FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr stressed the need for more skilled tower workers in a speech Thursday at Aiken Technical College in South Carolina, during a three-day swing through the South. “A skilled workforce is essential to winning the race to 5G and building next-gen networks in communities across the country,” Carr said. “I’ve seen firsthand the work that tower crews are doing to deploy this infrastructure and the challenges they face in meeting the exploding demand for their services.” The tower industry estimates it needs 20,000 more skilled workers to complete the 5G build, he said. Carr said he's working with the National Wireless Safety Alliance to create programs similar to Aiken's elsewhere. Changes in wireless infrastructure rules have meant more buildout, Carr told us. “Now that sort of tees up a new challenge -- how do we have the skilled workforce to go ahead and get that deployment out there?” The program at Aiken should be seen as a model, Carr said. All of the graduates of the course, which takes up to 12 weeks to complete, have been able to immediately get a job when they graduate, he said. “These are good paying, solidly middle-class jobs,” he said. By doing it through a college, students can get grants and other student aide, including from the military, he said.

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee is relaunching, NTIA said Thursday. Despite the administration’s focus on 5G, CSMAC has been idle since last year, apparently caught up in administration politics (see 1903280060). “The committee will be working on issues related to the growing demand for spectrum to support 5G technologies as well as ensuring continued access to spectrum for critical federal government, defense and national security missions,” NTIA said: Jennifer Warren, vice president at Lockheed Martin, and Charla Rath, independent consultant and former Verizon executive, will co-chair. Members of CSMAC, new and renewed, got emails this week saying the group has been reauthorized for a new two-year term and asking for confirmation the recipient wants to continue to serve, CSMAC members said. CSMAC last met in July. Members were selected “based on their technical background and expertise, as well as a diversity and balance in points of view, consistent with the CSMAC,” NTIA said.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a critic of the C-Band Alliance (CBA) band-clearing plan (see 1904100018), said Wednesday secondary market sales need clearly defined property rights, which satellite operators in the band lack. It also said taxpayers wouldn't benefit from revenue from such sales. Separately, in a docket 18-122 posting, Colorado's Way Media said of the band-clearing plans, the CBA's "is the clear choice" because it ensures current C-band users will still have access and CBA members have committed to launching new satellites to maintain capacity in the band. It said fiber isn't accessible to some downlink and broadcast locations, and is more expensive than C-band satellite service.

The record shows the FCC should allow maps for USF support in Alaska using an accuracy standard of 50 meters, the Alaska Telecom Association (ATA) said. In March, FCC staff rejected as "overly broad" an ATA request to waive a requirement that carriers receiving Alaska Plan USF support submit fiber network maps accurate within 7.6 meters (see 1903040026). GCI sought review. “Alaska Plan participants have demonstrated in multiple filings the burden of the 7.6 meter standard,” ATA said. “Applying the 7.6 meter standard imposes tremendous additional burden on Alaska Plan companies, burden which will not increase the utility of the maps.” NCTA and America’s Communications Association also filed in support of GCI: “As GCI makes clear in its application, requiring such a granular level of location information about fiber facilities would be prohibitively expensive and there is no public interest benefit to requiring such a strict definition.” Comments were posted Wednesday in docket 16-271.

The FCC Office of Inspector General issued a general warning against Lifeline fraud Tuesday. OIG said a common scam is to manipulate someone’s name or identity to get extra payments. “OIG has seen thousands of examples of ‘female juniors’ among Lifeline enrollments,” the office said. “Another fraudulent practice involves adding an individual’s middle initials to either the first name or last name fields … to create fraudulent enrollments.” Address manipulation is also common, OIG said: “One vacant lot in Detroit was used by a carrier as the home address of nearly two hundred Lifeline subscribers.” Lifeline abuse won’t be tolerated, the warning said: This advisory is “to alert and educate Lifeline stakeholders and the public about some of the techniques used to perpetrate fraud we have learned about during our investigations. OIG ... will continue to use a full-range of tools to expose and combat fraud, waste, and abuse in USF programs.”

The FCC is rechartering its Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council for a new two-year term and seeking members. Nominations are due at the FCC May 8 and the expected first meeting is in June, the FCC said Tuesday. CSRIC's future was initially unclear after Chairman Ajit Pai took over in 2017 and the FCC withdrew a CSRIC report on recommendations for communications sector cybersecurity risk management (see 1702060059). CSRIC has focused on other issues over the past two years. The FCC said the council’s work may include the reliability of communications networks and infrastructure, emergency calling issues, emergency alerting and national security/emergency preparedness communications. “It is no longer enough to be first to 5G, the networks we deploy must also be secure,” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted in response: “That's why the @FCC needs to refocus the work” of the CSRIC “on 5G security and the time to do it is now.”

C-Band Alliance (CBA) outside counsel met with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to discuss the status and timing of the C-band clearing proceeding, according to a docket 18-122 ex parte posting Friday. CBA said it reiterated that its plan protects incumbent band users while also clearing spectrum quickly for 5G.

Dish Network has a history of trying "to take taxpayers for a ride," and "a thorough inquiry" is needed into its progress deploying its planned narrowband IoT network, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and Digital Liberty Executive Director Katie McAuliffe wrote Wireless Bureau Chief Donald Stockdale last week (see here). They said Dish is hoarding spectrum intended for 5G, missing construction deadlines and plans to only use a small percentage of that spectrum for IoT and machine-to-machine communication. Dish didn't comment Monday.

Experiences from the 2017 hurricane season pointed to changes needed in how the U.S. prepares, Zenji Nakazawa, public safety aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, told a U.S.-Caribbean Resilience Partnership meeting in Miami. “We learned that in addition to fostering community engagement, authorities at all levels should establish pre-staged areas for processing incoming supplies, refueling, backup power, mobile telecommunications vehicles, and relief crews,” Nakazawa said Friday, in remarks posted Monday. Improved coordination is also key, he said: “We learned that coordination between communications providers and electrical and other utilities is critical to ensure restoration efforts. Coordination ensures that both communications and power are brought back into service quickly and efficiently.” The FCC is also looking at what post-disaster restoration and recovery should look like, he said. “Is it a mere ‘rip and replace’ of prior equipment or is it an opportunity for renewed investment to modernize outdated facilities and harden networks?” Nakazawa asked.

The cable industry's shapefiles-centric broadband mapping plan lacks the route for creating more accurate broadband location data, Broadband Coalition members USTelecom, ITTA and the Wireless ISP Association said in a docket 11-10 posting Monday. Shapefiles themselves are data formats and only as good as the data in them, and variability and latitude and longitude coordinates that providers submit in shapefiles could result in unserved areas being misdrawn, they said. Provider shapefile submissions need to follow a common template with consistent geocoding of addresses and locations -- which is why the consortium advocates such a template, the Broadband Serviceable Locations Fabric (see 1903220036). NCTA emailed that its proposed Form 477 process revisions "could provide more accurate information about broadband availability without undue time and expense. While the proposal by the Broadband Mapping Consortium has the potential to generate useful information regarding unserved areas, at this point it is a proof-of-concept that raises significant questions for the Commission about cost, timing, effectiveness, and access to data. The Commission can and should adopt NCTA’s approach now and supplement it with data from Broadband Mapping Consortium if their experiment ultimately proves successful.”