Iridium is continuing its eighth-floor lobbying against allowing terrestrial mobile service in the 29.1-29.25 GHz band, according a docket 14-177 ex parte filing posted Thursday. The filing recapped a meeting between Vice President-Public Policy Maureen McLaughlin and Chairman Ajit Pai aide Rachael Bender at which Iridium repeated its previous arguments made to aides of Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O'Rielly (see 1704280046). It says allowing terrestrial mobile service in the band would violate the Administrative Procedure Act, there would be difficulties preventing harmful interference to Iridium and terrestrial operations in the band in case of co-frequency operations, and the band is of little use to terrestrial wireless.

The FCC Media Bureau dismissed a petition for declaratory ruling by the Multifamily Broadband Council (MBC) alleging Article 52 of the San Francisco Police Code violates the FCC over-the-air reception devices (OTARD) rule. The article requires multi-tenant buildings to allow occupants access to competing communications service providers upon request (see 1704140025). “MBC has not established that it is entitled to relief under the OTARD Rule,” said a May 4 letter to MBC’s attorney, Bryan Tramont of Wilkinson Barker. “We disagree with MBC that permitting additional communications service providers to serve multiple occupancy buildings at the request of occupants, as required under Article 52, impairs the ability of antenna users to install, maintain, or use an antenna covered by the OTARD Rule. Article 52 does not restrict the placement of antennas or any other aspect of antenna installation, use, or maintenance. Rather, Article 52 is directed at inside wiring.” Tramont didn't comment Friday.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk doubts the migration to autonomous driving will mean a “dramatic change” in a car’s “interior design,” he said on a Wednesday earnings call. Musk foresees autonomous vehicles having perhaps “an option where you have club seating instead of everyone facing forward, but I wouldn't call that radical,” he said. The “sensor hardware” and computing power required for “at least Level 4" autonomy on the Society of Automotive Engineers scale “has been in every Tesla produced since October of last year,” said Musk. “So it's a matter of upgrading the software, and we can reach Level 5. And if it does seem that we need to upgrade the compute power, it's designed to be easy to upgrade.”

Applauding the FCC's spectrum frontiers decision to allow unlicensed operations in the 64-71 GHz band, NCTA is resisting wireless efforts to have some of that spectrum reallocated for licensed operations. In a docket 14-177 ex parte filing posted Thursday, it recapped meetings with eighth-floor staff about the need to stand fast on the unlicensed allocation. It also argued against comparing the 24 and 39 GHz bands with the 64 GHz band, since different spectrum characteristics make one-on-one comparisons invalid. The filing recapped meetings between NCTA counsel and outside counsel with aides to all three FCC members.

CTIA and member companies reported on a series of FCC meetings to make their case for the group's proposal on the Mobility Fund II (MF-II) challenge process. In late April, CTIA proposed a process for handling challenges, a big question with a new Mobility Fund in February (see 1704270011). “CTIA encouraged the Commission to request new mobile wireless coverage data from providers specifically tailored for MF-II purposes, to allow providers to confirm that the Commission correctly integrates such data into a nationwide map of rural areas potentially eligible for MF-II, and then to administer a fair and efficient challenge process that minimizes burdens on providers and the FCC,” it said in a filing in docket 10-208. “This approach will facilitate the Commission’s MF-II goals and is fully consistent with the MF-II Order and FNPRM.” CTIA said it met with officials from the Rural Broadband Task Force, Wireless and Wireline bureaus and Office of Strategic Planning. The four major wireless carriers and U.S. Cellular were represented.

Garmin is looking to “advanced wearables” to offset the "rapidly maturing" basic activity tracker market, said CEO Cliff Pemble on the company’s Q1 call Wednesday. Garmin reported a 3 percent drop in its tracker segment, but Pemble said advanced GPS wearables helped offset that. On the impact of Apple Watch in the smartwatch segment, which Apple CEO Tim Cook said a Tuesday earnings call grew nearly 100 percent year on year (see 1705030051), Pemble said Garmin is “also seeking steep growth” in advanced wearables. Despite shrinking margins in the maturing basic tracker category, Pemble said trackers are “still a very large market."

