CTIA and PCIA jointly filed in the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals as interveners on behalf of the FCC in the lawsuit the commission faces from Montgomery County, Md., against the FCC’s October wireless facilities deployment order. Montgomery County’s lawsuit and an identical lawsuit from Los Angeles and other municipalities in the D.C. Circuit say the order’s wireless tower siting rules are unconstitutional and misinterpret the 2012 Spectrum Act (see 1503100034). CTIA and PCIA were major parties in the FCC order’s creation, having pledged to work with local jurisdictions to streamline the wireless tower siting process (see 1410170048 and 1503050056). “By intervening in this case, CTIA seeks to uphold the FCC Order that created an effective framework for local governments whose support is crucial for allowing mobile providers to improve capacity and expand coverage in their communities and across America,” said CTIA Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Scott Bergmann in a statement Thursday. “PCIA strongly believes that the FCC’s October 2014 Infrastructure Order will help streamline and accelerate the deployment of wireless infrastructure across the country,” said PCIA Vice President-Government Affairs Zac Champ in a statement. “Lawsuits such as the one filed by Montgomery County could jeopardize that deployment and, with it, economic growth and job creation. PCIA and CTIA’s joint petition urges the courts to allow the FCC to carry out Congress’s clearly stated desire to streamline wireless infrastructure deployment.”

The FCC Public Safety Bureau will host a workshop May 8 on the use of apps on smartphones and other mobile devices to contact 911, the FCC said Wednesday. “Topics addressed in the workshop will include: how existing apps are assisting in the provision of 911 service, how 911 network architecture affects requirements for app design and delivery, and future steps needed to encourage further development and integration of 911 apps into the broader 911 ecosystem,” the FCC said. The workshop will be at FCC headquarters and more details will be revealed closer to the event, a public notice said.

The FCC should clarify that those who have made their cellphone numbers publicly available for business calls should be deemed as having given prior consent to receiving nontelemarketing calls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, said the Coalition of Higher Education Assistance Organizations in reply comments posted Wednesday in docket 02-278. The group was backing Citizens Bank’s petition for declaratory ruling seeking the clarification. Some consumer groups oppose the petition (see 1503170026). COHEAO is a partnership of colleges, universities and organizations that promotes campus-based loan and tuition payment programs, according to its website.

The National Regional Planning Council (NRPC) asked the FCC for more time for regional planning committees to modify their existing 700 MHz regional plans. The notice requiring the changes was published in the Federal Register Dec. 2, establishing a due date of June 2, NRPC said. But NRPC and the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council only recently completed work identifying new general use channels for use in a nationwide 700 MHz deployable system, the group said. “The modification of 700 MHz plans can only now begin to be initiated by 700 MHz regional planning committees as prior to these channels being identified there was insufficient information available to modify regional plans properly,” NRPC said. The filing was in docket 13-87.

The FCC Wireless Bureau denied a request for a waiver of the build-out requirements for 14 Multiple Address System (MAS) licenses held by Great River Energy. As a result, the licenses were canceled as of Oct. 12, 2010, the bureau said in an order released Wednesday. Great River told the FCC it and its 28 member cooperatives planned to use the licenses to deploy smart grid technology across Minnesota and Wisconsin. But, Great River asserted, the National Institute of Standards and Technology hasn't issued standards for system and equipment manufacturers. So Great River said it should receive a waiver until Oct. 12, 2015, the bureau said. “We conclude that Great River has failed to justify an extension of time to meet the first construction requirement because Great River’s failure to meet the buildout deadline was attributable to factors wholly within its control,” the bureau said. “Great River made the business decision to develop a Smart Grid system based on equipment manufactured to meet the Smart Grid standard developed by NIST, even though NIST had not yet developed the standard.” The bureau also denied waiver requests for seven MAS licenses held by Alligator Communications and said as a result those licenses were also canceled as of Oct. 12, 2010. Alligator had argued that granting the extensions would allow continued development and implementation of Shared Use Repeater Stations “which would be a ‘more efficient use of ... MAS spectrum ... than to have to employ stop gap implementation,’” the bureau said in a second order. “Alligator’s failure to meet its construction requirement was attributable to factors within its control,” the bureau said. “Any waiver or extension of the construction requirement would not be in the public interest.” The MAS licenses were sold in a 2005 auction. The licenses, in the 900 MHz band, allow terrestrial point-to-point and point-to-multipoint fixed and limited mobile operations.

