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.

PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein urged government, industry and education leaders to collaborate to develop a "wireless workforce of the future" to keep pace with the increased demand for wireless data. "Wireless infrastructure will carry the heaviest load in easing the wireless data crunch," Adelstein said Wednesday during the Wireless Industry Workforce Development Summit at the White House. "Our goal is to improve the proficiency of every aspect of the skilled workforce that builds, upgrades, and maintains wireless broadband infrastructure," he said. During the summit meeting, Adelstein commended the Obama administration's recognition of the importance of the wireless infrastructure industry and the president's Wednesday announcement of a pilot project expansion to provide broadband access to public housing residents. "The Digital Divide exists in urban as well as rural America," Adelstein, a former FCC commissioner, said. "Today's announcement will help bridge that divide and bring us one step closer to achieving the goal of ubiquitous broadband coverage."

The exclusion zones in FCC rules for the 3.5 GHz band are still too restrictive and, as a result, the IEEE 802.11 Working Group on wireless local area networks (WLANs) will not develop a standard to support IEEE 802.11 WLANs in this band, the working group said in comments filed at the FCC in docket 12-354. The working group said it conducted a straw poll of members at a meeting in May and there was overwhelming agreement on this point. “The success of products based on this standard, depends heavily on the industry’s ability to produce low-cost devices which in turn depends on the mass production of silicon; a time consuming and very expensive process,” the filing said. “The current rules restrict the size of the potential market for products in the 3550-3700 MHz band to the point where development of such products is not economically viable.” The FCC approved an order finalizing rules for the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band in April, opening the band partly for unlicensed use and for small cells, while protecting Navy and other systems already in the band.

Sprint began its Direct 2 You personalized phone setup and delivery service in Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas, the company said in a news release Monday. The service lets Sprint customers meet with a service representative at a location of their choosing (see 1505180052). Direct 2 You is also available in other big cities and is expected to be introduced to more throughout 2015, Sprint said.

The Wireless Bureau Tuesday sought comment on Progeny’s request that it be allowed to extend and consolidate the Multilateration and Location Monitoring Service buildout deadlines for many of its licenses, giving Progeny “a unified single milestone deadline” for 75 of its economic area licenses. Comments are due Aug. 3, replies Aug. 13. Among Progeny’s asks is an extension of its initial milestone deadline of approximately 11 months until June 5, 2013, a date when Progeny said it launched operations in its top 40 economic areas (EAs), the bureau said. For its remaining licenses, “Progeny seeks to consolidate the first and second build-out deadlines into a single unified deadline as follows: for its largest 24 EAs, Progeny seeks a deadline of April 3, 2020; for its next largest 22 EAs, Progeny seeks a deadline of April 3, 2021; and for its remaining 69 EAs, Progeny seeks a deadline of April 3, 2023,” the bureau said.