Howard Buskirk

The FCC released draft items set for votes at the commissioners' Feb. 15 open meeting, including an NPRM aimed at simplifying the process for alert originators to send multilingual emergency alerts over TV and radio. Also released Thursday was a second draft item that codifies some robocall rules while asking about applying protections in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to robocalls and robotexts from wireless carriers to their own subscribers.

FCC commissioners unanimously approved an order Thursday requiring carriers to implement location-based routing (LBR) for calls and real-time texts to 911 within six months of when the rules become effective for nationwide providers and 24 months for small providers.

NTIA is expecting detailed comments from federal agencies this week about the proposed implementation plan for the national spectrum strategy (see 2311130048), Scott Harris, NTIA senior spectrum adviser, said during an FCBA webinar Wednesday. NTIA has shared with the agencies its initial thoughts, he said. Next, it will prepare “a full draft” implementation plan, which it will also share, and “kick off” interagency meetings seeking “government-wide” consensus, Harris added.

AT&T had 526,000 postpaid phone net adds and 273,000 AT&T Fiber adds in Q4, the company reported Wednesday. AT&T bested Verizon, which reported Tuesday (see 2401230071), on wireless adds. But AT&T’s adjusted earnings outlook for 2024 fell short of Wall Street's expectations and the company said its $14 billion deal with Ericsson to build an open radio access network would accelerate the depreciation of other equipment (see 2312050049). AT&T closed down 2.97% Wednesday at $16.68.

Verizon Tuesday reported it added a net 318,000 consumer wireless postpaid phone customers in Q4, compared with just 41,000 a year ago. Verizon also saw 375,000 fixed wireless adds in the quarter, bringing its total to more than 3 million. Officials said Verizon is on track to hit as many as 5 million by the end of 2025. Verizon was the first of the major wireless carriers to report Q4 results. Verizon finished up 6.7% Tuesday at $42.23 per share.

Following last week’s oral argument in two Chevron cases before the U.S. Supreme Court (see 2401170074), the future of the doctrine appears in doubt.

Partnerships between mobile carriers and satellite companies now cover 2 billion subscribers worldwide, including in developing markets, said Tim Hatt, head-research and consulting at GSMA Intelligence, Monday during a Mobile World Live webinar. The footprint is “wide and it's deep, and we’re only going to see more of these [agreements] coming online,” he said. About 6%-7% of the world’s population still lives in areas not served by terrestrial wireless, including in high-income countries, Hatt said. Satellite operators have served ships for more than 20 years, but the cost has always been high, he said. But they are “really coming down,” which makes service “a lot more accessible,” he said. Satellite IoT is seeing growth for logistics, as well as in cars, precision agriculture, mining, oil and gas production and in other areas where connections are hard to reach through terrestrial networks, he said. Carriers see potential growth in revenue and “that underscores a lot of the commercial deal making we’re seeing taking place,” he said. Hatt predicted that the most common deals will be based on satellite operators providing backhaul and front-haul connectivity and mobile carriers controlling “the customer relationship,” though other business models are emerging. The “hype” about non-terrestrial service in the wireless industry “is becoming more and more real,” said Anirban Chakraborty, Comtech chief technology officer. The drive to standardization of satellite service as part of 5G through the 3rd Generation Partnership Project is important because it provides a common technology platform, he said. “There are technical challenges, regulatory challenges,” he said. Ubiquity of service has long been one of the biggest concerns for everyone in the telecom industry, Chakraborty said.

The U.S. attained generally positive results at the World Radiocommunication Conference, but 6 GHz band issues remain, Steve Lang, the State Department official who headed the U.S. WRC delegation, told an American Enterprise Institute event Monday. In contrast, other speakers argued WRC wasn’t a clean U.S. win.

Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) officials made their case Friday for assigning the 4.9 GHz band to FirstNet, a proposal that faces objections on numerous fronts. A year ago, commissioners approved 4-0 a long-awaited order and Further NPRM on the band's future, establishing a national band manager governing the leasing process. The FCC also sought comment on rights and responsibilities of the band manager (see 2301180062). The PSSA has asked that a single, national licensee get the spectrum (see 2304240057).

Groups representing wireless carriers and cable operators urged the FCC to take a cautious approach as it responds to a November Further NPRM on protecting consumers from SIM swapping and port-out fraud (see 2311150042). Additional rules beyond those approved in an accompanying order aren’t warranted, industry groups said. However, the Electronic Privacy Information Center urged the agency to go further in protecting consumers. Comments were posted on Wednesday and Thursday in docket 21-341.