The satellite industry is continuing its push for rule changes for the FCC spectrum frontiers NPRM. In an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-177, the Satellite Industry Association recapped a meeting it and numerous members had with Commissioner Ajit Pai about industry concerns on the idea of spectrum sharing in and among the 28, 37 and 39 GHz bands, including that earth stations should have co-primary status in the 28 and 39 GHz bands, as SIA has previously advocated (see 1601290010). At the meeting with Pai were SIA President Tom Stroup and executives from Boeing, EchoStar, Intelsat, Iridium, Kymeta, Lockheed Martin, O3b, OneWeb, SES, SpaceX and ViaSat.
Petitions for reconsideration are due Feb. 29 on an Oct. 22 order clarifying when operations are deemed to commence for companies that buy spectrum in the TV incentive auction, the FCC Wireless Bureau said Friday in a public notice. CTIA and NAB approved of the FCC's approach last year, calling it balanced (see 1510230045). The agency decided a provider “commences operations” when it conducts site commissioning tests.
AT&T is seeking a three-year experimental license to test 5G in Austin, it said in an FCC filing. The tests, mobile and fixed, would be done in the 3400-3600 MHz, 3700-4200 MHz, 14500-15350 MHz and 27500-28500 MHz bands. “Applicant’s testing and the expected experimental equipment would support potential fifth generation (5G) multi-gigabyte per second (Gbps) applications for fixed and mobile wireless communication networks at higher transmission rates and lower latency than is currently available,” AT&T said. Verizon said in January it plans to be the first U.S. carrier to do field tests of 5G. The first phase of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project standard for 5G won’t be ready until the second half of 2018, with the second phase due in December 2019 (see 1602030043).
Based on the latest Open Signal report, T-Mobile caught up with AT&T on coverage and is catching Verizon, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said on Periscope Tuesday. Legere also revealed the long version of T-Mobile’s Super Bowl ad featuring Canadian rapper Drake. Legere said T-Mobile's network is getting better every day. In Q4, OpenSignal measured T-Mobile’s time coverage at 81 percent, “which means that T-Mo 4G customers saw an LTE signal 81.2 percent of the time no matter where and when they connected,” OpenSignal said Tuesday in a blog post. “The most obvious explanation is T-Mobile’s recent network buildout in the 700 MHz airwaves. Those low frequency airwaves can travel much further afield in suburban and rural areas, and in dense urban cores they can more easily punch through walls to provide stronger indoor signals.” OpenSignal measured AT&T’s coverage at 82.6 percent and Verizon’s at 86.7 percent. Legere also said that T-Mobile would broadcast a "surprise" second commercial as well during Sunday's Super Bowl. A Verizon spokesman questioned the OpenSignal results, which are based on crowdsourcing. “Surveys that use crowd-sourced data sound cool, but they can be misleading -- when you can’t reliably connect to a network, there’s no way to measure its performance or speed,” the spokesman emailed. “OpenSignal’s own methodology page on their website states that the results include ‘an inherent bias’ due to the crowd-sourced nature of the survey. Most respected, impartial third-parties that use actual testing equipment rate the Verizon Wireless network as fastest and most reliable -- in fact, in four national studies in a row, Verizon has won RootMetrics awards for best overall performance, reliability and speed.” An AT&T spokesman said the OpenSignal results don't "align with our own analysis or with other third party speed test data. We’re proud of the mobile experience we’re delivering so that our customers have fast, reliable service.”
WifiForward's Save our Wi-Fi campaign has concerns about the FCC’s announcement Friday that it will allow testing of LTE-unlicensed by Qualcomm and Verizon (see 1601290064), the group said in a statement by Executive Director Bill Maguire. "Given the significant concerns raised by many stakeholders regarding harm LTE-U will cause to broadband connections over Wi-Fi, we hope the FCC will closely monitor the Qualcomm and Verizon trial,” Maguire said. “We are encouraged that the FCC still expects that Qualcomm and other LTE-U supporters [will] work closely with the Wi-Fi community on coexistence testing in the future."
The FCC should maintain its long-standing policy of light-handed regulation, based on a “permissionless innovation framework,” Mobile Future said in a paper released Monday. The paper looks at regulation going back to 1939. “While the Commission has modified its unlicensed rules over the years, certain fundamental FCC principles have remained constant,” the paper argues. “Chief among these principles has been a minimally intrusive regulatory approach, with unlicensed devices authorized to freely operate in accord with basic technical requirements designed to mitigate interference, limit radiofrequency exposure, and maximize the utilization of the unlicensed bands.”
