The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment on its fifth annual Report to Congress on State Collection and Distribution of 911 and Enhanced 911 Fees and Charges. The report is required by the NET 911 Act, which became law in 2008. The act “requires, among other things, that the Commission report whether 911 fees and charges collected by the states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, and Indian territories (states and other reporting entities) are being used for any purpose other than to support 911 and Enhanced 911 (E911) services,” the bureau said Friday (http://bit.ly/1dVat92). “With this Public Notice, the Commission formally solicits public comment on the Fifth Report, the information provided to the Commission by states and other reporting entities, and the reported expenditure of funds for Next Generation 911 ... services.” Comments are due Feb. 24, replies March 24.
Verizon Wireless is determined to “provide a wide range” of hearing-aid compatible handsets for its subscribers, company representatives told FCC staff during a recent call, said an ex parte filing. “As the Commission considers HAC requirements for third-party application providers, we stated that it is important that the FCC remain consistent with its prior interpretations of the Twenty First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) that confine the obligations of providers and device manufacturers to the services they directly provide to consumers,” Verizon said (http://bit.ly/1hPjNdM).
NTCH urged the FCC to reverse last month’s grant of Dish Network’s request for flexible use (CD Dec 23 p1) of its AWS-4 spectrum and for a one-year extension of terrestrial network buildout requirements. The waiver of the buildout deadline “was inconsistent with long and consistent FCC precedent regarding the grounds for providing construction build-out relief,” NTCH said in docket 13-225 (http://bit.ly/19QUQyn). By granting Dish the right to make its uplink/downlink election up to 30 months from the date of the waiver order, the commission gave Dish a huge advantage in the auction by allowing it to unilaterally increase the value of the adjacent H block by the election it makes, said the small wireless carrier. The Wireless Bureau “clearly would not have taken the actions absent Dish’s commitment to pay the H block cash,” NTCH said referring to Dish’s agreement to bid nearly $1.6 billion in the auction should the FCC approve its waiver. “The question of first impression here is whether the commission itself may engage in conduct which it would be unlawful for one of its employees to engage in.” The waiver gives Dish an unfair advantage in the H-block auction, which began Wednesday, said NTCH. “The integrity of the auction is necessarily distorted from the start by the imbalance in the fairness of the bidding process.” Dish and the bureau had no comment. Observers of early bidding rounds expect Dish to buy most of the spectrum (CD Jan 23 p4).
CTIA warned there could be legal issues with an FCC proposal that would require wireless carriers to submit data to the commission on cell site outages during and after disasters, which would be released to the public (CD Jan 22 p2). The proposal is “arbitrary and capricious” and “would unlawfully interfere with wireless carriers’ First Amendment rights,” CTIA said in a filing posted by the FCC Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1hjPBqp). CTIA’s objections were similar to those made by AT&T. “The proposal will mislead the public about wireless service availability, with consumers believing that the percentage of inoperable cell sites is equivalent to the proportion of a carrier’s service territory where service is unavailable when disasters occur,” CTIA said. “The proposal will not increase incentives to increase network resiliency. If anything, it will increase incentives for providers to restore inoperable cell sites as quickly as possible, even where that approach would undermine restoration of actual service.” Verizon Wireless also objected. “The proposed wireless outage reporting and disclosure rule would unnecessarily impose new obligations that provide no clear value to consumers, particularly given carriers’ own competition-driven efforts to give customers information about their wireless coverage, and could even penalize service providers for making important investments in diverse wireless networks and service restoration practices,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/KGVenP). T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/KHzck7) the information the FCC wants carriers to file “does not accurately reflect the available geographic coverage or resiliency of networks after a disaster."
A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision that the Town of Greenburgh, N.Y., had unlawfully denied Crown Castle’s application to install a distributed antenna system (DAS) in public rights of way (http://1.usa.gov/1cWoAVt). The town’s decision was not supported by substantial evidence, therefore violating Section 332 of the Communications Act, the court said. The town had concluded Crown Castle failed to demonstrate a need for the facilities, because they were “either purely speculative or for the apparent benefit of a single client.” The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the town’s determination was not supported by substantial evidence. The town’s determination on “aesthetic intrusion” was also not supported by substantial evidence, the court said. The court “made several notable findings that are important for the DAS and wireless industries,” law firm Davis Wright said in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/LHum7b).
The Mobile EAS Coalition urged the FCC to consider a more holistic and integrated approach to improving emergency notification procedures as it looks to improve wireless network reliability. This includes encouraging the voluntary deployment of M-EAS by TV broadcasters “and voluntary inclusion of M-EAS receiving capability in the devices distributed by wireless carriers,” the coalition said in comments in docket 13-239 (http://bit.ly/19LDSkP). The coalition asked the commission to look beyond the potential to improve the wireless broadband infrastructure itself, “and create incentives to improve overall emergency communications to citizens,” it said. The FCC also should support the recommendations of the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council III and embrace the dual use opportunity presented by the M-EAS system, it said.
Most smartphone users are sharing their location through at least one app, said a study released Tuesday by location app Life360 and online research company VeraQuest (http://bit.ly/1juVr9K). More than 60 percent of smartphone owners use at least one location-sharing app on their phone and 36 percent use two or more, and 41 percent of adult smartphone owners are more willing to share their location today than they were five years ago, the research found. VeraQuest surveyed 1,169 teens and adults who own a smartphone, it said.
Sonos added fledgling subscription-based Beats Music to its roster of content services. Beats Music began streaming to subscribers Tuesday, claiming a library of 20 million licensed tracks from Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music, and announced partnerships earlier this month with AT&T Wireless and Target. The service is $9.99 a month after a one-week free trial. Users who signed up at Target get a one-month free trial. Users enter musical preferences when they sign up for the service and a personalized selection of albums and playlists is delivered four times a day to their accounts, Beats Music said. In addition to musical preferences, the service bases curated selections on time of day, activity and “additional cultural and contextual clues,” it said. Beats Music will be available to AT&T Wireless customers on an individual plan basis and with a multi-line account for up to five family members and 10 devices for $14.99 a month with the first 90 days free, the company said. Currently, Target is the only retail source for prepaid Beats Music gift cards, which will be available in denominations of $10, $25 or $50. Beats Music didn’t immediately respond to questions about additional partners, including wireless music system partners.
The Consumer Electronics Association is sponsoring the “Mobile Medical Apps (MMA) Roadshow: Managing App Development under FDA [Food and Drug Administration] Regulation,” said a CEA news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/Ll80cj). The MMA “aims to demystify the FDA requirements for new entrant app developers and identify best practices” among app producers, it said. CEA joins six universities, more than a dozen industry trade associations and the FDA in support of the MMA, it said.
Sprint asked the FCC for a limited waiver of the agency’s Telecommunications Relay Services rules in order to permit federal video relay service toll-free “front door” phone numbers and 10-digit numbers into the Internet-based TRS Numbering Directory. “Permitting these federal ‘front door’ and ten-digit numbers into the database will increase the ability of taxpaying deaf and hard of hearing Americans to reach federal employees and will reduce the number of calls placed through the federal TRS fund,” Sprint said (http://bit.ly/1jaj4nH).