Howard Buskirk

NTIA will release in “coming weeks” the first notice of funding for the $1.5 billion federal fund to spur the growth of open radio access networks, said Amanda Toman, new lead of NTIA’s Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, Thursday at the Winnik Forum at Hogan Lovells. Under the Chips and Science Act, which created the fund, NTIA is required to make initial grants by Aug. 8, she noted.

Keeping American telecom networks secure and competitive with Chinese companies that receive substantial subsidiaries from the government is a top priority of the Biden administration, said Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser-cyber and emerging tech, at the Winnik Forum at Hogan Lovells Thursday. Neuberger said the administration is committed to promoting open radio access networks as a way of leveling the playing field with China.

The “jury’s still out” on whether the FCC’s 3.45 GHz auction was a success, said John Hunter, T-Mobile senior director-technology and engineering policy, during an FCBA wireless lunch Wednesday. Speakers welcomed the administration’s early steps on a national spectrum strategy (see 2303200044).

The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council unanimously approved reports by working groups on 911 services over Wi-Fi and the wireless emergency alert application programming interface. The Tuesday meeting was the first this year for CSRIC and the first with an in-person component in more than three years, though some participants were remote. The December meeting was supposed to be in person, but the FCC made it virtual because of an expected ice storm (see 2212150070).

Wireless industry commenters and public safety groups agreed on the need for some flexibility, in reply comments on an FCC proposal that carriers more precisely route wireless 911 calls and texts to public safety answering points through location-based routing (LBR). Disagreements remain on some implementation details (see 2302170044). Comments were posted Monday and Tuesday on an NPRM commissioners approved 4-0 in December (see 2212210047).

The last-minute fight over the C band, and the scramble for a compromise that allowed Verizon and AT&T to start turning on operations last year, while providing extra protection for radio altimeters around some airports (see 2201180065), shows the need to head off problems before they become a crisis, experts said Monday at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event.

NTIA faces questions about its request for comments released last week about a national spectrum strategy, which experts said appears to show work on the strategy at an earlier stage than expected. Several groups issued comments thanking the administration for moving forward, but former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the RFC was more like an FCC notice of inquiry than an NPRM (see 2303150066). O’Rielly said the document released offered less direction than expected, based on earlier comments by Scott Harris, tapped to lead work on the strategy.

An FCC robotexting order approved Thursday (see 2303160061) and posted Friday interjects a changed focus from “unwanted” text messages to “potentially harmful” and “unlawful” texts. Officials said Thursday the order included “minor” tweaks addressing changes sought by Commissioner Brendan Carr and industry. CTIA was able to get several changes it sought, based on a side-by-side comparison. Commissioners made few changes to a Stir/Shaken order, also released Friday.

The FCC clamped down, for the first time, on robotexts and closed what it called a loophole in Stir/Shaken rules. Both items were approved, as expected (see 2303130049 and 2303140062), by unanimous votes Thursday with minor tweaks. Neither item has been posted.

An order on the FCC’s equipment authorization program is mostly the same as the draft proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel (see 2302230059), based on a side-by-side comparison. None of the commissioners released statements. The order, approved earlier this week (see 2303130049), updates FCC rules to incorporate “four new and updated standards that are integral to equipment testing,” all from ANSI or the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The FCC added new text in the section on the implications for smaller companies. “The Commission cannot, at present, definitively quantify the cost of compliance and cannot determine whether small entities will have to hire attorneys, engineers, consultants, or other professionals when using the standards adopted in the Report and Order to comply with the Commission’s rules,” the order says. It notes some commenters, including Public Resource Org. and iFixit, “have requested free and unrestricted access” to relevant materials used in evaluations: “Such an approach, if implemented, would pose a burden to test laboratories, manufacturers and other businesses that could possibly qualify as small entities because the inability to continue to use the incorporation by reference process could jeopardize our ability to recognize state-of-the-art technical standards that have been adopted and are frequently updated through the consensus-driven standards development process.”