A federal court asked litigants to propose a briefing format by Sept. 17 for tribal challenges to a March FCC wireless infrastructure order. "Parties are strongly urged to submit a joint proposal and are reminded that the court looks with extreme disfavor on repetitious submissions and will, where appropriate, require a joint brief of aligned parties with total words not to exceed the standard allotment for a single brief," said an order (in Pacer) Friday of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in United Keetoowah Band v. FCC, No. 18-1129. "Whether the parties are aligned or have disparate interests, they must provide detailed justifications for any request to file separate briefs or to exceed in the aggregate the standard word allotment."

Enough testing has been done to show existing z-axis location technology “can provide floor level vertical accuracy of within 3 meters for at least 80 percent of wireless calls,” said NextNav, which makes such tech and is headed by SiriusXM Radio ex-Chairman Gary Parsons. Parsons and other executives met Tuesday with staff for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the Public Safety Bureau, said an ex parte posted Friday in docket 07-114. The company disagreed with CTIA, which said in an Aug. 3 letter to the FCC that questions remain after test results (see 1808080016). “The public safety community has clearly communicated its desire for floor level vertical accuracy in major cities, and the body of independent test results over the past five years demonstrates that such accuracy is clearly achievable,” the company said. CTIA didn’t comment.

APCO staffers said they met with officials from the office of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the Public Safety Bureau to discuss the 4.9 GHz band's importance to public safety. APCO’s points included “the importance of preserving this band to provide public safety users with high-bandwidth, broadband communications tools to enhance mission-critical operations,” said a filing Wednesday in docket 07-100. APCO officials discussed the band at their meeting last week in Las Vegas. The FCC recently wrapped up a comment cycle on whether it should change the rules for the band, including possible sharing with commercial operators (see 1808060033).

The FCC directed local number portability administrator iconectiv to work with Inland Cellular, a small wireless carrier in the Pacific Northwest, to allow porting across a local access and transport area (LATA) boundary until Nov. 13 while it recovers from a network outage due to a power spike. Inland's "entire core network was affected, including the database that enables roaming -- the Home Location Register (HLR) -- and approximately 40,000 customers are without service," said a Wireline Bureau order in docket 95-116 and Thursday's Daily Digest. It said Inland arranged for the use of a third-party HLR to temporarily port all its subscribers’ numbers, allowing proper call routing and roaming. Inland expects it to take up to 90 days to resolve its network issue.

Sprint said the LEC Coalition "merely recycles an argument" the FCC has rejected about applying access charges to intraMTA (major trading area) traffic. "The LECs have provided no reason why the Commission should not deny their petition for declaratory ruling and/or file an amicus brief" backing reversal of a district court ruling in a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case, said the group's filing, posted Thursday in FCC docket 14-228. The coalition asked the FCC not to undercut district court decisions, and to pursue a rulemaking if it seeks to let interexchange carriers route commingled traffic through Feature Group D trunks while exempting intraMTA wireless traffic from access charges (see 1808130039). "The LECs contend that the Commission’s rules currently permit them to impose access charges on IXCs delivering intraMTA calls," Sprint said. "But the Commission squarely rejected the LECs’ position" in its 2011 USF and intercarrier-compensation order, confirming prior decisions that intraMTA traffic isn't subject to access charges but to reciprocal compensation, said Sprint. It added that the district court erred in concluding FCC rules allowed LECs to charge reciprocal compensation and access charges to the traffic even though both regimes "have never been applied to the same calls."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will allow other tribes and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to file interventions in United Keetoowah Band v. FCC & USA, No. 18-1129, a case challenging the FCC’s March infrastructure order. Wednesday, the court left in place the revised rules, which took effect last month (see 1808150074). The other parties allowed to file are the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, the Mescalero Apache Tribe, the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, the Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma and the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town, said a Thursday order. The D.C. Circuit said a schedule for filing briefs will be established in a future order.

Horizon Hobby agreed to pay a $35,000 fine and implement a compliance plan to end an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation of whether it sold audio/video transmitters for use with drones that weren't compliant with rules. “Horizon Hobby admits that it marketed AV transmitters that did not comply with the Commission’s equipment marketing rules,” said a consent decree released Thursday. RF devices must “comply with the Commission’s technical requirements and do not interfere with authorized communications,” the bureau said. “Because the noncompliant AV transmitters could operate in bands that are reserved for important operations, including Federal Aviation Administration Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, they must not be marketed or operated by anyone. Moreover, entities that rely on amateur frequencies in operating compliant AV transmitters must have an amateur license and otherwise comply with all applicable laws.” Horizon Hobby operates several websites that advertise and sell fully assembled drones, parts and accessories to hobbyists, including for use in drone racing, the bureau said: the company stopped selling the noncompliant transmitters after receiving a letter of inquiry in December. It didn’t comment.

Verizon will offer YouTube TV and Apple TV 4K in its broadband package in four 5G cities when it launches in the second half of the year. The carrier also said Tuesday that Indianapolis is joining Houston, Los Angeles and Sacramento as the first 5G cities. “YouTube TV will give you more than 60 of your favorite live TV channels and with Apple TV you can select all the movies and TV shows you want from iTunes, Netflix, and Prime Video,” Verizon said.

Laptops and tablets are showing “surprising resilience” despite a 4 percent drop in global shipments year on year, Strategy Analytics reported Wednesday. The 2018 connected computing market installed base is at 1.5 billion units globally, with household penetration at 30 percent, said SA. Consumers are paring down the number of computing devices they own, holding on to them longer and replacing them less regularly, said the researcher. Connected computing device unit sales are projected to grow from 354 million this year to 403 million in 2022, revenue rising from $148 billion to $156 billion. “People use devices based on what makes the most sense at any given time,” said analyst Eric Smith, and while smartphones fill much of that need, laptops and tablets are the “go-to devices for long-form entertainment and work.”

T-Mobile customers can get a free Pandora Plus subscription (a $54.89 value) for a year through a partnership, the music streamer blogged Wednesday, good from 4:59 a.m. EDT Aug. 28 until 4:59 a.m. EDT Aug. 29. Pandora called it "the first step" in news to come from the companies. Pandora Plus is the company's $4.99 monthly mid-tier offering to listen to a curated list of songs according to channel sans commercials, lacking on-demand capability of Pandora's Premium $10-per-month plan. T-Mobile also announced a relationship with Live Nation, giving its customers access to last-minute reserved seats at concerts and discounted tickets.