Wireless Telecommunications

This report provides details on two separate spectrum auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that included: 1) the 1710 to 1755 megahertz (MHz) band, and 2) the 1695-1710 MHz and 1755-1780 MHz bands. This report covers the period from January through December 2016.

The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on Thursday, August 3, 2017 for the subjects listed below:
Connect America Fund Phase II Auction (Auction 903) – The Commission will consider a Public Notice to initiate the pre-auction process for the Connect America Fund Phase II auction which will award up to $198 million annually for 10 years to service providers that commit to offer voice and broadband services to fixed locations in unserved high-cost areas. (AU Docket No. 17-182)
Mobility Fund Phase II Challenge Process – The Commission will consider an Order on Reconsideration and Second Report and Order that lays out a robust challenge process that will enable the Commission to direct Mobility Fund Phase II support to primarily rural areas that lack unsubsidized 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) service. (WC Docket No. 10-90; WT Docket No.10-208)
Form 477 - The Commission will consider a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that takes a focused look at the Commission’s Form 477 to improve the value of the data we continue to collect. (WC Docket No. 11-10)
Expanding Flexible Use in Mid-Band Spectrum Between 3.7 GHz and 24 GHz – The Commission will consider a Notice of Inquiry that explores opportunities for next generation services – particularly for wireless broadband – in the 3.7 GHz to 24 GHz spectrum range and asks about how we can increase efficient and effective use of this spectrum for the benefit of all services and users. (GN Docket No. 17-183)
Wireless License Renewal and Service Continuity Reform – The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would adopt unified construction, renewal, and service continuity rules for the Wireless Radio Services, while seeking comment on a range of additional possible actions to increase the number of Americans with access to wireless communications services. (WTB Docket No. 10-112)
Transmitter Identification Requirements for Satellite Digital Video Uplink Transmissions – The Commission will consider a Memorandum Opinion and Order that waives the requirement that satellite news trucks, and other temporary-fixed satellite earth stations transmitting digital video, comply with the Digital Video Broadcasting-Carrier Identification (DVB-CID) standard if the earth station uses a modulator that cannot meet the DVB-CID standard through a software upgrade. (IB Docket No. 12-267)
Hearing Designation Order – The Commission will consider a Hearing Designation Order.

[Commentary] Microsoft recently made a Very Serious Announcement about deploying unused television airwaves to solve the digital divide in America. News outlets ate it up. Here's what's really going on: Microsoft is aiming to be the soup-to-nuts provider of Internet of Things devices, software, and consulting services to zillions of local and national governments around the world.

Microsoft doesn't want to have to rely on existing mobile data carriers to execute those plans. Why? Because the carriers will want a pound of flesh—a percentage—in exchange for shipping data generated by Microsoft devices from Point A to Point B. These costs can become very substantial over zillions of devices in zillions of cities. The carriers have power because, in many places, they are the only ones allowed to use airwave frequencies—spectrum—under licenses from local governments for which they have paid hundreds of millions of dollars. To eliminate that bottleneck, it will be good to have
unlicensed spectrum available everywhere, and cheap chipsets and devices available that can opportunistically take advantage of that spectrum.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.]

Apple has officially been granted Federal Communications Commission approval for an experimental license to test 5G data technology — specifically in the short-range millimeter wave spectrum in the 28GHz and 39GHz bands. The FCC portioned off those chunks of spectrum last summer for companies to begin testing 5G technology, so it makes sense that Apple would want to start exploring 5G, especially given that it’s a major player in the world of mobile data due to the sheer weight of the iPhone in the market.

Cheap phones are coming at the price of your privacy, security analysts discovered.

