Howard Buskirk

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.”

T-Mobile announced plans to buy Ka’ena, best known for Mint Mobile, a low-cost prepaid wireless brand partly owned by actor Ryan Reynolds, for $1.35 billion in cash and stock. T-Mobile also gets Ultra Mobile, which offers international calling options and wholesaler Plum. Clearance by the FCC and DOJ likely won’t be a problem, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors. Mint runs on T-Mobile’s network. “T-Mobile is acquiring the brands' sales, marketing, digital, and service operations, and plans to use its supplier relationships and distribution scale to help the brands to grow and offer competitive pricing and greater device inventory to more U.S. consumers seeking value offerings,” the carrier said Wednesday: “The Un-carrier will also be able to leverage Mint’s industry-leading digital [direct-to-customer] marketing expertise as part of its broader portfolio to reach new customer segments and geographies.” Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim are expected to manage the brands, “which will generally operate as a separate business unit,” T-Mobile said. Reynolds “will continue on in his creative role on behalf of Mint.” Reynolds and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert appeared together in an announcement on Twitter. “T-Mobile has assured me that our incredibly improvised and borderline reckless messaging strategy will also remain untouched,” Reynolds says in the posting. “I don’t remember the word reckless, Ryan,” Sievert deadpans. Reynolds assured the CEO he had added the word to the contract in crayon.

NTIA is moving forward on its long-awaited national spectrum strategy, releasing a request for comments Wednesday that poses more than 60 questions on what that strategy should include. NTIA also scheduled two “listening sessions.” Comment deadlines are to come in a Federal Register notice, to be filed in NTIA-2023-0003.

An order and Further NPRM on improving how Stir/Shaken works as a tool against unwanted and illegal robocalls is expected to be approved by FCC commissioners Thursday, potentially with a few tweaks addressing the handful of concerns raised by industry, industry officials said.

FCC commissioners are expected to approve a robotexting order and Further NPRM, scheduled for a vote Thursday, though with a few tweaks addressing issues raised by CTIA and others, FCC and industry officials said. Commissioners OK'd a second wireless item, incorporating into agency rules four new and updated standards for equipment testing. That item, which was deleted from the agenda for the meeting, hasn’t been controversial.

NTIA Senior Spectrum Adviser Scott Harris assured the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee Friday that work on the long-anticipated national spectrum strategy is starting (see 2301090035). Meanwhile, CSMAC unanimously approved a report by its Ultra-Wideband Subcommittee, which recommends better collaboration between NTIA and the FCC on UWB waivers.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology faces a growing workload and increasingly complex issues to work through, acting Chief Ron Repasi said during an FCBA webinar Friday. “I would say, overall, we manage,” Repasi said, laughing. “It’s becoming difficult because we’ve got a lot of competing demands” and not just on spectrum, he said. The number of OET staff has remained constant for the past decade, Repasi said, with about 25 at the FCC lab in Columbia, Maryland, and the remaining 50 at FCC headquarters. They’re not all engineers and OET also has lawyers and telecom specialists on staff, he said. OET strives to be “fact-based in its work,” Repasi said. “I won’t say that we’re not involved in policymaking; we certainly are,” though maybe not as visibly as other parts of the FCC, he said. “We’re really good at spotting issues, but we have to be even better at coming up with solutions,” he said. “When we get new proposals the first thing we look at is what is the potential for harmful interference,” Repasi said. Spectrum is “already very congested” and OET has to consider “what’s already authorized,” he said. Transparency is critical in any application for a new use of spectrum, he said: “We have to be in a position, from a technical and engineering perspective, to be able to know what the model or the simulation is that’s being used to show what the potential is for harmful interference. We have to know what the input parameters are.” OET is having ongoing discussions with NTIA officials “to minimize the number of surprises” and collaboration is improving, Repasi said. He noted coordination has long been seen as important for government spectrum and the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee is the longest-standing federal advisory committee, predating the FCC. IRAC is “still a valid and relevant advisory committee that we participate in,” he said. The challenge is there’s not any clear spectrum so “everything has to be shared,” said Michael Ha, chief of the OET Policy and Rules Division. “Every time we deploy a new sharing system we learn something new,” said Martin Doczkat, chief of the Electromagnetic and Compatibility Division. “We’re learning and applying lessons as new models are introduced,” he said.

All groups and companies that filed urged the FCC to act on service rules allowing use of the 5030-5091 MHz band by drones. The FCC sought comment in a long-awaited January NPRM (see 2301040046), and comments were due Thursday in docket 22-232. Pilots, public safety agencies, NAB, the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radio Frequencies (CORF) and others raised concerns on how the FCC proceeds.

Tower companies are looking to diversify their revenue streams as 5G unfolds, experts said during a Network Media Group webinar Thursday. The rollout of 5G presents “both challenges and opportunities for tower companies, including the need for infrastructure upgrades, competition in a highly regulated industry and potential for diversifying revenue streams,” said Will Townsend, Moor Insights principal analyst-networking.

The biggest takeaway from the Mobile World Congress for Neville Ray, T-Mobile president-technology, is that fixed wireless access has “arrived,” he said Tuesday during a Morgan Stanley investors conference. In the past 18 months, T-Mobile has added 2.6 million 5G FWA customers. “Many folks are looking at us, and to a slightly lesser extent Verizon” on “how we've driven 5G network capability into new business,” Ray said. Operators globally are “trying to figure out what's that fixed wireless access formula,” he said. T-Mobile is exploring ways to use its millimeter-wave spectrum as part of its home broadband offering, but that will require the development of customer premise equipment and antennas installed outside the home, Ray said. “There's more complexity in the solution -- there's a truck roll and so on,” he said: “But we're getting very confident now we can make those economics work.” Ray noted T-Mobile added 10,000 cellsites to its network from Sprint, but overall has decommissioned 30,000 since the Sprint deal three years ago. T-Mobile doesn’t decommission a cellsite without a lot of thought, he said. “We were looking forward multiple years into what we think we need” and “we believe we have that footprint,” he said. Ray is leaving the carrier in the fall (see 2302130068), to be replaced by Chief Network Officer Ulf Ewaldsson. “We built this network site by site … MHz by MHz, generation at a time, 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G,” he said. The years since the Sprint buy have been “the most rewarding period in my career” and T-Mobile is no longer the “scrappy underdog,” Ray said.