Amy Levine, senior wireless adviser to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, is leaving the agency, Genachowski said late Wednesday. Levine is being replaced, on an acting basis, by Charles Mathias, currently in the Wireless Bureau front office. He previously advised former Commissioner Meredith Baker on wireless issues. Levine is leaving the Washington area, the agency said.
By delaying a decision on a numbering administrator, the FCC is putting the 21 public safety broadband waiver recipients in a tough position, Public Safety Spectrum Trust Operator Advisory Committee Chairman Bill Schrier told commission officials. The waiver recipients selected Science Applications International Corp. as the administrator and asked for FCC blessing in February, Schrier, also chief technology officer in Seattle, wrote the commission (http://xrl.us/bmx5nc). Schrier noted that deadlines are approaching. Under a January order from the Public Safety Bureau (http://xrl.us/bmx5my), the waiver recipients are supposed to “complete development” of the numbering scheme by March 31” and employ a “common entity to provide the clearinghouse functions” by May 31, he noted. Charlotte, N.C., which wants to launch an early system this summer, asked for a block of networking numbering identifiers last week, requesting they be delivered by March 12, Schrier said. “SAIC is able to deliver most of the numbering identifiers to Charlotte the week of March 12, but they would be doing so as an administrator unapproved by the [Public Safety Bureau], which places Charlotte at risk.” Schrier told us he’s not sure why the FCC has yet to act on approving SAIC as numbering administrator. “The practical effect is that if Charlotte or anyone else uses numbers based on an unapproved scheme or from an unapproved administrator, they risk having to re-do the numbers they use in their network,” he said. “I think the chance of this is relatively small.”
LightSquared seeks to “change the rules after the game is over,” the Coalition to Save Our GPS said in an FCC filing on the company’s request for declaratory ruling on the legal status of GPS devices. The coalition said NTIA’s opposition to LightSquared’s service makes the company’s request moot and should be dismissed or “at least held in abeyance” until the FCC decides if LightSquared has met the commission’s waiver conditions. As part of a conditional waiver of MSS rules, LightSquared was required to resolve interference issues with GPS. The FCC has proposed canceling the waiver. If taken up at all, the issues of the LightSquared request should be taken up within a rulemaking, not a declaratory ruling, the coalition said. The GPS Industry Council said LightSquared seeks to avoid its obligations by “redefining the requirement out of existence.”
The FCC Media Bureau denied Southern Adventist University’s request for reconsideration of an $8,000 forfeiture. SAU was ordered to pay for failure to retain all required documentation in WSMC(FM) Collegedale, Tenn.’s, public inspection file, the bureau said in an order (http://xrl.us/bmx6sa).
The District of Columbia Public Service Commission (DCPSC) and the District Department of the Environment (DDOE) sought clarification that in jurisdictions that have state universal service funds but no authority over wireless, wireless ETCs are the entities responsible for certifying the Lifeline eligibility of their customers, an ex parte filing (http://goo.gl/WJCbd) with the FCC said. In the District of Columbia, the PSC is expressly prohibited by law from exercising any jurisdiction over wireless carriers, the filing said. Meanwhile, DDOE indicated that the Department of Human Services’ Economic Security Administration (ESA) performs verification activities for other federal assistance programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Medical Assistance and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamps). DDOE noted its ability to access information from the ESA database is “very limited” while the DCPSC has no access to information in the ESA database.
Clearwire agreed to a five-year wholesale agreement with Leap Wireless to supply the prepaid carrier’s Cricket brand with LTE services, the companies said. The agreement will supplement Cricket’s LTE buildout strategy with additional 4G capacity, Leap CEO Doug Hutcheson said. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. The move is a step in the right direction as it offers “credence” to Clearwire’s operating strategy of being a “neutral” spectrum partner to many different carriers, while Leap might not “move the needle as much as an agreement with another national carrier would,” Wells Fargo analysts said. Clearwire’s spectrum has “tremendous” value, said Credit Suisse analysts, who have been expecting new wholesale deals following the demise of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal and the unavailability of LightSquared capacity. Meanwhile, Leap should be a “valuable” source of revenue for Clearwire over time, the analysts said. They expected additional agreements with some or all of MetroPCS, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and others in coming months.
The National Association of Manufacturers and member companies said the FCC should not limit the use of Class B signal boosters as the agency examines booster rules. The NAM companies met with staff from the Wireless and Public Safety bureaus. “Class B boosters are used in numerous settings by manufacturers and other industrial users,” NAM said in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bmx6di). “If such boosters were prohibited, industrial users would be deprived of the cost and functionality advantages which Class B boosters continue to offer.” The company representatives told the FCC that commercial boosters, “whether used in confined spaces or in remote areas, are professionally installed. This is a point in marked contrast to the consumer boosters also at issue in the proceeding.” The FCC sought comment last summer on proposed booster rules suggested by Wilson Electronics and Verizon Wireless (CD Aug 29 p3).
The FCC should examine “more broadly the requirement of interoperability throughout the 700 MHz band” rather than just focusing on the lower parts of the band, T-Mobile said in a filing at the agency. The filing comes with the FCC expected to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking next week on 700 MHz interoperability. Public Knowledge has also urged the FCC to expand its focus beyond the lower 700 MHz band (CD March 9 p7). “Requiring interoperability throughout the band will promote roaming among commercial wireless providers and enhance public safety use of the 700 MHz broadband spectrum,” T-Mobile said (http://xrl.us/bmx6bg). Carriers might otherwise have to choose among 700 MHz licensees for roaming partners, rather than potentially roaming with all licensees in the band, T-Mobile said: “If there is a single 700 MHz band class, then consumers will have more choices of systems on which to roam, supporting the Commission’s goals of promoting roaming among carriers, which will ultimately benefit wireless consumers."
Aggressive fiber deployment in the past two years will limit incremental growth during the next four years, said analysts during a TIA webinar Wednesday as they discussed the newly released TIA 2012 ICT Market Review and Forecast. Surging Internet and mobile traffic will require high levels of ongoing infrastructure investment, the TIA report said. Spending on wireless data will increase overall spending on wireless services even as subscriber growth slows, it said. In the U.S., overall network infrastructure spending rose 23.7 percent year-over-year in 2011, helped by stimulus money, the report said. The 23.9 percent year-over-year increase in wireless infrastructure spending reflected wireless network upgrades and spending on LTE equipment, it said. However, the U.S. wireless market is now saturated, meaning further subscriber growth will be limited. That in turn could limit growth in overall wireless service spending, the report said. In that constrained environment, spending is shifting from voice to data, it said. The report expects voice to be used ultimately as a “low-cost promotion” to attract data users. The report also expects the M2M market to be one of the fastest-growing components of the data service market. The U.S. M2M spending on data is expected to overtake data spending by feature phone users in 2014, it said. Meanwhile, operators around the world are increasing their investments in cloud and M2M services, said Current Analysis’s Ron Westfall during the webinar. The communications industry is becoming more diversified, creating more opportunities for vertical markets like healthcare and public safety, he said. Cloud computing would open up the market to increased use of applications by more enterprises, he said. The fastest growing cloud service markets include Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, said economist Arthur Gruen with Wilkofsky-Gruen Associates, also the author of the TIA report. Enterprises are trading up to business ethernet as cloud computing and high-bandwidth connectivity to data centers are increasingly in demand, he said.
Discovery’s Asia-Pacific unit said it will introduce Discovery Kids in that region. The network will be carried first in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, it said. The company distributes eight other networks in 34 countries in the region, it said.