Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., referenced the Spectrum Innovation Act (HR-7624) during a Tuesday hearing as the bill he wanted the Commerce Committee to “go further” than, as panel members work on their own spectrum legislative package (see 2208020076).

CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux used his state of the industry remarks at the ChannelCon 2022 conference in Chicago Wednesday to unveil Project Agora, a CompTIA initiative to support “anyone interested in starting, staying and succeeding in a career in technology,” said the association. "Our challenge is to convert more career intent people to tech intent," said Thibodeaux, a former CTA executive. "We need to tell better stories, more consistently, about how truly great it is to work in tech. The way we get the talent we need is by fighting for it." A CompTIA job-seeker trends survey found one in four U.S. workers was actively seeking a new job or pursuing other career options during Q2 2022, said the association. “While tech is among the top five industries job seekers were considering, it ranked behind several other sectors, including sales, real estate, healthcare, hospitality and finance,” it said. “A lack of confidence in technical skills, concerns about the cost and the time it will take to learn those skills and perceptions about the tech industry culture are factors that contribute to reluctance to consider tech as a career option.”

The FCC should recognize the increasing competition of the video marketplace and that the market for local programming goes beyond local broadcasters, said NAB and the affiliate groups of all four major networks in comments for the FCC’s biennial state of competition report (docket 22-203). “The FCC’s focus here and in pending rulemaking proceedings should be on measures increasing the broadcast industry’s competitiveness in today’s marketplace,” said NAB. “It is long past time for Commission action to classify vMVPDs as MVPDs for purposes of the retransmission consent rules,” the affiliate groups also said. “The newer distribution channels are still developing,” said MPA. “Regulation would hinder this experimentation, chill growth, increase costs, and reduce choices.” The musicFIRST Coalition and Future of Music Coalition jointly said the agency should reject NAB’s proposal to “eviscerate current numerical limits on the number of FM stations that one entity can own in a given market.” The groups also disagree with NAB over congressional legislation on performer licensing fees. “The upcoming report should not repeat the music industry’s predictable and unsuccessful talking points from a legislative debate over copyright policy,” NAB said. The agency should reject requests to treat fixed and mobile broadband services as separate complementary services and to define broadband at the 1 Gbps level, said NCTA. USTelecom said the FCC should “ease legacy regulatory hindrances” to broadband deployment. The agency should resume reporting on the practice of phone locking, said Public Knowledge, Consumer Reports and the Open Technology Institute. “Phone locking harms competition, frustrates users, and creates e-waste,” the groups said. SES Americom and O3B Limited jointly said the agency should “refrain from adopting requirements for its funding programs that specify a latency threshold of 100 ms.” Rural Media Group said the agency should launch a proceeding on “the dearth of access to rural news and agricultural programming.”

CTA sided with Microsoft in its dispute with NAB over how often narrowband devices should have to check a database to operate in the TV white spaces (TVWS). The Open Technology Institute at New America and Public Knowledge also backed Microsoft arguments. In January, commissioners approved 4-0 an order requiring other white space devices (WSDs) to check the database at least once hourly. After NAB and Microsoft clashed as the order was before commissioners, the FCC decided to further explore the rules for narrowband IoT devices in a Further NPRM (see 2201270034). Replies were due Monday in docket 14-165. “With demand for IoT applications and services expected to skyrocket in the coming years, using white spaces more efficiently and effectively in rural areas to address opportunities in sectors such as agriculture can help to achieve this goal,” CTA said: “CTA therefore supports the Commission maintaining its current rule for narrowband WSDs which will facilitate the deployment of narrowband IoT devices in rural areas, while providing existing licensees the same level of protection from harmful interference.” NAB’s objections “stem not from any genuine technical concern but solely from the desire to ‘get Big Tech’ and undermine the use of unlicensed spectrum,” OTI and PK said. Against a dearth of evidence of harmful interference “the Commission must balance the public interest benefits of allowing narrowband WSDs to lower costs and improve productivity in less densely-populated areas for farming, ranching, remote sensing, environmental monitoring and a variety of other innovative uses,” the groups said. NAB filed a one-paragraph comment, noting only 211 devices currently use the white spaces nationwide. “The risk that narrowband WSDs will cause harmful interference to licensed wireless microphones is very low,” Microsoft said, responding to concerns raised in the initial comment round (see 2207050059). “The Commission’s conservative narrowband WSD technical rules combined with the paucity of spectrum in urban and suburban areas, will effectively limit commercial narrowband WSD use cases to those that can be successful in exurban and rural areas such as precision agriculture and remote sensing,” the company said.

