The FCC should preserve one vacant TV channel for use by licensed and unlicensed wireless microphones after the TV incentive auction, and allow unlicensed mics to operate in some portion of the duplex gap, said the Performing Arts Wireless Microphone Working Group in an FCC filing posted Friday. The letter to the five commissioners outlines the working group’s recommendations for wireless mic operations following the auction. Allowing performing arts groups using 50 or more wireless devices to apply for a Part 74 license is a good step, but doesn’t go far enough, the group said. “To consider performing arts entities that use fewer than 50 wireless devices to be non-professional, and therefore ineligible to register their uses in the geo-location database, is a false assumption,” the working group said. “The majority of professional, not-for-profit theatres, symphony orchestras, presenting organizations, dance and opera companies, professional training programs and even touring Broadway productions across this country use fewer than 50 wireless devices on a regular basis.” The issue is critical to the performing arts sector, the working group said. Thousands of performances “are held by professional performing arts organizations each year and the use of wireless microphones is both essential to producing high-quality performances and also mitigates against significant public safety concerns,” it said. “Professional wireless capability, with successful interference protection, and sufficient spectrum to operate, is essential to our sector.” The filing was posted in docket 12-268.

Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. during Q2 saw demand for smartphones become “weaker than we expected,” due to a sales slowdown in emerging markets and in China in the mid-priced and low-end smartphone segments, President Mark Liu said Thursday on an earnings call. The strong U.S. dollar relative to “emerging market currencies” was partly to blame for the weaker demand, but so were deteriorating “regional economic conditions,” Liu said. As a result of the slowdowns, the industry by the end of Q2 had managed to absorb only half of the “excess inventory” it had accumulated “in the supply chain,” he said. Recent “macro economy uncertainties in many parts of the world” has only “further dampened” the supply chain's confidence in end-market demand “and has caused customers to become even more cautious in managing their inventory,” he said. That said, “we expect our customers' end-market demand will improve in the second half” through new iPhone launches and several launches of Android-based high-end phones, he said. He also thinks the “continuing 4G migration in China and the demand recovery in emerging markets will further support” second-half growth, he said.

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance and Pacific DataVision asked the FCC to move forward with their proposal for a private enterprise broadband allocation in the 900 MHz band. Several critical infrastructure industry commenters raised concerns in initial comments (see 1506300047). “Some of the concerns in the Comments reflect misunderstandings about the … proposal and/or the rules, rather than a substantive disagreement,” EWA and PDV said in reply comments filed in RM-11738. “Those should be relatively easy to resolve. Some that relate to the realignment process itself, such as the timing of notification and negotiation and the selection of realignment managers, present useful input and have prompted the Petitioners to support modifications to the proposed rules.” The proposal “will bring next generation technology options to the [private enterprise] user community on terms that are consistent with their unique requirements and may be implemented while providing incumbents with fully comparable facilities and without causing increased interference,” EWA and PDV said.

The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council hailed the FCC designated entity order, approved Thursday, especially the end of the attributable material relationship rule (see 1507160051), in a news release. MMTC lost its fight to get the FCC to remove the caps on bidding by DEs, but the order allows DEs to lease spectrum they buy to a larger carrier and to sell the licenses they buy in as little as three years. “MMTC and our partners have worked long and hard for DE program reform,” said President Kim Keenan. “Now our charge is to make sure the revised and new rules can produce new and diverse entrepreneurs and businesses that will be able to raise the capital to compete for sought-after spectrum.” The decision “is a step forward in the recognition of the need to make substantial regulatory efforts to ensure people of color are also owners, and not just consumers, in the wireless ecosystem,” Keenan said.

T-Mobile agreed to pay $17.5 million and take various other steps to resolve an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation of two outages that allegedly prevented customers from calling 911 for approximately three hours last summer. The carrier agreed to strengthen 911 service procedures and to adopt “robust compliance measures” to ensure it follows the FCC 911 service reliability and outage notification rules in the future, an agency news release said Friday. “The Enforcement Bureau found that T-Mobile did not provide timely notification of the August 8, 2014, outages to all affected 911 call centers, as required by FCC rules,” it said. “The investigation also found that the outages would have been avoided if T-Mobile had implemented appropriate safeguards in its 911 network architecture.” “The safety of our customers is extremely important and we take the responsibility to provide reliable 911 service very seriously," T-Mobile said. "We have made significant changes and improvements across a number of our systems since last year, and we will continue working to improve these critical systems with our partners to provide the standard of service our customers rightly expect from T-Mobile.”

