U.S. Cellular tentatively plans to deploy a call-authentication solution in the second half of 2019, said a filing posted Friday on a discussion with FCC Chief Technology Officer Eric Burger and other staffers. Several components are "critical" for successfully implementing Stir/Shaken (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited/Secure Handling of Asserted Information using toKENs), said the docket 17-97 filing: "a certificate key management entity"; "new network elements and functionality"; "new functionality on devices (UE) to support [Session Initiation Protocol] parameters"; and "Volte interoperability (SIP trunking) with other carriers (who also have implemented STIR/SHAKEN)." Chairman Ajit Pai in May accepted recommendations of the North American Numbering Council for standing up a call-authentication governance framework over the next year, with some providers expected to implement Stir/Shaken on the same timetable (see 1805140028 and 1805030014).

Eighty-seven percent of U.S. homes own a smartphone, second only to TVs among CE devices at 96 percent ownership, CTA reported Monday. The top tech categories are screen devices, with laptops third at 72 percent. Vice President-Research Steve Koenig predicted smartphone ownership could match TVs within five years. Smart speakers nearly tripled their ownership rate since last year to 22 percent of households, one of the fastest-adopted tech products since tablets. Smartwatches had a 6 percentage-point increase in ownership to 18 percent. Ownership rates of virtual reality headsets were 11 percent and drones 10 percent of households. The household ownership rate of 4K Ultra HD TVs rose 15 points to 31 percent, and 19 percent of households own a TV with a screen size of 60 inches or larger. Ownership of digital media streaming devices rose nine points to 45 percent.

An Apple-led proposal by tech companies for addressing interference in the C-band (see 1806130048) would create unacceptable levels of interference for its members, the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition said Monday in docket 17-183. More than 95,000 licensed fixed service microwave links remain in the 6 GHz band, the FWCC said. “The gravity of the interference issues follows from the safety-critical nature of some FS applications,” the coalition said. “Even a brief interruption can take down a first responders’ backhaul network for several minutes.” Proponents of the tech-industry framework respond “to all such interference predictions with a wave of the hand, saying mitigation will solve the problem,” FWCC said. “Saying it is not enough.” A lawyer for the tech coalition didn't comment.

The Republican National Committee and other commenters supported the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Alliance request that the FCC clarify that P2P text messages to mobile phones aren't subject to the restrictions in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 1805040028). Comments were posted Monday on docket 02-278. The commission should “tread lightly when it comes to regulating political speech, which is what the wireless-number restriction of the TCPA does,” the RNC said. “The RNC agrees with the P2P Alliance that P2P platforms are not autodialers and do not make calls using autodialing capabilities.” Vote.org also backed the coalition. “One way that Vote.org communicates with voters is through the use of P2P text messaging. P2P text messaging offers us a way to engage with voters in a personalized, individual way regarding voter registration, upcoming elections, and participation,” the group said. “As the P2P Alliance describes in the Petition, there is no basis to subject P2P text messaging to the TCPA restrictions that apply to calls made to wireless phone numbers through the use of an automatic telephone dialing system.” Every message that the National Black Justice Coalition “sends using a P2P platform is sent by an individual, who manually dials each number and transmits each message one at a time to a single recipient,” said NBJC.

The U.S. government has the full backing of President Donald Trump as it moves forward on 5G, NTIA Administrator David Redl told the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences Monday in a speech in Stockholm. “The United States, through private industry activity and government policy, has made 5G development a priority goal,” Reld said. Trump is a “champion of the move to 5G, appreciating its importance to economic development and opportunity, and its importance to our national security strategy,” he said. Fifth-generation wireless will be “a true game changer, promising to enable entirely new and re-imagined services and devices that will take advantage of the technology’s high-speed, high capacity, and low latency attributes,” he said. Redl asked for support for Doreen Bogdan-Martin of the U.S. in her campaign to head ITU’s Development Sector: "Doreen would be the first woman to hold any of the ITU’s elected offices in the Union’s 153-year history.”

The FCC Wireline Bureau extended for six months a waiver allowing porting of numbers outside of local access and transport area boundaries in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The carrier sought extension to continue to serve some 7,000 wireless customers by routing their calls outside the island after last year’s storm (see 1806200060). It's “in the public interest to extend the waiver,” the bureau said in docket 95-116. “We exhort Sprint to expeditiously resolve this issue.”

Wi-Charge is pushing infrared for wireless charging and hopes to see products from third-party companies in the market next year, Chief Marketing Officer Yuval Boger told us in New York Thursday. Apple’s inclusion of Qi in the Apple 8 and X smartphones was seen as a tipping point for wireless charging (see 1804090021). Boger called Qi an “interim solution” because of placement limitations and AC-charging requirements. Wi-Charge can charge up to 15 feet, with no AC power required in receivers, Boger said. Initially, Wi-Charge is targeting smart home applications and tablets used in airport restaurants and other public spaces, Boger said, but smartphones are the “holy grail” for wireless charging at a distance. The FCC imposes safety limits on how much RF or ultrasound energy is allowed, but infrared, because it’s light-based, is classified as a Class 1 laser product under Food and Drug Administration regulations. The FDA has categorized Class 1 devices as safe under all conditions of normal use, the executive said, comparing a Wi-Charge transmitter to a laser mouse.

AT&T officials laid out the carrier’s position on the need for revised wireless siting rules in meetings with FCC staff. Among the topics was “the FCC’s authority under Section 253 of the Communications Act to require cost-based fees and adopt safe harbor fees for access to the rights-of-way and municipal right-of-way infrastructure,” AT&T said Thursday in docket 17-79. “We commend the FCC for confronting these issues and encourage it to continue positioning the United States to be the leader in the race to 5G.”

5G networks will play a “paramount role” in autonomous vehicle connectivity, and by 2025, the vehicles will upload more than 1 TB of vehicle and sensor data a month to the cloud, an increase from the 30 gigabytes uploaded currently from “advanced connected cars,” said Gartner. With 5G networks' extra efficiency, communications service providers can use that to seize “future opportunities” with manufacturers of self-driving vehicles “in the fields of driver safety and data processing and management,” it said Thursday.

Verizon asked the FCC to revoke an April change in the Mobility Fund challenge process rules by the Wireless and Wireline bureaus (see 1805020064). The bureaus increased the buffer radius from 250 meters to 400 meters, Verizon said. The revised radius “will allow challengers to successfully challenge a one square kilometer area with as few as two speed test points,” Verizon said in docket 10-208. The company said the revised challenge process could “result in widespread false positives, i.e., presumptively successful challenges of large areas that are in fact well-served by 4G LTE, particularly if providers cherry-pick test points with an aim of minimizing actual coverage.”