The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Thursday on a July 3 request by PHI Service for an extension of time or waiver of the performance requirement applicable to some of its 931 MHz paging geographic area licenses. Rules say licensees in the band must construct sufficient facilities to cover two-thirds of the population or demonstrate that it's providing “substantial service” in the area no later than five years after initial grant, said a Thursday public notice. PHI already got one extension, to July 3, the bureau said. “PHI explains that the Licenses are being used to support critical smart grid applications and distribution automation requirements of its affiliated energy delivery companies.” PHI seeking extension until Dec. 31 to complete construction and demonstrate substantial service, the bureau said. Comments are due Oct. 16, replies Oct. 31 in docket 17-246.
Samsung announced a $300 million investment in its new Automotive Innovation Fund, focused on smart sensors, machine vision, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, connectivity, safety, security and privacy for connected cars and autonomous vehicles. Harman, which it bought in March for $8 billion, established an autonomous/ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) business unit reporting to Harman’s connected car division, it said Thursday. John Absmeier, Autonomous/ADAS strategic business unit vice president-smart machines, also will lead the Harman unit as senior vice president-Harman SBU. The fund's first investment is TTTech, a networked safety control company, focused on transportation including ADAS and autonomous driving. Samsung “will not enter the car-manufacturing business,” said Samsung, saying it will focus on working with carmakers and mobility companies to develop next-generation automotive technology. The company is licensed for on-road testing of autonomous driving software and hardware under development in Korea and California, it said. Harman will eliminate 650 positions in the U.S. and Europe and shut facilities over the next year in Elkhart, Indiana; South Jordan, Utah; and smaller offices in Europe that came under the Harman umbrella through acquisitions, a spokesman confirmed.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Massachusetts and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Department of Homeland Security over its "fast-growing practice" of searching travelers' smartphones, laptops and other communications devices at the U.S. border without a warrant (see 1703170019), the groups announced Wednesday. They said the plaintiffs are 10 U.S. citizens and a permanent resident. Some are Muslims or people of color and none was subsequently accused of anything wrong, but their devices were kept for weeks or months, said the groups. The lawsuit "seeks to establish that the government must have a warrant based on probable cause to suspect a violation of immigration or customs laws before conducting such searches" as required by the Fourth Amendment, said the groups. They said Customs and Border Protection conducted almost 15,000 device searches in the first half of FY 2017 and is projected to conduct 50 more searches this fiscal year than last. A DHS spokesman said the department doesn't comment on pending litigation.
FirstNet will mean first responders will be able to communicate even in disasters as big as Hurricane Irma, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Irma knocked out about 25 percent of AT&T cellsites in Florida, he said. “Virtually all of that is because of lack of power,” Stephenson said. “We can't get people in to fuel generators, because the roads are not open. So, think about a hardened network, where you don't have this kind of situation occur, even in the most significant disasters like we are seeing with Irma.” AT&T historically hasn't been a big player in public safety communications, he said: “We view this as a nice opportunity for us to take share in terms of the selling services into the municipalities to police forces, the fire stations, the fire departments, and [emergency medical services] around the country.” AT&T and FirstNet expect competition, but competitors must be “interoperable” at all levels with the new network and their devices must be able to use the FirstNet band, he said. Stephenson said 5G will mean faster connections, but latency is just as important. “We’ve got to get the latency out of the entire network,” he said. “Think about autonomous cars, where you have live maps and maps that are being updated in the cloud, you cannot have a centralized cloud infrastructure hundreds of miles away and have autonomous cars.”
AT&T is increasingly giving HBO subscriptions to its wireless subscribers. Senior Vice President-Entertainment Group Vince Torres blogged Tuesday that that company, which has made HBO free to Unlimited Plus customers since April, will expand the offering to include Unlimited Choice customers starting Friday. AT&T expects to close by year-end on buying HBO parent Time Warner (see 1707260007).
The FCC should target 900 MHz band spectrum for smart grid broadband systems, said Newport, Rhode Island, in a letter posted Monday in docket 17-200. A private carrier broadband allocation at 896-901/935-940 MHz would "enable utilities and other providers of critical services to deploy modern, secure, and resilient networks ... capable of supporting Smart Grid and other critical functionalities," said the city. It cited the public-interest benefits as: migrating from "vulnerable narrrowband systems"; creating a "virtuous circle" of hardware, device, and application investment and development"; improving utility system "reliability, redundancy and coverage"; and bolstering power grid defenses against cyberattacks.
Asus launched a ZenFone 4 series Monday, calling it the first smartphone line with dual rear cameras.
Qualcomm has tried to separate its patent lawsuit against Apple from its role as a chip supplier to that and other companies, CEO Steve Mollenkopf told a Citi investor conference Friday. “They're very separate teams that deal with this,” he said. “We think being a good supplier is important. It's important business to us and the shareholders, and we try to have the least amount of disruption. ... We want to be a partner of people for decades, so it can take a long view.” History shows “these things get settled out of court,” Mollenkopf said of the fight with Apple. "There's always discussions.” Apple didn’t comment Monday.
Starry CEO Chet Kanojia met with FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Jessica Rosenworcel on the company’s proprietary 5G fixed wireless technology. “Starry reiterated its support for moving forward expeditiously on promulgating rules for sharing in the lower 37 GHz band,” said a filing in docket 14-177 on the Carr meeting. “Enabling this small portion of spectrum to be utilized for commercial sharing would create significant opportunities for new entrants to develop innovative technologies in these bands and would also unleash immediate capital investment.”
Qualcomm Technologies and Nokia said they will cooperate on interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on under-development 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G New Radio (NR) Release-15 specifications. “The testing and trials intend to drive the mobile ecosystem toward rapid validation and commercialization of 5G NR technologies at scale, enabling timely commercial network launches in 2019 based on 3GPP standard compliant 5G NR infrastructure and devices,” the companies announced Monday. Qualcomm said a recent survey it commissioned found 48 percent of consumers say they're likely to buy a smartphone that supports 5G when available, and “5G was the top feature that consumers were willing to pay more for in their next mobile device.”