Global smartphone shipments advanced 6 percent to 353 million units in Q1, Strategy Analytics reported Wednesday. Apple’s share slipped a percentage point to 14.4 percent share on “lackluster” sales of 50.8 million units. Samsung regained top position with 23 percent share, shipping 80.2 million units, and has “done well to recover quickly from its recent Galaxy Note 7 battery fiasco," said analyst Neil Mawston. SA expects the Galaxy S8 portfolio to drive Samsung’s upward momentum through the middle of 2017, Mawston said. Apple iPhone shipments declined year-on-year in four of the past five quarters, Mawston said. “Apple has been unable to capitalize on Samsung’s Note 7 missteps, and it is clear that Apple has to do something radical with its rumored upcoming iPhone 8 portfolio in the second half of this year to arrest the ongoing slowdown.” Apple Tuesday reported its latest quarterly results (see 1705030058).

Sprint is taking advantage of new technology to offer customers the Magic Box, a plug-and-play unit the carrier said will improve the average LTE connection in a home or small business by 200 percent. The unit uses an LTE-Advanced technology called LTE user equipment (UE) relay, otherwise used for wireless backhaul, Chief Technology Officer John Saw said in a Wednesday blog post. UE relay allows the Sprint Magic Box “to create an ultra-efficient connection to our macro network “ and operates on 2.5 GHz or 1.9 GHz spectrum, Saw said. “Conceived by our Chairman, Masayoshi Son, Sprint Magic Box is a revolutionary, plug-and-play unit designed to dramatically improve data service for Sprint’s business and consumer customers while accelerating the nationwide densification of our network.” Saw said. “This indoor, self-configuring LTE small cell is free to qualifying customers and requires zero implementation, labor, or rental costs. The customer simply places the unit near a window and plugs it into a power outlet -- no router, wired backhaul, or Wi-Fi required.” Saw emphasized that the box is more than a repeater. A repeater also amplifies the signals of macro towers, “along with all the noise and imperfections, and runs the risk of degrading the overall user experience,” he said. “The Sprint Magic Box, on the other hand, uses dedicated 2.5 GHz channels to reduce noise and interference, and thereby improves the efficiency of the Sprint network.”

The FCC should launch the 3.5 GHz sharing band and the vacant channel rule for the TV white spaces, said Dynamic Spectrum Alliance President Kalpak Gude and other Wi-Fi advocates in a meeting with Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology. DSA reported on a similar meeting last week with Rachael Bender, aide to Chairman Ajit Pai (see 1704250052). “There needs to be at least three usable channels -- 18 MHz -- available in every market to stimulate the level of investment necessary to establish an ecosystem for personal/portable whitespace devices,” said a filing in docket 15-146. “Availability of personal/portable devices will allow many components to get to scale, which in turn will drive the cost down and increase the affordability of fixed [TV white spaces] radios intended to provide broadband to unserved and severely underserved communities.” DSA also reported on a meeting with Daudeline Meme, aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

The FCC should examine IP captioned telephone service in a “holistic fashion taking into account all aspects of the service from consumer registration, to service quality, to new technologies, and the rate/rate-setting Methodology,” Sprint said. “The Commission has many regulatory levers at its disposal and that it should carefully monitor and enforce its existing rules while exploring new user registration requirements, annual re-registration, third-party certification, etc.,” said a filing in docket 03-123. “Sprint is open to exploring these and other ‘outside the box’ ideas to address core concerns with IP CTS.” The carrier said it met with officials from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, Office of Managing Director and Office of Strategic Planning. “Sprint also cautioned against arbitrary rate reductions that will not provide a sustained impact on controlling the growth of IP CTS,” it said. “Abandoning the Multistate Average Rate Structure rate-setting methodology would be an unnecessary departure from a competitively-based rate-setting methodology.”