Bid commitments reached $182.1 million in the 28 GHz band auction Monday, with provisionally winning bids on 2,447 of 3,072 licenses, said the FCC dashboard. Bids were at $145.1 million Nov. 20, before the auction closed for Thanksgiving. Bidding is to resume Tuesday with four more rounds.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he asked staff to expand "engagement with Tribal stakeholders so that their views and insights more fully inform our efforts to identify and develop measures to address, unserved Tribal areas." He noted a recent GAO report urging improved FCC data collection on tribal broadband and input from tribal members (see 1809100041), writing to Reps. Frank Pallone, D-N.J, and Greg Walden, R-Ore., Commerce Committee ranking member and chairman, respectively, and other lawmakers, posted Wednesday in docket 18-5. Meanwhile, Pai responded to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who voiced concerns about law enforcement use of cell-site stimulators (StingRays) to identify nearby devices and intercept calls. The FCC's role in such law enforcement use is "limited," wrote Pai: "We do not have the authority or expertise to determine which technologies are most appropriate for law enforcement use." Pai told Wyden: "You note a report from Canada and unsupported allegations that cell-site simulators cause significant interference to emergency services. Career Commission staff was unable to find actual test results by law enforcement authorities in Canada or any other credible evidence that authorized cell-site simulators used by federal law enforcement in the United States are failing to comply with the domestic requirement to cause a 'minimum of interference.'" Separately responding to Wyden cybersecurity concerns about Signaling System 7 vulnerabilities, Pai invited the senator or staff to visit the FCC to view a Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council risk assessment report "in camera," and to contact the Secret Service and FBI for data on breaches in customer proprietary network information, including SS7-specific breaches.

The previous FCC “turned a blind eye to the modern media marketplace,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a letter to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, posted Wednesday responding to her inquiry on media diversity. Pai said his FCC has tackled the issue by promoting “a more diverse and competitive media marketplace” by creating the broadcast incubator program and other initiatives. The previous FCC’s stance “reflected a 1970s media market and did nothing to promote diversity or competition,” Pai said. “The broadcasting industry deserves to have rules that make sense for the digital age and that allow them to thrive and better provide service to consumers.”

The FCC Wireless Bureau approved a request to extend until Dec. 11 the deadline for reply comments on the C-band NPRM that had been sought by a variety of groups (see 1811200055), according to a docket 18-122 order Wednesday.

Participants for a Nov. 30 FCC artificial intelligence and machine learning event (see 1811070039) include academics and tech executives. Arizona State University professor Subbarao Kambhampati will give the keynote. Chairman Ajit Pai will moderate two panels. Kambhampati, Microsoft Director-Technology Policy Carolyn Nguyen and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab Director David Cox are on the first. Participants for the second are CTA Senior Manager-Government Affairs Michael Hayes, Qualcomm Senior Director-Engineering Yongbin Wei, Nokia Lab Leader Chris White, Frame.io Data Head Matthew Ruttley and Georgetown University Medical Center Chief Data Scientist Subha Madhavan.

The date of a Phoenix Center telecom event is Dec. 4.

The FCC’s August infrastructure order “correctly and lawfully concluded that state and local moratoria on the deployment of telecommunications facilities violate Section 253(a) of the Communications Act,” the Wireless Infrastructure Association said, posted Tuesday in docket 17-84. Those seeking reconsideration failed to provide grounds, WIA said. The FCC has broad authority to interpret Section 253 and did so correctly, it said. The ruling isn’t a taking violation of the Constitution because it didn’t require localities to grant wireless siting applications or diminish property value, WIA said. A local group seeking recon, the Smart Communities and Special Districts Coalition, says wireless carriers didn’t respond substantively to its petition (see 1811190044). Energy companies responded to telecom industry opposition to a Coalition for Concerned Utilities petition to reconsider pole-attachment rate and process changes in the order (see 1811130048). “Pole attachments issues are complex, with many interested parties, issues and moving parts,” CCU replied. “To achieve our common goals, one set of attachers should not benefit at the expense of another," CCU said, and "newly-imposed regulations must be reconciled with conflicting regulations and the Pole Attachment Act, efficiencies should be added to speed deployment, and unnecessary roadblocks to future broadband deployment should be eliminated.” The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association agreed with utilities it’s dangerous to allow a self-help remedy or overlashing without sufficient oversight. Utility pole owners should be able to recover costs including for overlashing reviews and preparing make-ready estimates, NRECA said. Don’t “adopt a presumption in favor of providing ILECs with regulated rates for newly renewed joint use agreements and the Commission should not cap the rate at the pre-2011 Telecom rate in the event that a utility rebuts the presumption,” replied the Edison Electric Institute and Utilities Technology Council.

