Texas Instruments introduced a new SimpleLink platform of ultra-low-power wireless microcontrollers for Internet of Things connectivity that helps OEM customers “go battery-less with energy harvesting or enjoy always-on, coin cell-powered operation for multiple years,” it said Wednesday. The platform is an “industry-first technology” that gives OEMs “the flexibility to develop products that support multiple wireless connectivity standards using a single-chip and identical RF design,” it said. The platform supports Bluetooth Smart, 6LoWPAN, Sub-1 GHz, ZigBee and ZigBee RF4CE, as well as “proprietary modes” up to 5 Mbps, it said. The CC2640 for Bluetooth Smart and the CC2630 for 6LoWPAN and ZigBee will be the first devices introduced on the new platform, TI said. “Leveraging this multi-standard support, customers can future-proof their designs and configure their chosen technology at the time of installation in the field.” Additional devices on the new platform will become available later in 2015, TI said.

Comments are now being accepted regarding the Federal Aviation Administration’s proposed rules on the operation of small unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, in the National Airspace System (see 1502160003). Comments are due April 24 and can be made on the regulations.gov website, after the FAA NPRM appeared in Monday's Federal Register.

A recent FCC order changing the definition of broadband from 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream to 25/3 Mbps ignores the big role played by wireless ISPs, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly told the WISPAmerica 2015 conference in St. Louis Tuesday, according to a transcript of his remarks released Wednesday. “I’m sure it came as a shock to many providers that the high-quality broadband services that their consumers know and love no longer qualify as real broadband service,” he said. “One small provider I spoke with talked about how frustrating it is to predict just how far the FCC will move its broadband goal post from year to year.” O'Rielly dissented to the order changing the FCC’s definition of broadband, approved at last month’s FCC meeting (see 1501290043). O’Rielly said it was a more positive note that the FCC has made real progress on getting more spectrum in play. “But we cannot rest on our laurels, more needs to be done,” he said. The explosion in wireless data “will require additional spectrum resources” beyond what is in the pipeline, he said. “Locating, repurposing and clearing spectrum takes time, so a long-term strategy is needed.”

Allowing unlicensed operations to use the TV guard bands after the TV incentive auction, as proposed by the FCC, is a doubly bad idea, Brattle said in a report filed Wednesday and paid for by Qualcomm. The policy will be ineffective because operations in the guard bands won’t attract investment, Brattle said. “Their limited bandwidth makes the 600 MHz guard bands inferior to the unlicensed bands at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz for Wi-Fi-type applications, and the necessarily limited transmit power precludes use of 600 MHz unlicensed devices altogether for long-range applications such as rural broadband.” All use of the spectrum would yield is “Wi-Fi on tranquilizers,” the report said. The potential interference will also mean carriers are less likely to buy spectrum in the incentive auction, Brattle said. “Our analysis of an LTE network in a band similar to 600 MHz shows that a 5 percent loss of capacity due to interference from unlicensed operations in the guard bands will lower the value of the affected spectrum by 9 percent; a 20 percent loss of capacity will lower its value by 43 percent; and a 35 percent loss of capacity will eliminate most (93 percent) of its value.” Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, told us he's not surprised by the report because Qualcomm has long opposed unlicensed use of TV spectrum, including the TV white spaces. "It simply reemphasizes our concern that Qualcomm is attempting to kill Wi-Fi in everything but the 2.4 GHz band," said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld.

SIM card vendor Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) jumped Tuesday to address a widely circulated article from The Intercept last week reporting that in 2010 and 2011, American and British spies “hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world” -- G&D competitor Gemalto -- “stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe.” That hack, which the report said was not limited to Gemalto (see 1502200039), “gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.” Gemalto issued a statement Monday saying it was studying the matter and would reveal the results of its investigation in a news conference Wednesday. In its news release Tuesday, G&D, which supplies SIM cards to more than 350 mobile network operators worldwide, said it has played an “important role” in the development of SIM card security standards for two decades. “The SIM card is so secure that in the case revealed recently, even intelligence services preferred to steal the key rather than attack the SIM card,” G&D said. The secure authentication of the mobile phone user on the mobile network is the main function of the SIM card, it said, saying G&D employs “the highest security procedures and processes.” The company “is taking the targeted attacks by intelligence services which were reported in the last few days very seriously, however,” it said. “Until now G&D has no knowledge that SIM card keys were stolen,” Stefan Auerbach, G&D’s head-mobile security business unit, said. “Immediately after the attacks were brought to light we did, however, introduce additional measures to review the established security processes together with our customers.”

Free Press contradicted Verizon's arguments last week that the biggest investments in wireless infrastructure came after the FCC classified mobile broadband under Communications Act Title I. The carrier's filing doesn’t account for inflation in the data, Free Press said in a filing in docket 14-28. “This is a fatal error, as any conclusions about changes in historical spending must be drawn from data that accounts for inflation.” Free Press argued that the growth in spending fell off sharply following Title I classification. “The annual growth rate in wireless capital spending from 1998-2006 was 3-times higher than the annual growth rate from 2007-2013, the period following the Commission’s classification of mobile broadband as a Title I information service,” the group said. “Put another way, the annual growth rate in wireless investment declined by two thirds following the decision to classify mobile broadband as a Title I service and place it outside of Title II.”

