The extended deadlines granted EchoStar's Dish Network for building out its 5G terrestrial network were "clearly justified," New America's Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge said in an FCC docket 22-212 filing posted Friday. Vermont National Telephone (VTel) Wireless has a pending reconsideration petition (see 2410230004). "Building a nationwide mobile network from scratch is a high hill to climb, and EchoStar deserves every benefit of the doubt as it tries to overcome numerous obstacles," OTI and PK said. They said the extension includes "positive and unprecedented" public interest conditions. VTel Wireless said last week that the FCC Wireless Bureau lacked legal authority to grant the extension. The extension clearly harmed VTel, the company said, as it forestalls reauction of EchoStar's H-block and AWS-3 spectrum licenses. Acquiring those licenses would have more than doubled VTel's AWS spectrum holdings, it added.

The Wireless ISP Association told the FCC many of its members use CBRS spectrum for reaching subscribers, and it opposes higher power levels for priority access license holders as a threat to general authorized access use of the band. Comments were due last week on an August NPRM in docket 17-258 (see 2411070032). Increasing maximum power levels “would substantially increase mutual interference between GAA users and even between GAA and PAL users on different channels,” WISPA said. “WISPA members should not be required to replace existing, relatively new equipment and purchase and deploy expensive high-powered base stations such as those used by mobile carriers in order to maintain their service areas.” Lockheed Martin said the FCC must coordinate major changes with DOD. “The current power levels represent a material, established feature upon which CBRS is premised,” Lockheed said: “Despite the essential role of pre-coordinated and established power levels, the Commission appears to have proposed these changes independently, and it is unclear what inter-agency coordination has or will occur and whether, even, there is support for such action by federal stakeholders.” Researchers at the University of Notre Dame noted that the use of CBRS is accelerating, even in small markets such as South Bend, Indiana, where the university is based. The researchers called for more reporting of interference metrics as measured on the ground by users. “When spectrum is being shared among multiple different users deploying networks in different verticals, the more information that can be shared, the better the performance for all,” they said. The Notre Dame researchers opposed adding a third category of devices that transmit at higher power levels than currently authorized, saying it would “exacerbate the secondary coexistence problem.” But Ericsson said the FCC should at least examine use of higher power levels. “Higher power levels for both [devices] and user equipment improve the efficiency of coverage to serve rural and underserved areas and reduce the cost of deployment,” Ericsson said: “Power levels can constrain certain use cases, especially wide-area commercial and enterprise networks. Enterprises like mining, large-scale agriculture, and media and entertainment companies need to support large outdoor coverage areas, and higher power levels can have a dramatic impact on enabling efficient deployments.” Increasing transmit power levels “will improve coverage, especially in rural areas, increase network efficiency, and reduce equipment and network design and deployment costs” and “can be achieved without causing harmful interference to incumbents or other spectrum users,” Federated Wireless said. Federated noted transmit levels are much lower than in the adjacent 3.45 GHz and C-band. “This discrepancy creates a significant coverage imbalance between CBRS and these adjacent bands, which undermines CBRS’s competitive capability and restricts its potential for expanded service, particularly in rural and underserved areas.”

Aviation Spectrum Resources, Inc. (ASRI) told the FCC it doesn’t object to Piper Networks' request for a waiver of rules allowing use of its enhanced transit location system, which operates in the 4243-4743 MHz band, in the metropolitan Boston area. Piper has a similar system in the greater New York City and Harris County, Texas, areas. The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology recently sought comment, due Thursday in docket 19-246. ASRI filed the lone comment, posted Friday. “ASRI has conducted a preliminary review … in consultation with other stakeholders in the aviation industry, which considered recent data on altimeter performance developed in connection with other Commission proceedings,” the company said: “ASRI has not received any objections raised by aviation industry stakeholders at this time to Piper’s request.”

Verizon said that it will modify or discontinue ad claims about using its smartphones to receive satellite-supported texting services in remote locations, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division said Thursday. T-Mobile challenged Verizon's claims. The ads promise customers they can “Text Anywhere via Satellite,” NAD said. The ads offer “a small font disclosure reading 'Satellite connectivity requires select smartphones. Must be outside w/line of sight to satellite; might not work in parts of Alaska,'” the group said. NAD found “that the disclosure in Verizon’s commercials is not clear and conspicuous and is unlikely to be read and understood by consumers.”

UScellular announced on Thursday a $1 billion agreement to sell AT&T some of its spectrum licenses, which are not part of the proposed sale of wireless assets to T-Mobile (see 2405280047). T-Mobile is buying “substantially all” of UScellular’s wireless operations in a deal valued at about $4.4 billion, but it's purchasing only some of its spectrum licenses. AT&T agreed it will buy 3.45 GHz spectrum and 700 MHz B/C-block licenses for $1.018 billion. Like an earlier deal with Verizon and two undisclosed carriers, the sale is dependent on closing the proposed T-Mobile transaction. "We are pleased with the significant value that will be realized in the various transactions recently announced," said Laurent Therivel, UScellular CEO: "This agreement adds a fourth mobile network operator, in addition to T-Mobile, to the list of those whose subscribers will benefit from the sale of our spectrum licenses. As with the other mobile network operators, we are confident that AT&T can put it to productive use in communities throughout the U.S.” With the latest transaction, UScellular said it has deals to sell 70% of its total spectrum holdings, excluding high-band spectrum, measured on a MHz/POPs basis. UScellular retains 1.86 billion MHz/POPs of low and mid-band spectrum and 17.2 billion MHz/POPs of millimeter-wave, Therivel said, noting that the most valuable spectrum left to sell is in the C-band. “Our C-band licenses are positioned in an attractive mid-band frequency that can deliver outstanding speed and capacity.” There is “a substantial 5G ecosystem of equipment vendors and existing infrastructure that uses C-band” and “they have a lengthy build-out timeline, with first and second build-out dates of 2029 and 2033, respectively.” The deal “is in line with UScellular’s objective to monetize its remaining spectrum following the transaction with T-Mobile announced in May,” said RBC Capital Markets in a note to investors. The firm estimated that the price for the 3.45 GHz spectrum associated with the sale is 55 cents per MHz/POP, compared with the national average spectrum price of 77 cents during the 2022 auction. The C-band holdings are UScellular’s most valuable unsold band, RBC said, noting an average price of 94 cents MHz/PoP in the 2021 auction: “We view the remaining C-Band licenses as [complementary] to AT&T's and Verizon's holdings.”