C-Band Alliance, Intelsat, SES and Auctionomics dismissed concerns about a "windfall" from freeing up part of the C-band for 5G as misplaced, meeting chiefs of the FCC International and Wireless bureaus and Office of Engineering and Technology, and with Media Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning, recounted a docket 17-183 posting Tuesday. In the related docket 18-122, others petitioned for more time for replies on the NPRM on opening the C-band to terrestrial use. The C-band interests said with mid-band spectrum so vital to 5G, the alliance met with small and rural mobile operators and their associations about their needs. Intelsat and SES said they determined they could cut the proposed guard band from 50 MHz to 20 MHz through newly designed and optimized band-pass filters, validated by over-the-air tests with live satellite signals in the presence of adjacent 5G transmissions. The C-band interests said the sooner there's visibility on an order, the sooner a commitment of "very significant funding" to satellite manufacturers for additional satellites that will need to be built and launched for that transition. The C-band interests said SES and Intelsat -- with either one or the other out of the room -- discussed methods and tools to be used to repack customers, and plans to add more satellites and ensure satellite reception through filters and mitigation techniques. In the request for extension for replies, the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, Public Interest Spectrum Coalition and Wireless ISP Association said two more weeks, to Dec. 11, would help promote a more complete record. They said the 30 days for replies "was already very tight," given the Thanksgiving holiday, and issues raised are particularly complex. The alliance, in a coming reply, said delay "will slow the U.S. in the race to 5G" and the NPRM came out nearly four months ago: That's plenty of time to "evaluate the issues and anticipate opposing arguments." It said the petition coming days before the Nov. 27 reply deadline instead of closer to the Oct. 29 comment deadline "screams of gamesmanship and strains credulity."

State and local challengers to FCC net neutrality pre-emption said responses of the commission and its defenders "erroneously dismiss the record evidence of potential harm to the public -- from consumer protection to public safety to government services -- as sufficiently addressed by market forces." The "post hoc argument that market forces may protect public safety was not presented in the Order and cannot cure the Commission’s failure to fulfill its statutory duty to consider public safety," replied (in Pacer) officials of California's Santa Clara County and the state Public Utilities Commission, New York State's attorney general and others to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday in Mozilla v. FCC, No. 18-1051. They disputed arguments the order's "sweeping preemption provisions" were authorized by FCC broadband jurisdiction, saying the commission "must instead identify affirmative statutory authority for preemption, which it has failed to do." The FCC "may not rely on conflict preemption as a source of regulatory authority, and its views on the matter are premature and invalid," they said. Intervenor Digital Justice Foundation replied (in Pacer) that it's not procedurally barred from challenging the order's "arbitrary-and-capricious transparency rule," saying the FCC didn't respond to the substance of its arguments. Others replied earlier (see 1811160051).

Bid commitments reached $103.8 million Monday in the 28 GHz auction (see 1811140063), with provisionally winning bids on 2,220 of 3,072 licenses, said the FCC's dashboard. Four rounds are scheduled for the first time Tuesday, with bidding to then take a break for Thanksgiving and resume on Monday, Nov. 26.