CTIA highlighted the role its members play in pushing the envelope on mobile health and said in comments to the FDA that the wireless industry is well aware of the importance of protecting consumer privacy. The filing was on part of an agency request for comments on “Using Technologies and Innovative Methods to Conduct Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Clinical Investigations of Investigational Drugs.” The average U.S. home has 5.3 connected devices and Americans use more than 11.1 billion MBs of mobile data every day, CTIA said. “The ubiquity of powerful mobile devices, along with their ever-expanding array of sophisticated features and availability of health-related software, creates opportunities to revolutionize clinical trials.” CTIA cited AT&T’s work with the Garrison Geriatric Education and Care Center at Texas Tech University to provide connectivity to embedded pressure sensors and accelerometers in shoe inserts, which gather data in a fall-risk study. Duke University is using Verizon-enabled activity monitors and glucometers to analyze the impact of physical activity on participants with peripheral arterial disease, CTIA said. CTIA and its members understand the importance of protecting patient privacy, the wireless association said. “Protecting clinical trial participant data privacy is a top priority for the wireless industry, which implements a variety of options for consumers to choose when and with whom they share data. More generally, our industry participates in ongoing dialogue with policymakers, privacy advocates, and the health sector to ensure compliance with applicable regulations and norms aimed at protecting health data privacy.” Comments were in docket FDA-201-N-3579.

The New York City Department of Emergency Management (NYCEM) told the FCC it supports proposed changes to the FCC wireless emergency alert rules, in a filing in response to a notice approved by the commission at its November meeting (see 1511190053). The FCC is correct to recommend longer emergency messages, the department said. “It is NYCEM’s position that 90-character messages are wholly insufficient to provide the level of information needed by the public in order to understand the scope of the emergency and take necessary precautions,” NYCEM said. NYCEM cited two examples. “Due to an active shooter incident at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan, all individuals between West 45th Street and West 35th Street between 6th Avenue and 9th Avenue should move indoors now and stay indoors until further notice,” is the kind of warning possible if the FCC allows up to 360 characters, the department said. It's clearer than “Shooter near 42St/7Ave, MN. People nearby should go indoors and wait for more info,” it said. NYCEM also supports a proposal to lift a ban on including phone numbers and URLs in emergency texts, but with a caveat: “The Commission should caution alert originators to ensure that the website and/or telephone number that they are directing people to for more information (e.g., government websites, 311 systems, etc.) are prepared to handle the rapid influx of network and/or telephony traffic.” NYCEM also said the FCC should require carriers to target their messages within a smaller geographic area. The filing was posted in docket 15-91.

FCC proposals to protect grandfathered 3650 MHz-3700 MHz base stations from harmful interference from Citizens Broadband Radio Service users in the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band don’t go far enough, the American Petroleum Institute said in comments filed at the FCC. Comments were due Monday on the protection framework and protection criteria during the transition to spectrum sharing. “API believes that the FCC protection boundary proposal in this docket is less than adequate for over half of the use cases for existing equipment,” the oil and gas association said. “Examples of unregistered operations around a registered base station that would be affected by the FCC proposal include such things as support vessels in the Gulf of Mexico that surround a platform, or mobile work locations within an oil field.” API sought tighter limits on interference. The Utilities Telecom Council also sought tougher protections for utility operations in the band. UTC said the rules should protect customer premises equipment (CPE) farther than the 4.4 km from the center coordinates of the base station proposed by the FCC. “Second, the Grandfathered Wireless Protection Zone should extend in all directions around the center coordinates of the base station, not just to those sectors where there is existing CPE.” The comments were in docket 12-354. Google also encouraged the FCC to develop an approach that protects incumbents from interference. Google proposed the FCC establish as an aggregate received signal strength limit of -95 dBm/MHz (or -85dBm/10 MHz) at locations where equipment is located “rather than creating inefficient protection zones.” Companies with equipment that must be protected during the transition should also have to register with a database, Google said in its comments.

