The FCC will launch a proceeding by the end of the year looking at a recent agreement between NAB and white spaces device manufacturers on revised rules for the white spaces data base, the FCC said in a footnote of its Part 15 order released Tuesday. The various items approved by the FCC last week and released Tuesday shed new light on the FCC majority's thinking as it worked through a number of key decisions on the TV incentive auction, now expected to start March 29. Throughout, the FCC explains it faced a tough balancing act as it drew up rules for the auction.

The first consumer devices containing a chipset allowing Wi-Fi in the TV white spaces are likely to be broadly available in the 2017-2018 time frame, H. Nwana, executive director of the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA), said in an interview. Nwana left as head of spectrum for U.K. regulator Ofcom in early 2014. Nwana also said he doesn't expect the U.S. to drive the growth.

Wireless mics will be able to use new bands and share spectrum in the TV band, said a Wednesday FCC order issued with the support of four members and a partial dissent by Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. The order, which was deleted from Thursday's meeting agenda, allows all licensed users in the TV band to use the reserved 4 MHz in the duplex gap and allows wireless mics to operate in TV bands even within the contours of TV stations as long as the TV signals are at a low enough threshold, an FCC release said. The order also allows wireless mics to operate in portions of the 900 MHz band, the 6875-7125 MHz band and the 1435-1525 MHz band at specified times and places, coordinated with aeronautical mobile telemetry, the release said.

The FCC approved updated Part 15 rules, which provide additional protections for hospitals that use wireless telemetry in channel 37. In an usual development, the rules include a proposal by Commissioner Ajit Pai that allows hospitals to apply for a waiver giving them expanded protection zones upon the filing of a waiver request. The agency approved the order on a 5-0 vote Thursday.

Broadcasters and public interest groups lost their fight to keep all TV stations out of the duplex gap between uplink and downlink frequencies bought by carriers in the upcoming broadcast incentive auction. That was as expected (see 1507300042), though it left both broadcasters and the public interest groups upset. The FCC approved 3-2 the “procedures” for the auction, after a contentious debate. Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly said the rules could set the auction up for failure.

The Society of Broadcast Engineers objected to a June NPRM proposing to preserve one vacant TV channel in the UHF TV band in each area of the U.S. for shared use by white space devices and wireless mics, in a filing posted Tuesday in FCC docket 15-146. The proposal “signals the latest in a continuing, short-term series of unreasoned reversals and technically unsound retreats of the Commission with respect to reaccommodation of licensed, Part 74 [wireless mics] which were displaced from the 700 MHz band and those which now stand to be displaced from the 600 MHz band by the incentive auction,” SBE said. “Worse, this proceeding, sub silencio, abandons the Commission’s longstanding spectrum allocations policies relative to the priorities of unlicensed Part 15 devices versus licensed stations operating in allocated frequency bands.” Wireless mics “play an important role in enabling broadcasters and other video programming networks and entities to serve consumers, including delivery of breaking news, emergency information and broadcast live sports events,” SBE said. But in a series of orders modifying the UHF band plan, the FCC has “serially, in a very short period of time” reduced the amount of spectrum available for their use, the group said. The National Translator Association also objected. NTA said that those who rely on translator services to watch TV are “disproportionately lower income, elderly and frequently are minority individuals and families.” Translator TV service “has been available at low or no cost to these persons for a period approaching fifty years and, despite several previous takings of its channel space by the Federal Government, has largely survived to continue to provide service to its constituency,” NTA said. But the FCC’s proposal puts these services in jeopardy, the group said. “NTA opposes the FCC reservation of any TV channel for use by any unlicensed device which places priority of the unlicensed device's access to that channel over that of any existing licensee, including [low-power] LPTV and TV translator stations, to that channel.”

Sprint still has made no decision whether it will participate in next year’s TV incentive auction, CEO Marcelo Claure said on a call Tuesday as the carrier released its 1Q results. Numbers released by Sprint confirm that the carrier has fallen behind T-Mobile and is now the nation’s fourth-largest wireless carrier, behind Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Planet Labs is seeking FCC approval to launch as many as 600 satellites over the next decade for its nongeostationary Earth imagery satellite system. The satellites -- 200 of which would be operating at any given time, given the low altitudes at which they would operate and thus the short lifetime of each satellite -- would include the 11 Flock 1c satellites for which the company already has authorization and which launched in June 2014, plus another 56 the FCC authorized last year to be deployed from the International Space Station, Planet Labs said in an International Bureau filing submitted Sunday. The launches could begin in January, Planet Labs said, with the constellation orbiting at 350 kilometers to 720 km, with most at 475 km, it said. Each of the satellites is expected to have an operational lifespan of roughly two years, providing daily imaging of the entire planet, Planet Labs said. The company said signal interference with other systems is unlikely, even as Planet Labs' constellation grows, because earth exploration satellite service systems operating in the 8,025-8,400 MHz band -- like Planet Labs' -- "normally transmit only in short periods of time" and satellites from different systems do not typically travel through the narrow antenna beams of receiving Earth stations and transmit simultaneously.

The FCC will likely release an NPRM later this year as it continues its examination of how new developments in technology could increase the viability of operations in bands above 24 GHz, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a blog post Monday. The FCC approved a notice of inquiry on the topic in October (see 1410170048). “The NPRM will focus on developing a flexible regulatory framework that will allow maximum use of higher-frequency bands by a wide variety of providers, whether the service they provide is mobile, fixed, or satellite,” Wheeler wrote. “I anticipate that we will explore a range of regulatory strategies depending on the specifics of each proposed higher-frequency band, including licensed, unlicensed, and hybrid shared models.” Wheeler also predicted that lower-frequency bands will play a role in 5G. “For example, the timing of the incentive auction makes the 600 MHz band a prime candidate for deployment of a wide-area 5G coverage layer,” he said. “In much the same way that 700 MHz paved the way for America's world-leading deployment of 4G, so could 600 MHz accelerate U.S. deployment of 5G.” Wheeler also said the FCC will look at bilateral sharing of spectrum. The Department of Defense in particular has advocated rules under which government agencies also could share underutilized commercial bands (see 1503190041). "In addition, we will encourage and support other agencies' efforts to fund research on 5G and will encourage building cybersecurity protections for new 5G networks from the start," he said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has given little ground on the “duplex gap” between uplink and downlink frequencies bought by carriers in the upcoming TV incentive auction, after pulling the item from the agenda for the FCC’s July 16 meeting, rescheduling a vote for Aug. 6 (see 1507150058). But industry and agency officials said it's not clear that Wheeler has the three votes he needs to win on the gap. All of the expected incentive auction items were on the sunshine agenda released by the FCC Thursday.