The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) announced Wednesday that AT&T has joined the pro-open radio access network group’s board. Rob Soni, vice president-RAN technology, will represent the carrier on the board. “AT&T has been a trailblazer of open and disaggregated technologies” and AT&T joining the board “reflects the global profile of our community,“ said TIP Chair Yago Tenorio, director-network architecture at Vodafone Group. The appointment “supports AT&T’s effort to deploy 70% of our wireless network traffic across open-capable platforms by late 2026 and aligns perfectly with our commitment to efficiency and innovation,” Soni said.

T-Mobile is beefing up its network as hurricane season starts this week and with wildfire season already underway, the carrier said Wednesday. T-Mobile is “turning on new 2.5 GHz spectrum to boost critical coverage and capacity for nearly 60 million customers throughout the country, including hurricane-prone areas such as Louisiana.” The carrier continues to harden its network and is adding to its fleet of satellite cell-on-light-trucks and satellite cell-on-wheels “as well as heavy-duty trucks to provide Wi-Fi and device charging,” the company said.

Top executives from Rakuten Group and Rakuten Symphony met with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and staff on the “latest developments” on the company’s open radio access network initiatives, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 21-63. They were joined by officials from the U.S. Embassy in Japan. The executives discussed “key challenges for the deployment and adoption” of ORAN and how Rakuten “making its source code available to other companies” could promote open networks.

T-Mobile’s proposed $4.4 billion buy of UScellular would be credit positive “because it will expand T-Mobile's scale and provide it with potentially material synergies” and won’t “materially affect T-Mobile's credit metrics,” S&P Global Ratings said Wednesday. The agreement was announced Tuesday (see 2405280047). “T-Mobile estimates the deal will yield about $1 billion of annual run-rate cost and capital expenditure savings, which we view as achievable based on previous transactions,” S&P said. The firm warned that the expected $2.2 billion-$2.6 billion in integration expenses should be “modestly dilutive to the company's cash flow over the near term.”

DOD has relaunched the Partnering to Advance Trusted and Holistic Spectrum Solutions process to explore dynamic spectrum sharing (see 2405200050), but NTIA needs public engagement as part of the related studies (see 2403120056) of the bands being examined as part of the national spectrum strategy, Shiva Goel, NTIA senior adviser-spectrum policy, blogged Wednesday. For the band studies co-led by DOD and NTIA, “the responsibility to establish a multistakeholder forum for non-Federal engagement falls on NTIA,” Goel said: “We know just how instrumental that engagement was to the identification of bands to be studied in the Strategy. We know how much the execution, too, will benefit from those contributions.” Goel said involving diverse stakeholders in the studies is important “to ensuring that the public has confidence in the work that results.”

Ligado urged the FCC to reallocate the 1675-1680 MHz band for shared commercial use, licensed on a nationwide basis, “but limited to uplink-only operations,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 19-116. Representatives spoke with staff from the Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology. The proposal “would allow the spectrum to be put to good use supporting 5G IoT services and be consistent with the key conclusion of the in-depth spectrum sharing study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that it is feasible to open the band to sharing with commercial uplink-only operations,” Ligado said. The FCC sought comment on the band in 2019 (see 2006010057). Ligado said it envisions the band “being used to provide free-standing 5G IoT services to critical infrastructure industries such as electric utilities” and that it could be paired with the adjacent 1670-1675 MHz band.

Supplemental coverage from space activities could make radio astronomy impossible from 600 MHz to 2700 MHz and beyond, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory said Tuesday in FCC docket 22-271. NRAO said strong beam coupling or high passband occupation by SCS will destroy or permanently impair a radio astronomy receiver, though this could be mitigated. It said large swaths of spectrum where terrestrial interference has been coordinated away or otherwise obviated will be blocked by bands allocated to SCS. SCS emissions would block even protected bands, NRAO said, noting SCS undermines the protections the National Radio Quiet Zone and other remote locations enjoy today. Accordingly, it said the FCC should make SCS applicants show they can operate without directly illuminating, incapacitating or damaging radio astronomy observatory receivers. NRAO also urged cumulative limits on SCS interference.

The FCC’s Technological Advisory Council will meet June 21 at 10 a.m. at FCC headquarters, a notice in Tuesday’s Federal Register said. “TAC will continue to consider and advise the Commission on topics such as continued efforts at looking beyond 5G advanced as 6G begins to develop so as to facilitate U.S. leadership; studying advanced spectrum sharing techniques, including the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the utilization and administration of spectrum; and other emerging technologies,” the notice said. TAC held the first meeting under its current charter in March (see 2403190060).

Comments are due June 28, replies July 29, on the FCC's proposal requiring georouting of 988 calls by wireless carriers, said a notice for Wednesday's Federal Register. Commissioners voted 5-0 at their April open meeting to adopt an NPRM proposing the georouting requirement (see 2404250054). The NPRM seeks comment on georouting options and their viability, whether existing FCC rules would need amending, and the hurdles for georouting texts to 988. Comments are due in docket 18-336.

The International Association of Fire Chiefs told the FCC it remains “steadfast" in its support for letting the FirstNet Authority manage the 4.9 GHz band. The authority “has experience in maintaining a national public safety broadband network; mandated priority and ruthless preemption for public safety users; and has both federal and Congressional oversight to ensure proper stewardship of a vital taxpayer-owned resource,” a filing posted Tuesday in docket 07-100 said.