Ford expects to have 100 percent of its U.S. vehicles connected by 2019 and 90 percent globally by 2020, President-Global Operations Joe Hinrichs told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Monday. “The opportunity of connecting the vehicle with modems going forward is really to bring the whole system to that connected integration as well. And so the art of the possible expands dramatically.” Ford needs to design the “electrical architecture” into the connected car “to take advantage of that at the same time you put the modem in the vehicle,” said Hinrichs. He said the question is, “What can we help you do better in your daily life and make it easier and more enjoyable by having this capability?”

The FCC deserves credit for making more high-frequency spectrum available for 5G, expected at the Thursday commissioners’ meeting, but now the agency has to schedule an auction, blogged Stacey Black, AT&T assistant vice president-federal policy. “Now that the Commission has the 5G ball rolling with spectrum allocations, we urgently need to get to the next step -- auctioning this newly allocated spectrum so that mobile broadband providers can deploy as quickly as possible,” Black wrote Wednesday. “As an industry, we believe the best timing for auctioning the 28 GHz and 37-40 GHz bands is by December 2018. By this time, chipsets and equipment will be commercially available, FCC service rules will have been finalized, and standards will have evolved to a point that permits commercial 5G network deployments in 2019.” At the meeting, regulators will take up an order reallocating the 24 and 47 GHz bands for 5G (see 1710270030). Wireless industry officials expect an auction by the end of next year of bands reallocated in 2016 (see 1711030045). Citing the blog, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly tweeted Wednesday that he concurs on "need & timeliness of 5G spectrum auctions," but the agency "has a statutory hiccup" and he's supporting "targeted bills" by Reps. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Doris Matsui, D-Calif. and by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D. According to O'Rielly's office, those were references to Guthrie and Matsui's Spectrum Auctions Deposits Act and to similar legislation Thune introduced last Congress and is working on again, though it hasn't been reintroduced.

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee’s 5G Subcommittee recommends NTIA open one or a series of notices of inquiry or requests for information on bands that could be considered for sharing. Recommendations by the subcommittee are set for a vote at a CSMAC meeting Friday. NTIA also should “develop a list of information that is needed for interference mitigation that would improve sharing,” the subcommittee said. “This list should include information about the legacy waveform and operation that is required to design and develop sharing approaches, and the information needed to co-exist.” The subcommittee said NTIA should ask the FCC to consider “a counterpart processes inquiry on which commercial bands and which technology steps should be considered for bi-directional sharing.” The report backs more use of beamforming, active antenna systems, MIMO and network/cooperative MIMO as ways to limit interference. NTIA should investigate these technologies “based on spectrum, technology, application, and functional requirements of the federal communication systems that [need] to share spectrum with ... non-federal entities,” the subcommittee said. NTIA also should “expedite” a workshop on bidirectional sharing, as recommended by CSMAC last year (see 1606080050), the group said. Bidirectional sharing would allow federal agencies access to some commercial bands. The group wants more concentration on receiver standards. “There are no regulations governing the design of wireless receivers, or their performance,” the report said. “Protection from noise and interference is achieved through stringent requirements for the performance parameters like ACS (adjacent channel selectivity), blocking characteristics, spurious response, and intermodulation response.” CSMAC also plans to consider a report by its Identifying Key Characteristics of Bands for Commercial Deployments and Applications Subcommittee. “The subcommittee recommends that NTIA give consideration to the following key characteristics when reviewing potential new spectrum bands for reallocation or use by the commercial industry: (1) propagation and coverage; (2) capacity; (3) contiguity; (4) international harmonization (scale); and (5) incumbency issues." It recommends against the agency “rigidly” defining what are low-, mid- and high-band spectrum bands “as this metric is dynamic and ever changing.”

The FCC approved the National Emergency Address Database Privacy and Security Plan, on circulation for a vote (see 1710260036). The main components: “(1) the NEAD, a database of verified wireless access point street address information ... and (2) the National Emergency Address Manager (NEAM),” the order said. “When a caller dials 911 from his or her wireless handset equipped with Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth radios, the participating wireless carrier network will automatically collect information from the wireless handset about wireless access points within the vicinity of the wireless handset.” AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon submitted the plan Feb. 3. It's "consistent with the requirements outlined in the Indoor Location Fourth Report and Order and addresses the need to protect the privacy, security, and resiliency of the NEAD,” the agency said.

U.S. Cellular Chairman LeRoy Carlson met with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on the national carrier’s need for high-frequency spectrum for 5G. U.S. Cellular “discussed how its experiments with fixed 4G wireless service have produced strong results,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-177. “Its future ability to continue to compete with the dominant nationwide carriers will depend in large part on its deployment of 5G networks, which will require access to millimeter wave band spectrum.” Competitive carriers need access to high-band spectrum below 30 GHz, because of the propagation characteristics, the filing said. Its target band is 24 GHz, cleared by the FCC for 5G. The company urged the FCC “to ensure that smaller bidders have a reasonable opportunity to acquire licenses for the 24 GHz band.” The agency should license the band using seven 100-MHz blocks, it said. “Because licenses for 200 megahertz blocks could be prohibitively expensive for many smaller bidders, all such bidders could be forced to compete for a single 24 GHz band license in each market, which undoubtedly would cause this license to sell at a premium," the carrier said. "Licensing the 24 GHz band primarily on the basis of 200 megahertz blocks also would mean artificially restricting this band to, at most, four licensees, likely to the exclusion of smaller bidders.” The carrier had meetings with the other commissioners as well.