The FCC should take various steps to make certain the designated entity program remains viable, the DE Opportunity Coalition said in a filing posted Monday in docket 12-268. “The Coalition urges the Commission to take steps to realize that a viable DE program can fulfill important statutory and policy priorities, such as the wide dissemination of licenses and the avoidance of the excessive concentration of licenses.” The group urged the FCC to eliminate the attributable material relationship rule, “a counterproductive regulatory restriction that ultimately inhibits DE participation in auctions,” and to maintain the existing five-year unjust enrichment repayment schedule. “To encourage meaningful DE participation in future auctions, the Coalition also recommends that the Commission increase bidding credits across small business categories and extend new bidding credits to race-neutral categories of firms, supported by necessary data gathered through fact-based notice and comment,” the filing said.

BTIG downgraded Sprint from neutral to sell Monday, saying Sprint is unlikely to find a path to positive earnings or revenue growth. “With proper execution, we believe Sprint’s deep spectrum assets enable material market share gains from all three of its national competitors,” analyst Walter Piecyk wrote. “However, we are tired of waiting and simply can’t ignore the high cash burn rate and recent comments by Sprint’s Chairman Masa Son and latest CEO Marcelo Claure that outlined a clouded network vision and market strategy that we do not believe offers a clear revenue growth opportunity.”

FCC Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel urged the FCC to move forward on rules opening 75 MHz of spectrum at 5850-5925 MHz for unlicensed use. Two years ago, then-Chairman Julius Genachowski unveiled a proposal at CES to make the spectrum available for Wi-Fi, but the proposal met with heavy opposition from the auto industry. Automakers objected because the FCC allocated the same band for Dedicated Short Range Communications Service (DSRC) systems intended to improve roadway safety in 1999 (see 1305310095). “We support the safety initiatives associated with DSRC, but are mindful that mobile opportunities are multiplying in ways never contemplated when this spectrum was set aside in 1999,” the two said in a blog post Monday. They said driverless cars were the stuff of science fiction when DSRC was approved. “New technologies are coming to market that support features like automatic braking and lane change warnings that use radar and other technologies not dependent on DSRC,” they said. “We should not strand our spectrum strategies in turn-of-the-millennium safety technologies when there are may be other more efficient ways to reach these same goals.”

The FCC must not draw the wrong lessons from the AWS-3 auction, but instead should see the recently concluded sale as pointing to the need for competitive safeguards in the TV incentive auction (see 1501300051), members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition told the agency Tuesday. “The two dominant wireless carriers with the deepest pockets -- AT&T and Verizon -- walked away with 20 megahertz of the paired AWS-3 spectrum in most major markets and left the rest of the industry with only a smattering of paired blocks and 15 megahertz of low-value, unpaired, uplink spectrum,” the coalition said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. It asked the FCC to set aside at least 40 MHz in every market for competitors to AT&T and Verizon in the incentive auction. Otherwise, the two big players could buy enough spectrum to keep others from getting much of anything in the auction, the group said. AT&T and Verizon own 75 percent of the “uniquely valuable” low-band spectrum, they said. The incentive auction “provides what may be the FCC’s final opportunity to prevent the two dominant carriers from monopolizing the low-band spectrum needed to compete in a broadband data world,” the coalition said. “It is difficult to see how the non-dominant carriers can effectively compete in a 4G marketplace without sufficient access to low-band spectrum that enables in-building penetration and economic wide-area coverage.” The coalition also said the AWS-3 auction points to the need for the FCC to make more spectrum available for licensed and unlicensed use and to base auction rules on consumer benefits, not revenue for the government. The $41.3 billion that carriers and others will have to pay to get the AWS-3 spectrum on which they bid will harm consumers twice over, the coalition said. “Revenues from the AWS-3 auction ultimately get passed along as higher prices to wireless broadband consumers,” the group said. “It also sucks investment capital out of the highly productive telecom sector.” The Benton Foundation, the Center for Media Justice, Common Cause, Engine, the Institute for Local Self Reliance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Open Technology Institute at New America, Public Knowledge and Writers Guild of America, West signed the letter. A wireless industry official noted in response that T-Mobile was outbid in markets it was pursuing far more often by Dish Network than by AT&T and Verizon. Dish beat T-Mobile 132 times, AT&T 26 times and Verizon 16 times, the official said. "As we have seen in countless spectrum auctions in the U.S. and around the world, it is virtually impossible to predict auction outcomes or to try to engineer them," Mobile Future said in a written statement. "The commission must resist any efforts to expand restrictions on auction participation that would negatively impact continuing mobile innovation and the hundreds of millions of U.S. wireless consumers using exponentially more mobile bandwidth each year."