Tom Sawanobori, CTIA's senior vice president and chief technology officer, will retire in February after more than a decade at the association, the association announced Thursday. “Sawanobori played a key role in enabling the wireless industry’s deployment of 5G networks, including spectrum and siting initiatives,” CTIA said. He previously spent more than two decades at Verizon, where he was involved with the initial rollout of 2G networks through the 4G LTE era across Verizon's footprint, the group said.
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce representative urged the FCC to move quickly to streamline siting in a meeting with aides to FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty, according to a filing posted Wednesday in docket 25-133. Chamber members “have expressed concerns with obtaining federal decisions in a variety of contexts in the communications sector including siting” and “spectrum licensing decisions for space activities,” the filing said.
The FCC on Wednesday rejected a request by Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless, Easy Wireless and i-wireless asking the agency to grant the companies' applications for review on upward revisions for reimbursement of services provided in the last month of the Lifeline COVID-19 waiver period (see 2504030027). In June, Chairman Brendan Carr circulated an order denying the carriers’ requests (see 2506270060). The order was approved 3-0 by commissioners.
The FCC Wireless Bureau on Wednesday approved AT&T’s proposed purchase of 700 MHz and 3.45 GHz licenses from the former UScellular for $1 billion. The approval came after AT&T agreed to end any trace of diversity, equity and inclusion in its hiring and other practices and made concessions to NATE (see 2512020061). The FCC has also quickly moved on proposed transactions from Verizon and T-Mobile after they offered similar concessions. In each case, approval has been through staff orders rather than commissioner action.
AST SpaceMobile's supplemental coverage from space (SCS) partnership with Verizon and AT&T will use the 800 MHz cellular frequencies of those wireless carriers only within the carriers' cellular geographic service areas and adjacent unserved areas, according to Verizon. In a docket 25-201 filing posted Monday, Verizon said the SCS service wouldn't use another carrier's licensed spectrum, as the Competitive Carriers Association has argued (see 2511190020). AST's satellite system will protect in-band and adjacent licensees from harmful interference, and AST operations will be secondary to any nearby wireless operations, Verizon added.
NCTA opposed a waiver request from Brownsville, Texas, asking to operate a city network that uses the citizens broadband radio service band at +60 dBm effective isotropic radiated power, which is higher than the +47 dBm allowed by FCC rules (see 2511250015). The group is concerned that approving the waiver “would increase the risk of interference with other CBRS operations, undermining the carefully calibrated framework that is vital to the band’s success,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-258.
New Era Broadband, a wireless ISP in Ohio, opposed any move to relocate the citizens broadband radio service band or raise power levels (see 2511260031). Moving the band would “basically put us out of business,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 17-258. “Drastically changing the CBRS rules could cost our business, which would directly impact 7 jobs, nearly 800 internet users, multiple first responders, firehouses, township operations.”
A new study by researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found a link between cellphone ownership and higher rates of obesity and insufficient sleep among children. Owning a phone at age 12 “was associated with increased risks of depression, obesity, and insufficient sleep, with younger age of acquisition linked to additional risks of obesity and insufficient sleep.” The study was done in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University in New York.
REC Networks asked the FCC not to eliminate rules covering the use of unlicensed consumer-grade cordless phones in the 43.71-44.49, 46.60-46.98, 48.75-49.51 and 49.66-50.00 MHz bands as part of the agency’s “Delete” proceeding. The commission “provides absolutely no data that there are positively zero of these old phones, including the ‘46/49’ cordless phones marketed primarily in the 1980s and early 1990s in circulation,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 25-133. Some handsets for those phones “may use batteries that are still available to this day, including standard batteries that are not exclusively used by cordless telephone handsets.”
The U.S. will meet its spectrum goals only if DOD is forced to come to the table to give up spectrum, former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said Monday in an opinion piece. “For historical reasons, [DOD] is sitting on some of the most desirable spectrum bands in the entire nation … based on decisions made half a century or more ago.” As policymakers push for the reallocation of federal spectrum, the DOD holds an estimated 80% of the government spectrum portfolio, O’Rielly wrote. “It’s as if the Interior Department was previously awarded almost all of Manhattan two centuries ago, then said no commercial development.”