Broadcom remains “fully committed” to buying Qualcomm for $70 a share, said Broadcom in a Monday statement, after Qualcomm’s announcement earlier in the day that its board unanimously rejected the Nov. 6 “unsolicited” offer (see 1711060004). Broadcom is “encouraged” with the reaction of Qualcomm shareholders that the offer is “the most attractive, value-enhancing alternative available” to them, said CEO Hock Tan. Many Qualcomm shareholders “have expressed to us their desire that Qualcomm meet with us to discuss our proposal,” said Tan. It remains Broadcom’s “strong preference to engage cooperatively” with Qualcomm's board and management team, he said. It’s Qualcomm board’s “unanimous belief” that Broadcom’s offer “significantly undervalues Qualcomm” relative to its “leadership position in mobile technology and our future growth prospects,” said Chairman Paul Jacobs. No company is “better positioned” in mobile, IoT, automotive, edge computing and "networking within the semiconductor industry,” added CEO Steve Mollenkopf. “We are confident in our ability to create significant additional value for our stockholders as we continue our growth in these attractive segments and lead the transition to 5G.”

The FAA should endorse commercial networks as the preferred communications platform for small, low-altitude drones, CTIA said Monday in a white paper. “This begins with the FAA recommendation to use these networks as one of the viable technologies for remote tracking and identification of [drones] by law enforcement, and continues with FAA recognition of wireless networks as suitable to provide safe and reliable command and control functionality for small, low-altitude” unmanned aerial vehicles, the association said. It urged policymakers to work with industry “to create a unified national framework for FAA management of drone airspace” based on a risk-based regulatory framework. Policymakers should ensure carriers can build networks needed for drones “by freeing up more spectrum for licensed use, encouraging broadband infrastructure deployment, and promoting the testing of commercial wireless networks to support low-altitude UAV communications,” CTIA said. The group said more than 800,000 drones are U.S. registered. CTIA said it's convening leading players in the drone space, including Amazon, AT&T, Qualcomm and Verizon, for a meeting of its Drone/UAS Working Group on Tuesday.

AT&T, Verizon and tower company Tillman Infrastructure said Monday they agreed to build hundreds of cell towers, with the potential for “significantly more new site locations.” Tillman agreed to build the towers, which will be leased and co-anchored by AT&T and Verizon. “These new structures will add to the overall communications infrastructure in the US, and will fulfill the need for new locations where towers do not exist today,” said a joint news release. “They also will serve as opportunities for the carriers to relocate equipment from current towers.” Construction of the first tower is to start in early 2018.

TerreStar asked the FCC to reconsider an Oct. 10 order denying its request for waiver of a requirement it demonstrate substantial service for all its paired 1392-1395 and 1432-1435 MHz and unpaired 1390-1392 MHz band licenses by April 23. “TerreStar’s failure to meet the construction deadline was due to circumstances beyond TerreStar’s control, and that grant of the waiver request serves the public interest,” it said. The company said it was well on its way to building out a smart-grid ecosystem when wireless medical telemetry service (WMTS) equipment was deployed in the adjacent band. “The sensitivity of these receivers -- built, certified, and deployed during and after 2011 -- was not known, and could not have been predicted," the filing said. TerreStar shifted business plans to use the spectrum instead for wireless medical telemetry, doing so in partnership with WMTS providers, the filing said. That “would protect existing and future WMTS operations in the adjacent band from potential interference; it would lead to expanded use of the 1.4 GHz band for WMTS, which would generate public interest benefits far greater than those from any other presently feasible use,” it said. WMTS companies said the bureau should have approved. It erred “by failing to consider the nation’s growing need for wireless medical telemetry capacity and the grave interference threat posed to the safety-of-life Wireless Medical Telemetry Service,” GE Healthcare said. The American Society for Healthcare Engineering and Philips Healthcare also filed for recon (see here and here) in docket 16-290.

FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry slammed the wireless industry Monday for not doing enough to fight contraband cellphones in correctional facilities. Berry's tweet responded to a Daily Caller story about Robert Johnson, a South Carolina corrections captain shot six times in a 2010 attack allegedly ordered from inside a South Carolina state prison using a contraband phone. Pai had Johnson address commissioners in March when the FCC took up an order on contraband phones (see 1703230056). “Unfortunately, the wireless industry isn't taking this problem seriously and is trying to obstruct effective solutions,” Berry said. CTIA didn't comment.