The FCC’s 2.5 GHz auction started slower than other recent 5G auctions and had little upward movement Monday, after three rounds. The auction hit $115.3 million Monday, after opening Friday at $103.5 million (see 2207290045). “Demand at the start of this auction is very tepid, with excess demand as a percentage of aggregate demand starting at roughly 37%, which puts this auction at the low end of prior auction starts,” blogged Sasha Javid, BitPath chief operating officer, about the start of the auction. “Perhaps this slow start is not surprising,” he said. “This 2.5 GHz auction is far from a typical spectrum auction.” The FCC is selling overlay licenses, which means many winners will have to negotiate with educational broadband service incumbents “if they want to use their entire license,” Javid said: “By my estimate over 80% of the MHz-POPs in these overlay licenses are encumbered (including both incumbents and all pending tribal licenses). This could explain why both Los Angeles and Cook County (Chicago), the two most populated counties in the country have demand below supply at the county level.” Another factor, some 27.5% of the U.S. doesn’t have any licenses available for sale, he said. “This is because the FCC decided against selling overlay licenses in any county where every category of license was fully-encumbered when measured by area,” he said. T-Mobile holds long-term leases with most incumbents EBS licensees and “has an information asymmetry advantage over other auction participants. … Because these leases are confidential, other bidders will not know how long they may be precluded from accessing or re-leasing parts of their licenses currently encumbered by these T-Mobile leases.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin predicted in a weekend note to investors the auction will likely hit $3.4 billion, less if Congresses approves a 15% book alternative minimum tax on spectrum licenses (see 2204050083). He predicted the auction will likely end in September. “We have a long way to go,” Chaplin said: “The spectrum is useless to Verizon, AT&T and Dish [Network]; their only interest in the auction is pushing up the cost for T-Mobile. Smaller carriers and [wireless ISPs] may actually have a use for some of the licenses, but these companies won’t have the resources to outbid T-Mobile for any licenses that T-Mobile views as important." But Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer noted widespread interest in bidding. “It's a credit to the FCC's ability in shepherding this proceeding along and I'm glad to see that we are going to unleash 2.5 GHz,” Thayer emailed: “This auction is particularly going to be helpful for T-Mobile to be an even stronger alternative to the ‘big two,’ which is great for consumers.” Thayer sees Verizon and AT&T as potentially more interested in 12 GHz, a band being looked at for 5G. Two more rounds are on tap Tuesday.

Global semiconductor revenue growth is expected to slow to 7.4% in 2022, down from 2021's actual growth of 26.3%, and lower than the 13.6% growth in 2022 that Gartner had projected in previous forecasts, reported the research company Wednesday. Though the chip shortages are abating, the global semiconductor market “is entering a period of weakness, which will persist through 2023 when semiconductor revenue is projected to decline 2.5%,” said Gartner Vice President Richard Gordon. “We are already seeing weakness in semiconductor end markets, especially those exposed to consumer spending. Rising inflation, taxes and interest rates, together with higher energy and fuel costs, are putting pressure on consumer disposable income. This is affecting spending on electronic products such as PCs and smartphones.” Gartner reduced its 2022 semiconductor revenue forecast by $36.7 billion from its previous outlook, to $639.2 billion, as economic conditions are expected to worsen through the year. “Memory demand and pricing have softened, especially in consumer-related areas like PCs and smartphones,” said Gartner.

There's now an accessibility feature in the Congressional Record daily edition where articles will be read aloud to users who click on the "listen to this page" feature on articles, the Library of Congress said Monday. The feature was previously available only in the Daily Digest.

Noting the 90,000-plus comments in docket 20-443 supporting SpaceX's opposition to opening the 12 GHz band to terrestrial service (see 2207060012), President Gwynne Shotwell urged closing the 12 GHz proceeding, in meetings with FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, said an ex parte post Monday. The record has multiple studies "from all sides that unanimously show that high-power terrestrial services in this shared band would effectively wipe out existing satellite services," it said. "The Commission should listen to this outcry from across the country and reject the misleading efforts by speculators to line their pockets at the expense of the American people."

The FCC’s World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee will meet Sept. 12, starting at 11 a.m. EDT, the International Bureau said Friday. “Due to exceptional circumstances, the sixth WAC meeting will be convened as a virtual meeting with remote participation only,” an announcement said. The advisory committee provides industry input as the U.S. shapes its positions for the next WRC meeting.

Amazon will buy One Medical, a provider of telehealth and physical in-office healthcare services, for $3.9 billion in an all-cash transaction, said the companies Thursday. “We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention,” said Amazon Health Services Senior Vice President Neil Lindsay. By combining with One Medical, “we believe we can and will help more people get better care,” he said. The One Medical buy should be “additive” to Amazon’s move into telehealth, Cowen’s John Blackledge wrote investors Thursday. One Medical’s telehealth sessions exceed its in-person visits by a 5-1 ratio, providing Amazon with more “scale in telehealth,” he said.