The second meeting of the Federal Aviation Administration Drone Advisory Committee is Jan. 31 to continue to help the FAA integrate unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the national airspace. The agency said in a Wednesday news release the committee will review and possibly approve three task groups. The first group will review the roles of federal, state and local governments in enforcing drone laws. The second group will review technological and regulatory approaches to permit drone operators to access the airspace beyond what's allowed under the small UAS rule. The third will consider ways to fund services needed to support integration efforts. At its first meeting in mid-September the 35-member committee, chaired by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, said it would take a deeper dive into privacy issues (see 1609160003).

T-Mobile detailed plans to boost wireless capacity during the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. Wireless carriers last week said they have prepared for many months to fortify networks in Washington in anticipation of massive data demand expected next Friday (see 1701050059). T-Mobile will boost its network capacity in the National Mall and surrounding areas by nearly 1,000 percent through permanent upgrades, Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray said in a Thursday news release. T-Mobile did so by deploying LTE Advanced technologies including 4x4 MIMO and 256 quadrature amplitude modulation, he said. The company said it added more LTE spectrum over the past year, deployed three-carrier aggregation, added multi-beam antennas and doubled backhaul on many sites. The carrier will make temporary capacity boosts in the area by rolling out cells on wheels several days before the inauguration. T-Mobile and other carriers have said the temporary upgrades will remain all weekend, including for protests (see 1701060023).

Two consumer groups want President-elect Donald Trump to "fire" General Motors CEO Mary Barra from co-chairing the recently announced Department of Transportation committee that will review challenges, opportunities and best practices related to automation, which is projected to play a bigger role in buses, cars, drones, trains and planes (see 1701110048). Barra "should not lead a panel recommending how to deploy her company's automated vehicles," wrote Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, the group's Privacy Project Director John Simpson and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways Chairwoman Joan Claybrook in a Thursday letter to Trump. "We are also appalled that not a single consumer, citizen or auto safety survivor’s group sits on this industry-dominated panel and ask that you restructure the rest of this advisory committee so it includes members of consumer advocacy groups and true representatives of the public interest." Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) will co-chair the 25-member panel, which includes representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Lyft, Uber and Zipcar, plus academics, insurers and others. The consumer groups' letter said companies like GM and others "are rushing to deploy robot car technology and will not offer unbiased advice." The advisory panel should be focusing on developing privacy and security measures and standards, the consumer groups said, but companies selling robot cars "have shown little willingness to protect our data." The panel is "likely to backfire" because their advice will be called into question, which could potentially set back development of the technology, the groups said. The Trump transition team didn't comment.

Sprint's Virgin Mobile said Wednesday its U.S. headquarters will now be One Kansas City Place in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and it plans to hire up to 100 people. “Kansas City is a national hub of entrepreneurial spirit and sophisticated start-ups, which is the perfect backdrop for our new office as we evolve the Virgin Mobile brand and elevate it to new heights,” said Dow Draper, CEO of Virgin Mobile, in a news release. "This innovation district is a natural setting for a bold brand like Virgin, which does things differently and changes business for good.” Virgin Mobile is operating from a temporary office in One Kansas City Place at 1200 Main St. and is starting renovation of nearly 11,000 square feet of vacant office space on a separate floor. Sprint corporate headquarters is in nearby Overland Park, Kansas.

Comments to the FCC on further changes to rules for wireless emergency alerts (see 1701100078) agree the agency needs to move with caution, T-Mobile replied in docket 15-91. “The record establishes that further study is essential before any geo-targeting mandate can be considered, given that the Commission’s proposed benchmark is not realistically achievable,” T-Mobile said. “It is premature to set a specific degree of precision and establish a deadline for implementation until, at a minimum, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions has completed its standards-related work.” The record also makes clear that WEAs are “simply not capable of the many-to-one communications the Commission seeks to encourage,” T-Mobile said. “Commenters favoring multimedia alerting failed to dispel concerns that such alerts may actually delay alert delivery and disrupt WEA functionality.”

The FCC established a pleading cycle on AT&T’s proposed buy of a lower 700 MHz C-block license in Texas from XIT Telecommunication & Technology. “Applicants maintain that the proposed transaction would provide AT&T with additional spectrum that would enable it to increase its system capacity to enhance existing services, better accommodate its overall growth, and facilitate the provision of additional products and services in Cellular Market Area 653 (Texas 2-Hansford),” said a Wednesday public notice. “The Applicants assert that, as a result of this proposed transaction, AT&T would hold 24 megahertz of contiguous, paired Lower 700 MHz spectrum in the nine counties involved in this transaction, which would allow for a 10×10 megahertz LTE deployment.” Petitions to deny are due Feb. 1, oppositions Feb. 8 and replies Feb. 15.

U.S. airlines no longer will be required to make preboarding announcements that the Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone is prohibited onboard aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a Tuesday announcement. announced Tuesday. Note7s will still be barred, but the “high degree of public awareness of the ban” means the announcements no longer are needed, the agency said. That Samsung has “successfully recalled” more than 96 percent of the Note7s shipped in the U.S. is evidence of “the awareness of the ban,” it said. The company is continuing its “intensive efforts internally and with third-party experts to understand what happened” with the Note7 “and to make sure it does not happen again," Samsung Electronics America President Tim Baxter said at CES (see 1701040074).

Wearables could offer an opportunity for wireless power company Powercast, which has been supplying FCC-certified power transmitters, chips and modules to the industrial market for 14 years, Jason Gill, electrical engineer, told us at the company’s CES booth. The company showcased its technology, along with a development kit, with keyboards, sensors, clothing, key fobs and a smartwatch, looking to sign wearables makers looking for radio-frequency-based wireless charging. Most devices using the company’s Powerharvester chip charge at distances of 1-3 feet, said Gill. Powercast doesn’t have designs on RF charging for smartphones or PCs, he said, calling RF charging for higher-power devices “not practical.”

The 71 percent of U.S. broadband households with Wi-Fi or Apple AirPort access own an average 30 percent more computing devices than non-Wi-Fi households, Parks Associates reported Tuesday. Wi-Fi is “by far” the most common road to internet access in broadband households, but half use 3G/4G mobile data as a primary source of broadband, Parks said. More than half of U.S. broadband households with speeds under 1 Gbps would upgrade to gigabit-speed services if they were offered, said the industry research firm. Seven percent of those households have only one device connected via Ethernet, it said. Wi-Fi households own an average 5.7 computing devices and 8.1 connectable CE devices, said the researcher.

MoffettNathanson downgraded T-Mobile to neutral from buy Tuesday, after its announcement last week of a new T-Mobile One plan, in which all taxes and surcharges are part of the "headline rate." The plan “opens yet another front in the battle over service plan pricing, leaving us incrementally more cautious about [average revenue per user] ARPU forecasts for all operators, not least T-Mobile itself,” MoffettNathanson said in a note to investors. “To be sure, we still see T-Mobile as the best-positioned operator, and the most reasonably valued one, in the sector. But after factoring in the impacts of T-Mobile’s new pricing, our estimates for T-Mobile are now below consensus for the first time in four years.”