The FCC Wireless Bureau gave Pine Cellular in a Tuesday order, a limited one-year waiver, to Jan. 9, 2023, to meet the tribal lands bidding credit construction requirement as it deploys service to the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The carrier says it's unable to meet a Jan. 9, 2022, deadline to serve 75% of the population covered by one of two 600 MHz licenses purchased using credits, the bureau said. Pine Cellular says it “needed additional time to deploy its network to serve Choctaw Nation communities because its existing network in that geographic area uses Huawei equipment for the performance of core functions,” the bureau said.

Dish Network is serious about building a 5G network, said Executive Vice President Network Development Dave Mayo at the Wireless Infrastructure conference Wednesday, streamed from Orlando. A T-Mobile veteran, Mayo said since he joined in June 2020, Dish has put in place the building blocks for a cloud-native, open radio access network. The company faces a June deadline to cover 20% of the U.S. population, 70% a year later.

House Commerce Committee Republicans are unlikely to make the $4 billion in broadband money included in committee Democrats’ portion of the Build Back Better Act budget reconciliation package a centerpiece of their opposition to the measure but are expected to file at least some amendments to it, Capitol Hill aides and lobbyists told us. The legislation includes $10 billion for next-generation 911 tech upgrades, $1 billion to fund a new FTC privacy bureau and authorizes an FCC auction of at least 200 MHz of spectrum on the 3.1-3.45 GHz band, as expected (see 2109090067). House Commerce said it will begin marking up the measure at 11 a.m. EDT Monday in 2123 Rayburn.

Dish Network's Dish Wireless is seeking FCC special temporary authority for 90 days to use two 600 MHz band licenses owned by Bluewater Wireless to test and validate equipment for its open radio access network-compliant 5G network. Dish plans to use the licenses to test carrier aggregation (CA) functionality paired with Dish-licensed 600 MHz spectrum, said a filing posted Thursday. Dish is “unable to adequately test CA using only its own licensed spectrum due to insufficient bandwidth in the two test markets and because the contemplated CA tests require non-contiguous 600 MHz spectrum blocks,” the carrier said.

The House Commerce Committee seeks $4 billion more for the FCC Emergency Connectivity Fund as part of its portion of the Build Back Better Act budget reconciliation package, the panel said in a summary we obtained Thursday. Commerce intended to have released the full bill text Thursday night, lobbyists told us. The House Science and Education committees were in the process early Thursday evening of marking up their parts of the reconciliation measure, which touch on other tech and telecom matters.

Verizon and AT&T, counting on early C-band deployments to narrow T-Mobile’s lead on mid-band spectrum, warned of potential delays in the clearing process that could complicate plans to build out in the C band starting later this year. Both companies have been at the FCC to urge an expedited process for the Relocation Payment Clearinghouse (RPC) to make payments to licensees to clear the band on an expedited basis.

Qualcomm representatives spoke with aides to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks about the company’s push for sharing the 37 GHz band (see 2104280038), said a Wednesday filing in docket 14-177. “The simple rule" Qualcomm proposes "would allow multiple licensees, each using any air interface, to share on a licensed basis the entire 600 MHz wide Lower 37 GHz band in the same location, on the same frequencies, and at the same time, by taking advantage of the highly directional nature of millimeter wave communications.”

T-Mobile’s “Extended Range 5G,” which uses 600 MHz, covers 305 million U.S. people, President-Technology Neville Ray blogged Tuesday. “Ultra Capacity 5G” covers 165 million, Ray said. “We are moving at pace and with confidence towards our 200 million people covered and NATIONWIDE Ultra Capacity for the end of this year.” T-Mobile’s average 2.5 GHz deployment is 60-80 MHz, expected to grow to 100 MHz this year, he said.

Qualcomm officials spoke with aides to FCC acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on the company’s proposal for licensed sharing of the entire 600 MHz-wide lower 37 GHz band. “Our proposal offers a state-of-the-art regulatory paradigm optimized for this novel shared licensed millimeter wave band,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-177.

Qualcomm representatives told FCC Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology staff that the entire 600 MHz-wide lower 37 GHz band can safely be shared by licensed users. Under Qualcomm’s proposal, priority users would be licensed to use a 100 or 200 MHz channel “in a given area on which they have primary rights, and each priority licensee would have secondary rights to the other channels,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-177. Simulations “demonstrate that fully overlapping licenses in both frequency and location can perform very well in an extremely high density node deployment scenario,” Qualcomm said: “This unsurprising result is due to the highly directional nature of millimeter wave communications.”