The IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee (LMSC) plans to weigh in at the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as the standards group develops specifications for devices that use licensed assisted access (LAA), a variation of LTE-unlicensed, the committee said in a filing at the FCC. The IEEE committee deals with standards for local area networks and metropolitan area networks. The committee recommends that 3GPP “adopt a number of specific 802.11-like coexistence features, and that those features be a mandatory part of the LAA standard, given how successful these features have been in promoting the growth of wireless broadband over unlicensed spectrum,” said the letter, from LMSC Chairman Paul Nikolich. The committee understands 3GPP will make its draft LAA specification available in Q4, Nikolich wrote. “At that point, IEEE 802 expects to review 3GPP’s draft LAA specification and provide any appropriate feedback, and we hope that input will be incorporated into the LAA specification” due for release in March, he said. The filing was posted in docket 15-105.

Wireless carriers are causing harmful interference to public safety radios using the 800 MHz National Public Safety Planning Advisory Committee channels, APCO said Wednesday in a filing at the FCC. The interference “appears to be mainly due to commercial cellular operations overloading the front end (862-869 MHz) portion of public safety radios that was left in place following the 800 MHz rebanding proceeding,” APCO said. It said it bases its complaints on reports from the field. The problem “is expected to only grow worse as cellular carriers continue their deployments, including LTE,” APCO said. “Further, even on a going-forward basis, APCO understands that very few radios are available that might be capable of addressing the overloading issue.” The letter was written by Jeffrey Cohen, APCO chief counsel. APCO said it has spoken with various FCC officials from the Public Safety and Wireless Bureaus and Office of Engineering and Technology about its concerns. The filing was posted in docket 12-40. The FCC approved a landmark order in 2004, which set in motion the still-ongoing rebanding of 800 MHz spectrum with the goal of alleviating interference to public safety radios.

U.S. Cellular representatives told Stephanie Weiner, an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, that the pending Connect America Fund Phase II funding mechanism must provide a “meaningful role for commercial mobile wireless carriers,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 10-90. U.S. Cellular said it also met with Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Carol Mattey. “The company expressed a conceptual willingness to participate in CAF Phase II and to extend new broadband services into high-cost rural areas that need infrastructure investment,” U.S. Cellular said.

The FCC should expand eligibility criteria for the Lifeline program to specify that any person who receives telecom equipment from a state equipment distribution program be automatically eligible for Lifeline funds, Odin Mobile General Manager Robert Felgar said he told Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Wireline bureau staff. Felgar was accompanied by Zainab Alkebsi, policy counsel to the National Association of the Deaf, said a filing by Odin posted Tuesday in docket 09-197. “We discussed how budget phones provided by eligible telecommunications carriers to Lifeline consumers would not meet the needs of individuals with disabilities, including people who are blind, deaf, hard of hearing, or those who have mobility disabilities,” Odin said. “Such phones would not provide adequate screen readers for people who are blind and would likely not have the ability to provide adequate Video Relay Services or captioned telephone services for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. As a result, people with disabilities will not be able to partake fully in the Lifeline program.”

The FCC has multiple interests to weigh as it considers a T-Mobile request that the agency block two Dish Network-backed designated entities, and Dish itself, from bidding for the licenses they opted not to buy after being the initial winners in the AWS-3 auction (see 1511020064), said analyst Jim Patterson of Patterson Advisory Group Tuesday. “T-Mobile’s efforts to block the previous bidders from participating in a re-auction appeals to the concept of ‘fairness," Patterson emailed. “While there would be emotional appeal to excluding the designated entities, the FCC has to consider the obligation they have to the taxpayers and members of Congress who want to garner the maximum auction yield for deficit relief. There is a strong case to be made that a re-auction with AT&T and T-Mobile as the primary bidders would yield lower results than one with three or more parties.”