U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen rejected AT&T’s claim that the FTC couldn’t sue the wireless carrier to stop its throttling of unlimited data plans, ruling in San Francisco Tuesday that he would allow the FTC’s lawsuit to move forward. The FTC filed suit against AT&T Oct. 28, claiming AT&T throttled data transmissions more than 25 million times since October 2011 for 3.5 million of its customers subscribed to unlimited data plans. The FTC is seeking injunctive relief against AT&T and restitution for affected customers (see 1410280047). AT&T argued in January that the FTC couldn’t sue the carrier over throttling because it held common carrier status and was therefore outside the FTC’s jurisdiction. The FTC Act does exempt common carriers from the FTC’s jurisdiction, but the mobile data services at issue in the lawsuit weren’t considered a common carrier service when the FTC filed the suit, Chen said in his ruling. The FCC reclassified wireline broadband and mobile broadband as Communications Act Title II services Feb. 26 in its new net neutrality rules, with reclassification set to happen after the net neutrality order appears in the Federal Register (see 1502260043). Once the order “goes into effect, that will not deprive the FTC of any jurisdiction over past alleged misconduct as asserted in this pending action,” Chen said in his ruling. AT&T has also misinterpreted the common carrier exemption in the FTC Act to mean the FCC and FTC can’t overlap on common carrier regulations, when in fact “it appears that the more precise purpose was to prevent overlap between common carrier regulations,” Chen said. “Indeed, it is not uncommon for any particular activity of a business to be subject to multiple sets of regulations.” FTC Commissioners Terrell McSweeny and Joshua Wright expressed concerns in late March about Title II reclassification endangering the FTC’s jurisdiction over broadband providers (see 1503250059). The FTC looks “forward to proving that AT&T's marketing of its ‘unlimited’ data plans was unfair and deceptive and returning money to the millions of consumers who were harmed by AT&T's action,” Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. AT&T said in a statement that “we’re obviously disappointed in, and disagree with, the decision and will seek to appeal it as soon as possible.”

The Wireless ISP Association urged the FCC to exempt small ISPs from any USF charges that may be imposed on broadband. Imposing new costs and burdens on unsubsidized broadband providers “will make broadband less affordable for customers, including many in those areas most in need of access services,” WISPA said in a letter to the commission posted Tuesday in docket 96-45.

U.S. Cellular said Tuesday it plans to add more than 600 4G LTE cell sites through the end of the year in 10 states in partnership with King Street Wireless. The additional cell sites will give 98 percent of U.S. Cellular customers access to 4G LTE coverage, the carrier said. The additional sites will be in California, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, U.S. Cellular said. “This network expansion brings fast 4G LTE speeds to areas that other carriers ignore,” said U.S. Cellular Chief Technology Officer Michael Irizarry in a news release.

Major product launches with a “clear commitment to wireless charging” will make 2015 “a breakthrough year" for the wireless power industry, said David Green, research manager, IHS technology. Wireless power receiver and transmitter shipments will more than double to 120 million units this year, from 55 million in 2014, said IHS research released Tuesday. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge will help drive revenue to more than $1.7 billion this year, said IHS. It said the Apple Watch will help spur growth of wireless power receivers for wearable technology to more than 20 million units this year. To avoid initial negative customer experiences, said Green, the wireless charging industry will need a stronger focus on interoperability among the standards from the Alliance for Wireless Power (Rezence), Power Matters Alliance (PMA) and Wireless Power Consortium (Qi), even accounting for the combination of A4WP and the PMA announced earlier this year (see 1501060013). Consumers “do not care which technology or standard their device uses; they just want it to work well,” Green said. Multimode wireless charging receivers supporting more than one technology will comprise 30 percent of the market by 2018, said Green. MediaTek announced in early March it was the first semiconductor company to mass-produce multimode wireless charging chipsets supporting PMA, Qi and Rezence standards. IHS forecasts industry revenue will grow by nearly $15 billion a year through 2024. But 63 percent of consumers weren’t aware of wireless charging in IHS consumer surveys conducted last year. New products in 2015 should help raise awareness and drive demand, said Green.

Google executives, including Milo Medin, head of Google Fiber, pressed the FCC in a meeting with Wireless Bureau officials to move forward on rules for the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band. The meeting came two days before Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated an order on the band (see 1503270052), said a filing posted Monday in docket 12-354. The Google officials said the FCC should “adopt rules without delay” following the three-tiered framework proposed by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The rules should “establish interference protection requirements that take into account aggregation effects of secondary and tertiary usage” and “establish dynamic protection zones that protect incumbent operations when and where they are in use,” Google said.