The FCC is allowing tests of LTE-unlicensed, to be conducted by Qualcomm, on a “very small scale” at two Verizon sites, Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, said Friday in a blog post. OET approved special temporary authority (STA) for the tests in Oklahoma City and Raleigh, North Carolina, Knapp said. “Various parties have expressed concern that LTE-U may not share spectrum fairly with Wi-Fi and other devices operating in unlicensed spectrum,” he wrote. “The Office of Engineering & Technology and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau have encouraged the industry to address and resolve these concerns and considerable progress has been made.” Grants of STA and experimental licenses “don't have any significance relative to whether the Commission may ultimately authorize a device or service,” Knapp wrote. “Significant steps remain” before LTE-U could see widespread commercial deployment, he said. “We believe that this development is an encouraging step in continuing that success.” The news got a bipartisan thumbs up from the leaders of the House Commerce Committee and Telecom Subcommittee. “This is what we have been working toward all along, and it’s the right call for consumers and innovation,” the leaders said in a news release. “An environment that fosters the development of next generation technologies is what makes America the greatest place in the world to do business, create jobs, and develop state-of-the-art communications tools for consumers.” CTIA Chief Technology Officer Tom Sawanobori said, “Fostering innovation in unlicensed bands is key to meeting consumer demand and maintaining our position as global leader in mobile broadband.”
The FCC should move forward to open the 28, 37 and 39 GHz bands for licensed use, CTIA said in comments on the FCC’s spectrum frontier proceeding. CTIA said spectrum above 24 GHz should be primarily licensed, but it supports a mixture of licensed and unlicensed offerings. CTIA also said companies need certainty and the agency should avoid tough “use it or share it” rules. Proposed performance rules “are not viable and are ill-suited for the millimeter wave bands,” CTIA said. Since “the primary promise of millimeter wave band spectrum is the potential for very high speed data throughput,” the FCC should allow “extensive, contiguous spectrum blocks,” CTIA said. CTIA said it "believes that this proceeding will play an important role in both enabling 5G services and addressing future spectrum challenges. As wireless services grow more advanced and lower-frequency spectrum grows increasingly scarce, it will be necessary for the Commission to explore the use of higher-frequency bands for mobile services.” The filing, in docket 14-177, hadn't been posted by the FCC by our deadline. CTA urged the FCC to move quickly to expand unlicensed operations throughout the entire 57-71 GHz band. The FCC should also create a new Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service in the 28 GHz, 39 GHz and 37 GHz bands, CTA said. The high-frequency bands “hold promise for meeting demand in heavily congested areas and can be one tool (of many) to alleviate the spectrum crunch,” CTA said in comments, also in docket 14-177. “Beyond providing supplemental capacity for wide-area mobile networks, these bands may also be useful for innovative and emerging applications, including backhaul, other point-to-point applications, unlicensed wireless cable replacement, satellite and aerial broadband, and other services.”
AT&T is still taking a wait-and-see approach on the TV incentive auction, CEO Randall Stephenson said during a call with analysts Wednesday, after the carrier released Q4 results (see 1601260066). “We'll see what the auction brings and then how everybody participates, but I haven't been bashful in saying if there's an opportunity to get another 2 x 10” MHz of low-band spectrum “we would pursue it.” Unknowns remain, Stephenson said. “It's not yet to us really clear what the spectrum footprints are going to look like and whether you can piece together truly a ubiquitous 2 x 10 type footprint, which is really important to us to be bringing another band of spectrum into our operation.” Stephenson noted AT&T spent $18 billion last year in the AWS-3 auction and the 40 MHz of “fallow spectrum” in which it can deploy its TV Everywhere offering. Stephenson also stressed AT&T’s focus on connected cars. Some 10 million automobiles being manufactured by Ford will come equipped with AT&T connectivity between now and 2020, he said. AT&T is also looking at the massive used car market, he said. “I have a sports car, an old sports car, that I now have connected to the Internet and it's actually a fairly elegant solution,” Stephenson said.
The FCC extended the filing window for short-form applications to bid in the forward TV incentive auction by a single day. The window was supposed to open Tuesday, but that didn’t happen with the federal government shuttered due to the weekend snow storm. Instead, government agencies opened at noon Wednesday, said a public notice. Potential bidders also got an extra day to file -- Form 175 applications are now due at 6 p.m. Feb. 10, the agency said.