Comments on an Oct. 30 NPRM on proposed changes to FCC hearing aid compatibility rules are due Feb. 26, replies March 28, said a notice published Monday in the Federal Register. “The proposed changes would expand the scope of the wireline HAC rules, add a volume control requirement for wireless handsets, address recently revised technical standards, and streamline the process for enabling industry to use new or revised technical standards for assessing HAC compliance,” the notice said.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam demonstrated a version of 5G to the company’s board in November, McAdam said in an interview with Business Insider. “You don't ever go to a board with something that's not real,” he said. “We'll be piloting it more broadly. San Francisco, we'll be there. We'll have it in New York. We'll have it in Boston.” McAdam said he expects to launch 5G service at Verizon’s Basking Ridge, New Jersey, campus in January, with commercial deployment to follow later in the year.

The Wireless Innovation Forum told the FCC that the WIF Spectrum Sharing Committee is recommending changes to an FCC proposal for rules for the protected contours for grandfathered licensees in the 3.5 GHz band as the FCC launches the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS). The task force’s “general consensus” is that the commission’s proposed two-pronged approach “is not sufficiently effective at protecting” wireless ISP operations and may block CBRS deployments. “This approach does not, for example, explicitly take into account protection of [wireless Internet service providers] base stations, which are typically mounted at high sites with good visibility to surrounding areas,” the forum said. “In this case, the FCC’s implicit assumption that the received signal strength at the base station from a CBRS device outside a boundary must be less than the signal strength at the boundary is not necessarily correct.” The comments were posted in docket 12-354.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance criticized Apple and Google for deciding "independently and with no notice to law enforcement that I’m aware of" to give their customers control over access to their encrypted smartphones. "Apple and Google are no longer teenagers in the business world of the Internet," Vance said in an interview Monday with The Takeaway radio news program. "They are the absolute dominating mature adults with 96.4 percent of the smartphone market.” He said the companies themselves decided to "draw the line between privacy and public safety," which "also happens to fit their economic interests." Though encryption is a long-standing controversial issue, some federal, state and local law enforcement officials have stepped up calls for access to encrypted phones since the November terrorist attacks in Paris (see 1512100032 and 1511240023). Vance said he doesn't want a back door to gain access to encrypted devices but wants companies like Apple to have a digital key to unlock their own devices. "All I want Apple to do is, when a judge has determined by looking at a criminal case that there’s a need to get into this device and issues an order, that that order can be effectuated," he said. Vance said lawmakers must examine the issue and strike a balance between privacy and public safety. He said he's not talking about bulk telephone data collection or scooping up information on millions of people, referring to federal snooping programs (see 1511300028). “Every phone that we seek to open is done by an individual, separate presentation of facts to a judge. It’s very much retail law enforcement investigation,” he said.

The use of smartphones and mobile technology is helping the environment, cutting 198 tons of carbon emissions per year in the U.S. and across Europe, Mobile Future said Thursday. “The savings are due to the ubiquity of mobile technology, including connected buildings and lifestyle choices like working from home and smart heating and electricity systems,” the group said.

U.S. Cellular successfully implemented use of the industry stolen phone database, the carrier said in a letter to the FCC. The carrier had promised to notify the agency when it did so, it said. The letter was posted in docket 14-143.

T-Mobile asked the FCC to reject AT&T’s proposed buy of three lower 700 MHz C-block licenses from East Kentucky Network, said a filing on a meeting with staff from the Wireless Bureau and Office of General Counsel, posted Thursday in docket 15-79. AT&T’s market share in some of the areas already approaches 60 percent, T-Mobile said. “Low-band spectrum offers one of the few -- if not the only -- opportunity for competitive carriers and new entrants to serve consumers in these areas cost effectively. Under these circumstances, dominant firms such as AT&T have the incentive and ability to raise their rivals’ costs through input monopolization: AT&T can acquire spectrum not only to put it to the firm’s own use, but also to withhold the resource from actual or potential competitors.” In June, T-Mobile filed a petition asking the FCC to reject the deal (see 1506230057). In response to the petition, AT&T said T-Mobile should stop complaining and start investing in spectrum in markets like those it hopes to buy from East Kentucky.