The Competitive Carriers Association and members support an FCC move to place TV stations in the duplex gap as part of TV incentive auction rules, but are also open to other alternatives, CCA said in a Friday filing at the FCC, reporting on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “As the Commission’s models have shown, without the ability to place broadcast stations in the duplex gap, the Commission simply cannot reclaim as much spectrum for licensed broadband deployment,” CCA said. “CCA and its members are, however, open to any solution that will maximize spectrum clearing while providing ample spectrum for unlicensed devices, and proposed various alternatives to meet these goals.” One possibility, CCA suggested, would be identifying an additional channel for unlicensed use in the post-auction broadcast segment in markets where the duplex gap is unavailable. “This ‘replacement channel’ would provide developers and manufacturers the certainty they need to invest in the band by making up for the capacity lost as a result of permitting broadcast operations in the duplex gap,” CCA said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler pulled an order addressing the duplex gap and other incentive auction issues from the agenda for last week's meeting, but promised action at the Aug. 6 meeting (see 1507150058).

The decision of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group on Wireless LANs to not develop a standard for the 3.5 GHz spectrum sharing band is “very shortsighted,” New America Foundation Wireless Future Project Director Michael Calabrese said. The IEEE group complained that the restriction zones for the band are still too broad to make development of a standard financially viable (see 1507150039). “Although the FCC has adopted overly restrictive exclusion zones along the coastlines, to protect naval radar, they are temporary,” he told us. “NTIA, [the Department of Defense] and FCC have already agreed on a path to allow the private sector to deploy inexpensive sensors along the coast to protect radars. Once deployed, the exclusion zones become fairly minimal, allowing the mass markets that chip and equipment makers covet.” All indications are sensing technology “will be in place and certified in roughly the same time frame it would take to develop equipment for the band,” Calabrese said. “If the Wi-Fi standards body does not start now, they probably cede dominance of this incredibly promising small cell band to LTE-based gear.”

The Competitive Carriers Association urged the FCC to direct the North American Numbering Council and the Local Number Portability Administrator to implement wireless-to-wireless nongeographic number porting for all wireless carriers, regardless of size. “CCA’s rural and regional members have experienced problems with porting-in wireless numbers from disparate parts of the country,” CCA said in a filing in docket 13-97. “As a result, non-nationwide carriers are placed at a competitive disadvantage compared to their nationwide counterparts, who today are able to port-in numbers regardless of location.”

Mobile subscriptions in Latin America are projected to reach 757.2 million in 2015 and 885 million by year-end 2020, said a report released Wednesday by Pyramid Research. The growth is expected to be driven by the expansion of network coverage to unserved and underserved locations, the implementation of pro-competition policies and an uptake of cellular connected machine-to-machine and IoT devices, the research said. Pyramid Research predicts the Latin American mobile service market will be worth $80.3 billion by year-end 2015 and that mobile data revenue will account for more than 60 percent of the region's total mobile service revenue by 2020. As of 2014, LTE connections accounted for just 1.9 percent of all mobile subscriptions in Latin America, the research said, but it projects LTE connections will make up about 4.2 percent of the region's total mobile subscriptions by the end of 2015.

The FCC should retain flexibility to place TV stations in the 600 MHz duplex gap when necessary to secure sufficient spectrum for broadband use as part of the TV incentive auction, the Competitive Carriers Association said Wednesday. “The FCC should not sacrifice larger nationwide broadband spectrum-clearing targets for modest gains in unlicensed spectrum availability when reasonable alternatives exist,” CCA President Steve Berry said in a news release. Berry said CCA supports proposals by consultant Henry Waxman, D-Calif., former chairman and later ranking member of the House Commerce Committee, filed at the FCC last week. Waxman, a consultant to CCA member T-Mobile, proposed that the FCC put broadcasters in the gap only if broadcasters do not offer 84 MHz of spectrum or more for sale in the auction (see 1507100048). Berry said CCA supports Waxman’s proposal for a revised trigger on the spectrum reserve and strongly supports holding the auction in early 2016.