The IEEE 802.22 Working Group on Wireless Regional Area Networks said it approved IEEE 802.22b-2015, designed to support point-to-multipoint wireless broadband operation in the VHF and UHF TV bands. “The standard is intended to support wireless broadband services and monitoring applications for the world’s traditionally underserved rural areas, where most empty TV channels can be found and where Internet access services are often scarce,” the group said. “IEEE 802.22b-2015 is designed to double the throughput of devices based on the original IEEE 802.22 standard,” said Chang-woo Pyo, chair of the task force that created IEEE 802.22b. It will enable more capacity for machine-to-machine communications and the IoT, he said.

The use of additional C-band spectrum (3.4-4.2 GHz) for mobile broadband in just two cities, London and Shenzhen, China, would generate $440 million in economic benefit while protecting C-band incumbents, GSMA said in a report released Tuesday. The findings were presented at the Global Mobile Broadband Forum in Hong Kong, coinciding with the start of the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva. “The report highlights an urgent need for regulators across the globe to address the allocation of spectrum required to meet the huge growth in mobile data traffic, especially in densely populated urban areas,” GSMA said. “C-band spectrum can provide large contiguous channels that support the delivery of high data rate services such as video.” The study was written by Plum Consulting with analysis from the GSMA and Huawei. “The report shows that use of C-band spectrum for mobile broadband can be achieved through the development of sharing techniques to allow mobile services to co-exist with other users of the band, such as satellite and fixed link services,” GSMA said. “Plum’s study and other independent studies show that C-band small cells can successfully co-exist with satellite services, provided that an exclusion zone of a 5-kilometer radius is established around the satellite installations.” Administrations worldwide should make available more contiguous spectrum to meet growing demand for high-speed connectivity in densely populated environments, said David Wang, president of Huawei Wireless Networks. “C-Band discussions during the WRC-15 offer a unique opportunity which should not be missed.”

Connected car platform company Zubie launched an in-car Wi-Fi device that operates over the Verizon 4G LTE network. The $99 mobile hot spot, with a $10/month data fee, is available at Best Buy. The Zubie is targeted to families looking to stream entertainment or mobile workers wanting to take their offices on the road, the company said. The Zubie in-car Wi-Fi device is based on a Sequans Communications LTE chipset for connectivity and processing, and plugs into a vehicle's OBD-II port under the dashboard. Zubie accommodates multiple users and devices, the company said.

Pump Alarm, a sump pump monitoring device that works on the Verizon Wireless network, is available in 96 Home Depot stores in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio, the companies said Monday. The device is targeted to the 43 percent of U.S. homes with basements that have sump pumps installed, allowing property owners to remotely monitor pumps, dropping temperatures and power outages, said the companies. The product's built-in wireless capability bypasses power outages giving homeowners an immediate notification when the power goes out and when it returns, the companies said. Pumpalarm.com is a partner in Verizon’s Innovation Program that is designed to help innovators bring machine-to-machine and wireless technology innovations to market, they said.

Lease-to-own chain Aaron’s in the past week began offering smartphones online and through about 80 percent of its 2,100 stores, President Steven Michaels said on an earnings call Friday. That's a reversal of the chain’s policy announced in July of putting off launching smartphones until 2016, Michaels conceded. “We believe in the smartphone category, as we did back in the summer when we announced our delay,” Michaels said. “Our customers are asking for these devices and it continues to be the category that gets searched most often on Aarons.com.” The chain wanted to address several “issues” before it felt “comfortable” jumping into the category, he said. For example, Aaron’s has partnered with a third-party service vendor to “ensure a proper wiping and refurbishment on the phones as they come back off of lease,” he said. “We've got a tight and narrow device lineup of current-generation phones that we feel good about. And we're going to be conservative in our inventory positions and continue to pay attention to the industry and make sure we're reacting and dunk it home.” Aaron’s plans to partner with a “national” wireless carrier in 2016, he said. But for now, customers who walk into Aaron’s stores can procure “unlocked GSM-capable devices,” he said. “We've asked the stores to partner with local stores to get the activation on from a prepaid standpoint, assist the customer in doing that,” he said. “We are talking to carrier partners, and we do think that activation is a key component of the program, and we do intend to have a second phase in 2016 via a national partner carrier and that will help provide us some additional margin through the activation and refill of the airtime.”