The FCC Public Safety Bureau tweaked a waiver on wireless emergency alert rules it approved for competitive carriers just before the Labor Day weekend (see 1709050053). The earlier waiver, responding to a petition by the Competitive Carriers Association, provided “temporary and conditional relief” for CCA, waiving a requirement that carriers decide by Sept. 1 whether to elect to withdraw from the voluntary wireless emergency alert program. A Friday-evening notice was “temporarily waiving the 60-day notice requirement” until 30 days after the FCC acts on the merits of an earlier CCA petition seeking (see 1708160063) a delay of new alerting requirements by at least a year. The bureau cites problems posed by hurricanes Irma and Harvey. “This situation is being exacerbated by the fact that many carriers’ limited resources are being further constrained at this time by the response to multiple severe weather events,” the order said. “This temporary waiver will permit these carriers both to focus their limited resources on responding to recent storms and figure out whether they will be able to comply with requirements that are scheduled to take effect at the beginning of November.”
More than 21,000 people from 110 countries and territories attended the 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas, which ended Thursday, GSMA announced. There were more than 2,400 CEOs and 20 percent of attendees were women, GSMA said. A few attendees told us numbers seemed low and security was tight.
AT&T got the go-ahead from the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology to do tests using 2.5 GHz spectrum. “AT&T plans to test experimental integrated radio and adaptive antenna systems to evaluate the performance of short distance microwave radio digital communications systems,” it told the FCC. "Testing will assess various performance characteristics of each system in a real world rural/suburban outdoor environment, such as data throughput, latency, error rates, and availability.”
"Government planning" didn't "create" the smartphone, and government doesn't "create or drive competition," but "provides a framework" for it to "thrive," acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen said in prepared remarks to a Fordham Competition Law Institute event Friday. On "the role of a government antitrust agency, I agree with the description of our role as an umpire. ... We should make sure that the sides are not agreeing to shave points, prevent better players from playing, colluding, or combining teams to undermine the nature of the contest." She cited the FTC's challenging this year of the combination of top-two daily fantasy sports sites DraftKings and FanDuel, "where market dynamics suggested a substantial risk to competition." With "competition-driven innovation" resulting in smartphones, which displaced cellphones that had displaced landlines, something "will one day displace the smartphone," Ohlhausen predicted.
T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray met with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Mike O’Rielly and Brendan Carr on the big issues now before the agency of most concern to the company, said a filing in dockets including 12-268. Efforts to deploy incentive auction spectrum and concerns about ATSC 3.0 were among the topics covered. It's important to have "sufficient spectrum in the low, mid, and high bands to support competitive 5G deployments,” T-Mobile said. “The existing 3.5 GHz framework should be revised because the current structure will not drive investment and does not align with international use of the band for 5G. ... [T]he 3.5 GHz spectrum is a core band for 5G deployment around the world and ... the U.S. will miss a huge opportunity if it does not create a structure aligned with global 5G requirements.”
The Wireless and Public Safety bureaus and its Office of Engineering and Technology will get deep in the weeds Nov. 6 with an all-day workshop on “improving the co-existence of Cellular (and other commercial wireless) licensees and public safety licensees in the 800 MHz band,” the FCC said Friday. Cellular licensees, public safety agencies and public safety equipment manufacturers are all “crucial to resolving lingering concerns about unacceptable interference to public safety mobile and portable radios” and the workshop will include all three, said a notice. The FCC said it will explore “the existing 800 MHz interference environment, realistic anticipated changes in that environment, and practical options for addressing both existing and anticipated interference problems without hindering technological advances in the Cellular Service.” The workshop starts at 9 a.m. at FCC headquarters.
The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America told FCC officials Tuesday of concerns about elimination of Form 740 filing requirements for importing RF devices, as expected (see 1709110022), NCBFAA said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-170. Brokers worry that "if no other party makes 'a determination,' the broker may be liable as one of the parties responsible for the determination, even though the broker does not have sufficient knowledge of the product to make that determination," the group said. Officials from the Office of Engineering and Technology participated in the meeting, attended by lawyers and a representative of UPS Supply Chains Solutions.
Cellular connectivity, enhanced sensors and better algorithms will improve wearable accuracy and make it possible for companies to sell through new channels and to new customers, said IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani. The research firm reported Thursday that 121.7 million wearables should ship this year, up 17 percent from 2016, extending to 229.5 million in 2021. Smartwatches running third-party applications and basic watches that don't run third-party apps will be the majority of wearable devices throughout the forecast, said IDC, with Apple and Android Wear leading and Fitbit's Java-based operating system and Garmin's Connect IQ making strides.
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved special temporary authority for ShawnTech to provide a “secure communications/private mobile radio service to Agencies to manage and control mobile device interdiction and extract contraband communication devices,” said an OET notice. The four major carriers, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile, supported the application, ShawnTech said. The STA covers Folkston, Georgia. The D. Ray James Prison is among the correctional facilities there.
Remaining changes to FCC Part 97 amateur radio service rules take effect immediately, said a notice scheduled for Friday's Federal Register. It said the Office of Management and Budget approved, for three years, associated information collection. The FCC made the changes consistent with decisions of the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference. Other changes took effect in July.