The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved a Charter Communications application for modification of a two-year experimental license, giving it more sites for millimeter wave coverage testing in anticipation of 5G wireless development. In the authorization given Monday, 74 separate test sites were approved across Florida.
Public Knowledge said the FCC should finalize rules for sharing the 37-37.6 GHz band approved last year as part of the spectrum frontiers order, saying it could OK Starry's proposal with some tweaks. “Spectrum sharing is critical to maximizing the usefulness of available spectrum,” said a filing in docket 14-177. “Diverse spectrum access schemes are important for promoting new and innovative technologies and uses. The Commission’s sharing framework for the Lower 37 GHz band will advance the public interest goals of promoting innovation, market entry, competition, intensive spectrum reuse, and accommodate a myriad of users and uses.”
Ligado keeps trying to brush away legitimate interference concerns, such as its proposed terrestrial wireless network posing bigger interference concerns in the band adjacent to Iridium's 1617.775-1626.5 MHz spectrum than current and future satellite operations in the same spectrum do, Iridium said in an FCC docket 11-109 filing posted Thursday. Iridium said Ligado continually tried to chip away at the 2003 ancillary terrestrial component order rules about gating and technical requirements, so Ligado's plan now is far beyond what was envisioned in the ATC rules. It said Ligado is engaged in "pure spectrum arbitrage," because it let its satellite business wither. Iridium also denied Ligado assertions that it inflated the interference risk via worst-case scenarios, saying it used LTE parameters used multiple times in past interference assessments. Ligado in a statement said it has "confidence that the Commission can distinguish between fact and fiction and between the license modification and 1675-1680 MHz auction proceedings." Iridium repeatedly brought up concerns about interference from Ligado's broadband network (see 1706290043 and 1612140061).
Mid-band spectrum is critical to 5G as is a pending FCC notice of inquiry, Peter Pitsch, executive director-federal relations, blogged Wednesday. Mid-band spectrum is both well suited to 5G and available in the sizable quantities needed, Pitsch wrote. Commissioners are to vote Thursday on the NOI and Intel is part of a group of companies that released a proposal for mid-band spectrum (see 1707240061). “Over the past year, the FCC freed additional spectrum in both low and high bands to support a myriad of new connected devices and applications that soon will be enabled by 5G," Pitsch wrote. "However, more needs to done to make spectrum in the mid-bands available for flexible licensed and unlicensed broadband use.”
The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition said it's “declaring a truce” in the debate over a proposal to reserve vacant channels in the TV bands for unlicensed use (see 1707110015). The declaration came in an email newsletter Tuesday. Though NAB and Microsoft have been actively pressing the FCC on the matter, a broadcast industry official told us the two sides remain far apart, and the coalition announcement doesn’t indicate any of the other parties active in the vacant channel proceeding have reached an agreement with the coalition. The group is working on a plan under which licensees would be offered “economic opportunities to utilize their spectrum rights to participate in the solving of national problems,” the email said. LPTV spectrum could be used for rural broadband, and to assist in the rollout of ATSC 3.0, the email said. Microsoft didn’t comment. NAB "remains strongly opposed to the Microsoft proposal," a spokesman said in response to the coalition announcement. "Microsoft’s proposal could damage TV reception for tens of millions of people living in both rural and urban America.”
Mobile Future asked the FCC to move as quickly as it can to follow up a spectrum frontiers order approved by commissioners a year ago (see 1607140052). The FCC should auction the high-frequency spectrum identified in the order, reallocate other bands identified in a Further NPRM, and “approve pending secondary market transactions as quickly as possible,” the group said in a filing Monday in docket 14-177. “The Commission must also leave intact the elegant and practical compromise framework adopted in the Spectrum Frontiers Order that balances terrestrial and satellite user interests to facilitate 5G services while providing flexibility for satellite users to operate in the band,” Mobile Future said. “As the Commission moves forward with efforts to free up additional millimeter wave spectrum, it should not simultaneously take a step backward by altering the careful compromise adopted in the Spectrum Frontiers Order.”
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers raised objections to proposed language in a draft notice of inquiry on mid-band spectrum, circulated by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai July 13 (see 1707130059). The NOI “seeks comment on how the Commission could mitigate the risk of interference from unlicensed devices to licensed services that operate in the 5.925-6.425 GHz band,” the alliance said, but it doesn't explicitly ask about interference to “vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-everything” systems in the adjacent 5.9 GHz band. The alliance asked the FCC to include specific questions on the risk to intelligent transportation service (ITS) systems: “Unlicensed devices would also need to avoid causing out-of-band interference to ITS services operating in the 5.850-5.925 GHz band. If the Commission allowed unlicensed use in the 5.925-6.425 GHz band, what out-of-band emission limits would be needed to protect licensed ITS services?” Commissioners are to vote at their Aug. 3 meeting. Wednesday's filing is in docket 17-183.
Verizon is trying to get the balance right on buying spectrum versus densifying its network, Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis told analysts Thursday as it turned around subscriber losses. “We continue to look at the trade-off,” Ellis said: The carrier wants to find “the most efficient way to add the capacity that we need.” Based on the cost of spectrum in some markets, it’s cheaper there to densify the network through small cells and other build outs, he said. “Cost of densification, just like any technology, has come down,” Ellis said. The company continues to add spectrum through buys in the secondary market when it's “priced at the right level,” he said. Verizon lost 398,000 retail postpaid wireless subscribers in the first six weeks of 2017 before it launched an unlimited offering (see 1704200044). Q2, Verizon reported 590,000 postpaid smartphone net adds, with retail postpaid churn of 0.94 percent and postpaid phone churn of 0.7 percent. Ellis said it's very “confident” in low- and mid-band spectrum holdings, remaining interested in the shared 3.5 GHz band. "Verizon reignited its growth engine in the quarter," CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement. MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said results overall impressed, beating analyst estimates. "The meme that perhaps best captures the current investor Zeitgeist about the U.S. telecoms is that 'AT&T is playing chess while Verizon is playing checkers,'" Moffett wrote, the thinking being that "at least AT&T, with its string of vertical media moves and diversification, HAS a strategy. Verizon is, to mix metaphors, lost in the woods." But Verizon is showing it also may have a strategy, he said.
A state small-cells bill enacted Friday in North Carolina “will lay the foundation for 5G,” said CTIA Senior Vice President-State Affairs Jamie Hastings in a Monday statement. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) signed the bill that pre-empts local authority over wireless infrastructure siting, a measure on which the municipal league was neutral (see 1707210039).
Nine rural and agricultural groups wrote FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in opposition to proposals to reserve vacant channels in the TV band for unlicensed use, said a letter by American Agri-Women, the National Farmers Union, National Association of Wheat Growers and others. “This proposal will only serve to deprive our members of critical access to local broadcast television coverage,” said the groups. The vacant channel proposal would make it tough for low-power TV stations and translators to find new homes, which disproportionately will affect rural areas, the letter said. “Losing television translators and LPTVs would have a devastating impact on our members, as these services are often our only means of receiving free, over the air local broadcast television service.” The groups previously filed against the vacant channel proposals in 2013 and 2015, NAB noted in an email to reporters flagging the letter. NAB has opposed the vacant channel proposal (see 1707050048).