At $60, the Blu R1 HD is the top-selling phone on Amazon. In November 2016, researchers caught it secretly sending private data to China. Shanghai Adups Technology, the group behind the spying software on the Blu R1 HD, called it a mistake. But analysts at Kryptowire found the software provider is still making the same "mistake" on other phones. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, researchers from Kryptowire, a security firm, revealed that Adups' software is still sending a device's data to the company's server in Shanghai without alerting people. But now, it's being more secretive about it. "They replaced them with nicer versions," Ryan Johnson, a research engineer and co-founder at Kryptowire, said. "I have captured the network traffic of them using the command and control channel when they did it."

The Trump Administration’s plan for $1 trillion in infrastructure spending presents an opportunity not only to repair existing roads, bridges, and tunnels, but also to build out broadband internet coverage in rural areas. On July 24, the Center for Technology Innovation hosted a panel discussion at Brookings about how the administration, Congress, and the private sector can work together to address broadband needs of unserved (no access) and underserved (limited access) populations.

The event began with opening remarks from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), focused on the congressional perspective on broadband infrastructure. To close the access gap, Chairman Blackburn seeks to eliminate regulatory barriers, increase investment in unserved areas, and redraft current Federal Communications Commission maps to more accurately reflect the percent of Americans that lack broadband access. The panelists largely focused on ways the government and private sector can work together to expand broadband internet access.

To provide you with a complete picture of mobile network performance in the first half of 2017, we’re offering a three-part, complementary series of special reports to show you how the networks fared across the entirety of the United States, within each of the 50 states, and across the 125 most populated metropolitan markets.

Verizon’s performance on the national stage was outstanding in all test categories in the first half of 2017. AT&T, meanwhile, offered strong competition, finishing second in five out of six performance categories and earning a share of the Text RootScore Award with Verizon and Sprint. Sprint showed improvement at the national level, delivering particularly strong text results and earning a share of the United States Text RootScore Award. T-Mobile’s rankings at the national level remained unchanged compared with those in our previous test period.

The Open Technology Institute team did a technical experiment at this Spring’s March for Science in Washington (DC) to try and answer these questions and explore new ways of detecting when your cell phone is being surveilled. The increasingly broad use of cell site simulators by law enforcement is controversial for many reasons. As a general matter, the devices themselves indiscriminately invade the privacy of everyone around them because they connect to, and can capture data from, all phones within their range. But the devices have also been used in controversial ways. In particular, they have been deployed disproportionately in areas made up predominantly of people of color.

We decided to conduct an experiment to see whether and how one might be able to detect the use of cell site simulators during a large protest. In particular, OTI conducted a spectrum survey at the March for Science in April 2017 to experiment with ways to identify these devices. Although our results were inconclusive, they gave us new insights into how best to tackle this problem, insights that we and others can apply to future experiments with the same goal: developing tools that give us the power to watch the watchers.

Today’s topic – Next Generation 5G Wireless Networks: Seizing the Opportunities and Overcoming the Obstacles – is one of great importance. Countries across the globe are vying to shape the next generation of mobile technologies and grab their slice of the economic bounty. There is no time to sit on the sidelines when everyone, including the standard bodies, have expedited their work to enable deployments as early as 2019. So, how do we “seize the opportunity” that future wireless technologies provide and remain the global leader in wireless, while overcoming the many obstacles – or challenges – that lie in the way?

Recently, Verizon was caught and subsequently admitted to throttling all video traffic on its network. July 25, the company is finally addressing the potential network neutrality issue. Verizon said that its actions represented “reasonable network management,” which is an exception carved out under the 2015 net neutrality rules. "Video optimization is a non-discriminatory network management practice designed to ensure a high quality customer experience for all customers accessing the shared resources of our wireless network,” a spokesperson said.

It’s pretty expected that Verizon would argue this. It said last week that its video throttling was a matter of “network testing” that would be “completed shortly,” and speeds since appear to have returned to normal. The trouble is, the order is a little vague on what constitutes “reasonable network management,” since the commission assumed it might take many different forms. But it has a handful of guidelines of what might and might not violate the exception. One important limitation: the practice must be “primarily motivated by a technical network management justification rather than other business justifications.”