T-Mobile and Grain submitted to the FCC various documents on their pending low-band spectrum transaction. Filed Monday in docket 25-178, the documents were fully redacted. Grain Management agreed to buy T-Mobile's 800 MHz spectrum in exchange for cash and Grain's 600 MHz spectrum portfolio (see 2503210033). Grain plans to work with utilities and others to deploy services using the 800 MHz spectrum.
New Jersey State Police supports a petition from the Safer Buildings Coalition urging the FCC to launch a rulemaking on guidelines for getting consent from licensees to install signal boosters (see 2507210025), said a filing Tuesday in RM-12009. Implementing the proposal “to involve proven frequency coordination precedents would help to standardize and streamline the approval process, leading to a single, known, published standard for all authorities having jurisdiction, licensees, signal booster system designers and installers,” it said. The police division was the first to weigh in on the petition.
The courts have spoken, upholding the FCC’s stance that cellphone location data is customer proprietary network information regulated by the agency, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said Tuesday. “It feels like a rare treat these days to be able to share positive updates related to our privacy and cybersecurity work,” EPIC said. “The journey to get to this point has been quite a saga, spanning well over five years.”
Nationwide commercial mobile radio service providers must enable georouting of texts sent to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by April 16, 2027, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Tuesday (docket 18-336). The compliance deadline for non-nationwide providers is Oct. 16, 2028. FCC commissioners adopted a 988 text georouting requirement during the agency's July meeting (see 2507240055).
Amateur operator Yael Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center, warned against NextNav’s proposal to offer a terrestrial complement to GPS using 900 MHz spectrum (see 2507280039). “A growing community of hobbyists and enthusiasts have benefited from an open band of spectrum … to communicate with each other, test various devices, and ensure a free and open ‘net’ for our own amateur radio communications,” said a filing Monday in docket 24-240.
Srini Gopalan, former CEO of Deutsche Telekom’s Germany business, will replace Mike Sievert as CEO of T-Mobile starting Nov. 1, the company announced Monday. Sievert will move to the new role of vice chairman. The move had been rumored for several months (see 2506100058), with Gopalan, who has served as COO since March 1, as the expected replacement.
The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe slammed the FCC’s approach to seeking tribal input on how the agency enforces National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act rules, according to a letter posted Monday in docket 25-217. Comments in the proceeding, due last week, showed tribes and states leading the opposition to proposals included in an August NPRM (see 2509190053), part of a broader Trump administration move to limit enforcement of environmental laws.
T-Mobile asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday to rehear en banc the August decision by a three-judge panel upholding the FCC’s data fines against it and Sprint, which it subsequently purchased (see 2508150044). The 2nd Circuit recently upheld a similar fine against Verizon, while the 5th Circuit rejected one against AT&T (see 2509100056).
SpaceX expects that the spectrum it's buying from EchoStar, along with the technology in the satellites it plans to deploy, will allow the company to provide LTE-like service. The 50 MHz of spectrum that SpaceX will get from EchoStar "will deliver unparalleled performance" to off-the-shelf mobile phones and IoT devices, SpaceX said Friday in an application seeking approval of the transfer. The $17 billion cash-and-stock deal, announced earlier this month, came shortly after EchoStar also agreed to sell its 3.45 GHz and 600 MHz licenses to AT&T (see 2509080052).
The 5G download and upload speeds of EchoStar's Boost Mobile network are slightly slower than those of its wireless rivals, Ookla said last week. Citing its Speedtest and RootMetrics data, Ookla said Boost "relies heavily" on AT&T's wireless network, often connecting to it in U.S. metro areas and using it the majority of the time along rural state routes. Boost also hasn't yet launched its network in some major California cities, it noted.