5G Americas' white paper said Thursday the wireless industry is undergoing a significant shift as carriers expose their application programmable interfaces (APIs) as a major business opportunity. Citing a recent McKinsey report, 5G's paper said, “this technology transition can produce between $100-$300 billion industry-wide revenue over the next 5 to 7 years.” In addition, 5G noted: “To unlock this huge opportunity and generate returns on the sizable investments made in the network infrastructure, the industry needs to grow an ecosystem involving developers, enterprises, hyper-scalers, vertical industry players and vendors while engaging in new market structures such as aggregation and federation.” Viet Nguyen, 5G Americas vice president-PR and technology, said carriers are moving away from viewing their networks as “dumb” pipes. “There is a quiet revolution going on in the telecommunications industry that is introducing intelligence into those pipes and evolving 5G networks into something much more significant,” he said. “5G networks are becoming programmable, software-driven architectures supported by a robust ecosystem” of APIs.

Tech companies responded to NAB concerns (see 2410290052) about interference to broadcasters' electronic news-gathering (ENG) operations from very-low-power (VLP) devices in parts of the 6 GHz band. The companies noted that in June they submitted a report on broadcast auxiliary service use of the spectrum and VLP (see 2407010057). “NAB faults the study for simulating distant devices in locations where they could not cause interference,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-295: “But this is no flaw. Rather, the fact that the vast majority of VLP devices will not operate in locations where they could cause harmful interference is a key finding of the study.” Apple, Broadcom, Google, Meta Platforms and Qualcomm made the filing.

T-Mobile said it set a world record speed of 2.2 Gbps for a wireless uplink, using a combination of 2.5 GHz and millimeter wave spectrum, during a test at SoFi Stadium in Southern California. 5G dual-connectivity technology “enables the Un-carrier to aggregate 2.5 GHz and mmWave spectrum, allowing for an insane boost to uplink throughput and capacity,” T-Mobile said this week: “T-Mobile was able to allocate 60% of the mmWave radio resources for uplink where previous use cases typically allowed up to 20%.”

SI Wireless asked for an additional six months to remove, replace and dispose of Huawei and ZTE equipment from its network. The deadline for SI Wireless was previously extended from May 24 to Nov. 24 (see 2404300031). “Due to a variety of reasons, most notably the FCC’s unexpected current hold on all funding disbursements” the company can’t meet the Nov. 24 deadline, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-89. “The grant of an additional six-month extension, as contemplated by the FCC’s rules, is warranted and in the public interest.”

Verizon told the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals the $47 million fine the FCC levied on it in April (see 2404290044) for allegedly not safeguarding data on customers' real-time locations is arbitrary and capricious and that the court should reject it. “The agency ignored the limits of its authority in these multiple ways, in an effort to show force against a large company that did nothing wrong,” the provider said. Verizon said it would appeal the fine at the time the FCC approved it 3-2, with Republican Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissenting. The fine was approved four years after Republican Chairman Ajit Pai proposed it. Verizon’s location-based service (LBS) program “used device-location information, and device-location information is not” customer proprietary network information, Verizon said this week in a brief in docket 24-1733. By the time the FCC proposed the fine, “Verizon had shut down its LBS program nearly one year earlier, eliminating any potential current or going-forward liability,” it added. Verizon noted that the FCC got involved following a New York Times report that Securus “misused many carriers’ LBS programs and that a sheriff in Missouri took advantage of Securus’s actions to track wireless carriers’ customers without their consent.” But the agency found that the statute of limitations had expired in both cases, Verizon said. The FCC then “adopted a novel approach to generate an eye-popping penalty amount,” the brief said: The agency “punished Verizon for not terminating every other service provider from the LBS program on a faster timeline” imposing “a forfeiture penalty for each day -- starting 30 days after the New York Times article -- that each of the 63 service providers remained able to use the LBS program, despite not being involved in any wrongdoing.” Verizon also argued the order should be overturned given the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in SEC v. Jarkesy (see 2406270063). “The Constitution guarantees Verizon a jury trial -- not an administrative adjudication -- before it faces an order compelling it to pay a forfeiture.” AT&T, meanwhile, made similar arguments in its challenge filed in the 5th Circuit against the FCC’s $57 million fine, approved the same time as Verizon's. “The Commission itself has acknowledged that Securus’s misdeeds took place long before the statute-of-limitations period,” AT&T said: “The Commission cites no evidence that Securus ever unlawfully accessed a single AT&T customer’s location information.” AT&T said the FCC accused it of carelessness. “AT&T gave access only to providers with an approved use case; conducted daily audits of consent records and broader programmatic audits; and responded to Securus’s misdeeds promptly and prudently, weighing the costs and benefits at every turn,” AT&T said. “That is far more than the Commission can say for itself, having taken no action (failing even to inform the major wireless carriers) after learning of Securus’s malfeasance nearly a year before AT&T did.”