Grant Bryan Broadcasting’s petition for the FCC to allow AM stations to voluntarily transition to all-digital HD radio, commented NAB, posted Friday in RM-11836. “We agree with the Petitioner that all-digital AM service will allow broadcasters to provide substantially improved sound quality that could help AM stations to retain and attract listeners in the increasingly competitive audio marketplace.” There's broad support for the proposal among broadcasters, NAB said. The FCC should provide an incentive for AM stations to make the jump since HD Radio receiver penetration hasn’t reached 50 percent in any market, said engineering consulting firm Communications Technologies Inc. “Promptly” issue an NPRM on allowing a transition “on a voluntary basis under an expedited, simplified elective process,” said the California and Missouri broadcasters associations. Transmitting using all-digital MA3 mode as the petition suggests would help AM “achieve aural and visual parity with other services found in vehicle entertainment systems,” said Hubbard Radio.
Ruckus Wireless received special temporary authority from the Office of Engineering and Technology to test citizens broadband radio service technology “prior to full FCC certification.” The tests will be in Sunnyvale, California, through Nov. 1. Sony, which hopes to be a spectrum access system operator in the band, also got OET permission to do tests of its systems in San Jose through Nov. 30.
The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on a request by Ocean Signal for waiver for a personal locator beacon (PLB) in spectrum used for maritime navigation. The beacon incorporates automatic identification system functionality in compliance with a recently published Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services standard, the bureau said Tuesday. “Ocean Signal believes that PLBs designed to the new … standard will provide users with enhanced safety, as the addition of AIS in PLBs will provide increased location accuracy and enhance the ability of rescuing resources to locate persons in distress,” the bureau said: “We ask commenters to address the potential effect on the integrity of AIS, which is primarily a maritime navigation system, of the addition of PLBs, which may be used on both land and water.” Comments are due May 30, replies June 14, in docket 19-124.
Chairman Henry Samueli and other Broadcom executives met Monday with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on the company’s “enthusiastic support” for the proposed framework for opening the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use. “An FCC decision to open the full 6 GHz band to unlicensed technologies is critical to accelerating deployment of 5G services in the U.S. and extending 5G’s reach beyond urban cores and into rural areas,” says a filing to come in docket 18-295. “Adjust the proposed framework in certain limited, but important, ways in order for the 6 GHz band to support all the benefits of Wi-Fi 6, and support 5G services in the near term. In particular, they emphasized the need for rules that allow low-power indoor operations throughout the band, and the importance of very-low-power portable operations.” The agency is examining Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use of the band (see 1903190050).
IEEE says radiation risk from cellphones may be beyond what industry claims because testing doesn’t involve holding the device next to the body. The paper recommends compliance testing be updated to include body-contact positions and accounting for special vulnerability of children and pregnant women. Industry tests RF absorption at distances of 5 to 25 mm from the body, said Om Gandhi, emeritus professor at the University of Utah, and author of the paper. Gandhi tested what happens when the device is held next to the body. “The U.S. is far behind much of the industrial world in failing to test and monitor phones in the real world. My analysis confirms that currently marketed cellphones could exceed US FCC limits by as high as 11 times the 2-decade old allowable U.S. limits,” Gandhi said. “People use and carry cellphones against their bodies. It is not sufficient for manufacturers to simply state that users should keep a distance from the phone.” CTIA said consumers need not be alarmed. "We follow the guidance of the experts when it comes to health effects," it said. "Following numerous scientific studies conducted over several decades, the FCC, the [Food and Drug Administration], the World Health Organization, the American Cancer Society and numerous other international and U.S. organizations and health experts continue to say that the scientific evidence shows no known health risk to humans due to the RF energy emitted by cellphones." The evidence shows that since the introduction of cellphones in the mid-1980s, "the rate of brain tumors in the United States has decreased," the group said.
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology OK'd special temporary authority for T-Mobile to test experimental equipment in the 2.5 GHz band. “T-Mobile wishes to conduct tests … to understand better the propagation characteristics and to gain a better understanding of new innovative services this band can offer,” the carrier said. The tests will be in the Seattle and Salt Lake City areas through Nov. 1.
The FCC should treat the inside of large commercial aircraft the same as other indoor locations in rules allowing unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, Boeing said in a meeting with Office of Engineering and Technology staff. The FCC recently sought comment on unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, potentially a key band for the future of Wi-Fi (see 1903180047). The fuselage of an aircraft offers radio signal attenuation levels equal to or better than building construction materials, and unlicensed transmitters within large aircraft “operate at very low power levels,” Boeing filed, posted Monday in docket 18-295. “Unlicensed devices inside large aircraft should not be subject to automated frequency coordination requirements or database management systems because the transmissions from such unlicensed devices will be nearly undetectable at distances exceeding the wingtip." The plane maker said rules should be the same for aircraft in flight and parked.
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology seeks comment on updating rules to reflect changes to ANSI C63.4a-2017 “American National Standard for Methods of Measurement of Radio-Noise Emissions from Low-Voltage Electrical and Electronic Equipment in the Range of 9 kHz to 40 GHz, Amendment 1: Test Site Validation” and ISO/IEC 17025:2017(E) “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.” The standards are used in the FCC program for authorizing RF devices, OET said Tuesday. “These organizations periodically update their standards to maintain best practices in response to advancements in technologies and measurement capabilities,” OET said: “When these changes are of a substantive nature, we use the rulemaking process to evaluate whether the changes should be effectuated in our rules.” Comment dates will come with Federal Register publication.
S&P Global Ratings upgraded Verizon’s ratings outlook to positive from stable based on debt reduction and improving metrics in its wireless business. The upgrade reflects Verizon’s “demonstrated commitment to debt reduction over the past several years, which was further accelerated by the implementation of U.S. tax reform in early 2018, and improvements in wireless service revenue and total revenue trends,” S&P said Monday. But risks remain, S&P said: “Potential debt-financed acquisitions, spectrum purchases, and higher levels of capital spending on network upgrades to support growth in data and video consumption could constrain near-term leverage improvement.”
Broadcom told the Office of Engineering and Technology that unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band presents little risk to fixed service receivers, the topic of an ongoing FCC inquiry (see 1903190050). Broadcom shared with the OET staff its research on “the characteristics of Fixed Service receivers and, specifically, these receivers’ available link margin, and the relationship between various Fixed Service use cases and available link margin,” said a filing in docket 18-295 posted Monday. “Any meaningful interference to 6 GHz licensees is extremely unlikely due to the complementary radiofrequency and operational characteristics of Fixed Service and unlicensed RLAN [radio local access network] operations.”