The BWI Business Partnership urged the FCC not to grant the FirstNet Authority effective control of the 4.9 GHz band. “The FCC’s current 4.9 GHz regulations allow effective communication by public-safety agencies and their partners in Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and throughout Maryland,” the partnership said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 07-100.

T-Mobile asked the FCC for permission to use information from the E.U.’s Galileo system “in conjunction” with U.S. GPS to provide 911 location information. The company satisfied FCC conditions for commercial mobile radio service providers “to receive authorization to use information derived from Galileo signals to improve its 911 location services,” according to a filing posted Thursday in docket 07-114. “More importantly, grant of the requested authorization would serve the public interest by increasing the availability, accuracy, and reliability of T-Mobile’s 911 location services, which will better help emergency responders quickly find and assist 911 callers, potentially saving callers’ lives,” T-Mobile said. The commission has recognized that “supplementing GPS with Galileo … signals can increase the availability, accuracy, and reliability of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing services,” the carrier added.

T-Mobile US and Lycamobile USA told the FCC they settled a lawsuit in a state court in King County, Washington. T-Mobile sued Lycamobile, saying it accidentally undercharged the company for more than a year for access to its network. The lawsuit was referenced in objections Lycamobile made to T-Mobile’s buy of Mint Mobile, a low-cost prepaid wireless brand, and other assets from Ka’ena (see 2405200031). The filing was posted on Thursday in docket 23-171.

Many of the suggested ways of dealing with harms related to social media and smartphones are questionable under the First Amendment, and a scholarly effort is needed to find solutions, Steven Collis blogged Thursday. The founding faculty director of the University of Texas at Austin's Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center said a better understanding of related problems is needed, such as the dopamine rush that comes with reading and commenting on smartphone posts.

Some of the world’s largest carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in the U.S., working with Ericsson, unveiled a venture Thursday that will “combine and sell” network application programming interfaces (APIs) “on a global scale.” Today’s networks “have advanced and intelligent capabilities, which have historically been inaccessible to developers,” said an Ericsson news release: “It has been impractical for developers to integrate the different capabilities of hundreds of individual telecom operators. The newly formed company will combine network APIs globally.” The venture is targeting hyperscalers, communications platform as a service providers, system integrators and independent software vendors, the release said.

The FCC opened a new docket, 24-286, on T-Mobile’s proposed buy of “substantially all” of UScellular’s wireless operations, including some of its spectrum (see 2405280047). “Applications seeking Commission consent to the transaction are expected to be filed in the coming days,” the FCC said Wednesday. The agency said under its “permit-but-disclose” proceeding rules, anyone making an ex parte presentation “must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies).” The companies unveiled the deal in May, valued at about $4.4 billion, including $2 billion in assumed debt.

Competing air-to-ground networks in the in-flight connectivity space face a far bigger business threat from low earth orbit satellite operators than from one another, Valour Consultancy blogged Tuesday. SpaceX has entered the commercial aviation sector and is making headway in business aviation, while OneWeb is signing hardware deals with a variety of commercial partners, Valour said. "The consequence for ATG has been staggering," with close to 1,000 commercial aircraft moving from ATG to satcom in coming years. Pointing to SmartSky Networks shuttering operations last month, Valour said Amazon’s Kuiper and Telesat's Lightspeed increasing LEO options for aircraft operators in coming years points to continued momentum for LEO.

Working with Starlink last week, T-Mobile successfully transmitted and received a wireless emergency alert via satellite for the first time in the U.S., the carrier said Wednesday. “The breakthrough opens up the 500,000 square miles of lightly populated, mountainous and/or uninhabitable land across the country to critical, life-saving emergency alerts,” T-Mobile said: The test alert “was sent 217 miles into space where it was received by one of the more than 175 Starlink direct-to-smartphone satellites currently in low-earth orbit that effectively function as cell towers in space.” The process took only seconds to complete, the carrier said.

Patti Kukula, executive director of the Detroit Public Safety Foundation, withdrew a filing at the FCC made in August opposing FirstNet control of the 4.9 GHz band (see 2408290015). The filing "is not reflective” of the foundation’s “position or stance on this public safety communications matter,” said the new filing posted Wednesday in docket 07-100. “The submission of the Foundation’s original filing did not adhere to our organization’s process for review,” Kukula said. The foundation was “operating on an incomplete set of facts regarding this regulatory proceeding and a mistaken assumption regarding the proposal.”

The FCC Wireless Bureau approved a waiver for Federated Wireless of rules that require environmental sensing capability systems to protect federal incumbents in the citizens broadband radio service band from harmful interference as Hurricane Francine hits the Gulf Coast. The waiver “only applies to periods where the subject ESC sensors are unable to communicate with the Federated [spectrum access system] due to a power outage or backhaul outage,” said the order in Wednesday's Daily Digest. The waiver expires either on Sept. 24 “or when commercial power and backhaul service is restored to the subject ESC sensors,” the bureau said.