Petitions to deny SpaceX's proposed acquisition of EchoStar's AWS-3, AWS-4 and AWS-H Block spectrum licenses are due Dec. 15, with oppositions due Dec. 29 and replies Jan. 8, an FCC Wireless Bureau public notice said. The docket is 25-302. EchoStar struck a spectrum deal with SpaceX and a similar spectrum rights sale deal with AT&T to end a pair of FCC investigations into its use of the 2 GHz band and the deadline extensions it received for its 5G network buildout (see 2505130003).
Opensignal is deepening its focus on the consumer experience on wireless networks through the recently launched Global Network Excellence Index, said Sylwia Kechiche, the company’s senior director of industry analysis. “We want to explain that network excellence is not all about speed,” Kechiche said Friday during a Mobile World Live podcast. Opensignal uses a metric called “constant quality,” which measures subscriber experience doing “everyday tasks,” she said. “What we want to bring to the table” is an examination of whether “everyone can participate in the digital economy.” Opensignal wants to simulate “what will happen when you do certain things” online.
Dish Wireless objected at the FCC to a Universal Service Administrative Co. finding that some households it served under the affordable connectivity program and emergency broadband benefit program were ineligible and didn’t comply with USAC’s one-per-household rule.
Mobile carriers worldwide are spending up to $19 billion annually on “core cybersecurity activities,” and that is expected to increase to $42 billion by 2030, GSMA said in a report released Wednesday. Despite this investment, carriers face “poorly designed, misaligned or overly prescriptive regulation, which results in unnecessary costs, diverting resources from genuine risk mitigation, and in some cases increasing exposure to cyber threats,” GSMA added.
Major providers are using their fixed-wireless access offerings to expand the reach of their networks faster than they can build a wired connection, even in markets where they already have fiber, Mike Dano, lead industry analyst at Ookla, said during a Senza Fili podcast Wednesday. Dano cited as an example AT&T targeting neighborhoods where it doesn’t already have fiber, such as in Houston, one of the country’s fastest growing markets. Dano spoke with analyst Monica Paolini.
Brownsville, Texas, is seeking a waiver from the FCC 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 agency rules. In a filing posted Monday, the city emphasized that it’s located on the Mexican border and uses the network for border security. The higher power levels would mean the city needs about a third as many nodes to operate the network, it said. “The City’s planned outdoor applications -- spanning public safety, border security, and critical infrastructure operations -- require broader signal reach and fewer network nodes than the existing limits allow.”
T-Mobile asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to act on its petition for rehearing of a decision by the court upholding an $80 million data breach fine by the FCC (see 2508150014). T-Mobile was also fined $12.2 million for actions by Sprint, which it later acquired. The FCC has asked the court to hold off on a decision while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to hear appeals by Verizon and AT&T challenging similar fines (see 2511170035).
The FCC's order to overturn a January ruling and NPRM addressing the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks, approved 2-1 last week (see 2511200047), benefits WISPA members, the group said Tuesday in an emailed statement. “This is an important development that removes an unnecessary regulatory burden from all commercial broadband providers irrespective of the technology you use to serve your communities.”
NextNav said a new technical analysis demonstrates that 5G-based 3D positioning, navigation and timing operations can coexist with RAIN systems in the lower 900 MHz band, with “no operational impact … in typical real-world deployments.” For any measurable change to happen, “an implausibly strong 5G signal would need to align with multiple additional simultaneous conditions that rarely align in the real world,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 24-240.
AT&T told the DOJ that it needs to buy “unused 3.45 GHz and underutilized 600 MHz Spectrum” from EchoStar to compete in an increasingly competitive wireless market, according to documents filed at the FCC. AT&T's arguments to DOJ were submitted to the FCC at commission staff’s request and posted Tuesday in docket 25-303. The company recently said it has already started to deploy the 3.45 GHz licenses it bought from EchoStar (see 2511170023), adding coverage to nearly 23,000 cellsites in a matter of weeks.