificial deadlines on some stakeholders with respect to implementing technical changes,” Hastings said.
Mobile Future said the 2007 FCC voice roaming order can in no way be a model for reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service. That analogy misses big differences between automatic voice roaming and broadband Internet access, it said in a filing Friday: “Most importantly, to the extent there is a market for automatic voice roaming, it is a wholesale market involving a discrete set of participants -- namely, mobile wireless voice carriers. In contrast, the broadband Internet access market is a retail market, involving literally hundreds of millions of relationships -- all of which would be dramatically altered by the reclassification of broadband Internet service.” Broadband reclassification “could require a greater degree of forbearance than was required in the voice roaming context -- or, alternatively, could result in a far heavier regulatory burden,” the group said in docket 14-28.
The FCC “fundamentally” mischaracterized FiberTower’s position in its legal challenge of an agency order that held the company hadn't demonstrated that it was providing substantial service for 689 of its 24 GHz and 39 GHz licenses and the licenses should be revoked, FiberTower said in a filing last month at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In October, the FCC told the court it acted within its legal authority in rejecting the licenses (see 1410150093). FiberTower said it never contended “no service” could satisfy FCC build out rules. “To the contrary, despite the technical challenges inherent in the bands and the dearth of widespread customer demand for reasons outside of FiberTower’s control, the record establishes the ample service FiberTower has provided under all of its 24 and 39 GHz licenses,” FiberTower said. FiberTower said the service it offered included “building a nationwide construction platform with the systems and contracts necessary for providing transmission on demand; developing new equipment such as small-cell technologies for transmission in congested urban areas; making 100 percent of its licensed spectrum available for use on a daily basis both through its innovative ‘spectrum-in-a-box’ program and through secondary-market leasing; and -- last but not least -- constructing and operating links wherever sufficient demand existed, including on at least 42 of the licenses at issue.” Oral argument is set for Jan. 20 (see 1412030048). FiberTower filed with the court Nov. 18.
Correction: Telcordia, not Neustar, is the company that wants the FCC to quickly name the next local number portability administrator (see 1412030046).
LTE deployment “chewing up spectrum at a faster pace” than expected could explain why the AWS-3 auction bidding (see 1412030023) has topped $40 billion and continues to rise, BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said Thursday in a research note. Verizon confirms it has started converting PCS spectrum from 3G to LTE a year after it tripled the spectrum it allocated to LTE to launch XLTE, Piecyk wrote. “The increased spectrum usage for LTE comes a year earlier than we expected and leaves Verizon with less than 50 MHz of spectrum to provide voice (which LTE does not yet support) as well as data service to existing 2G and 3G customers." Telecommunications Industry Association CEO Scott Belcher noted in a statement the record levels in the auction. “The level of bidding demonstrates that the spectrum crunch is very real, and that more work is needed to keep pace with exploding consumer demand for mobile broadband,” he said.