A Report from Dallas FirstNet/AT&T/SPOC Meeting and unfortunate activities from one vendor. This past week in Dallas was the fifth time the Single (State) Point Of Contacts (SPOCs) and their teams met with FirstNet and from most reports this was the best meeting yet. The number of both FirstNet and AT&T employees and contractors present was a measure of how important this event was to both of them. The reason, of course, was that this was the first SPOC gathering since AT&T became the official partner of FirstNet and the public safety community. Unfortunately, one vendor that was not chosen appears to have over-stepped the bounds of decorum while the SPOC event was underway. Read the entire Public Safety Advocate here Below is this week’s News Summary Courtesy of Discovery Patterns: Continue reading
FCC
CSRIC Meeting Set for June 23
The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council plans to hold its first meeting under its new charter on June 23 from 1-5 p.m. in the Commission’s meeting room
FCC Plans Webinar for State, Local Governments on Wireline Deployment Proposals
The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau have scheduled a webinar for state and local governments on June 14 to address issues raised in the FCC’s recently adopted notice of proposed rulemaking and notice of inquiry on accelerating wireline broadband deployment (TR Daily, April 20). The webinar will be held at 2 p.m.
Parties must register to attend at https://fccevents.webex.com/fccevents/onstage/g.php?MTID=e86049709729c5cc4c960604ccd5d33b5.
Benchmark Waiver Granted to Alaskan 700 MHz Licensee
The Mobility Division of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau today granted The Alaska Wireless Network LLC’s request for a limited waiver to permit it to meet population instead of geographic construction benchmarks for a lower 700 megahertz band A-block license that covers the entire state. In a letter ruling released in WT docket 16-402, the division cited “the unique and unusual challenges of serving the State of Alaska.”
Courtesy TRDaily
Ligado Renews Call for FCC Action
June 5, 2017–Ligado Networks LLC today renewed its call for FCC action to enable it to deploy a nationwide LTE network. “The Commission can unlock 40 megahertz of mid-band spectrum, drive forward the transition to 5G, and hasten development of the Internet of Things (‘IoT’) by taking two closely related actions: (1) approving the spectrum plan and license modification applications submitted by Ligado Networks in December 2015, and (2) issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking outlining the terrestrial use of adjacent spectrum currently allocated only for government use. These companion decisions will enable the use of 40 megahertz of greenfield spectrum,” the company said in a filing in IB dockets 11-109 and 12-340. “Once this spectrum is available, Ligado plans to build a unique network that will maximize the capabilities of both the satellite and terrestrial spectrum by integrating them to achieve new levels of reliability, security, and pervasiveness that can be achieved only by using both capabilities.” Continue reading
Supreme Court to Consider Whether Warrants Are Needed for Cell Site Location Data
June 5, 2017–The Supreme Court today agreed to consider whether the government must obtain a warrant before obtaining access to historical cell-site location information (CSLI). The case, “Carpenter v. United States” (case 16-402), involves whether the government violated the Fourth Amendment when law enforcement authorities obtained from carriers months of cellphone location records for robbery suspects. Authorities obtained records for 127 days for suspect Timothy Carpenter that revealed 12,898 location data points.
After being convicted, Mr. Carpenter appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Cincinnati). That court ruled 2-1 that a warrant is not needed under the Fourth Amendment.
A petition for a writ of certiorari was filed last year with the Supreme Court. The petition was supported by five civil liberties groups and the Cato Institute (TR Daily, Oct. 28, 2016). “Because cell phone location records can reveal countless private details of our lives, police should only be able to access them by getting a warrant based on probable cause,” Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said today. “The time has come for the Supreme Court to make clear that the longstanding protections of the Fourth Amendment apply with undiminished force to these kinds of sensitive digital records.”
The ACLU is co-counsel in the case. “Given the increasing use of new forms of electronic surveillance, it’s important now more than ever that the Supreme Court steps in to push back against police overreach and clarify the protections of the Fourth Amendment,” said Harold Gurewitz, the other co-counsel. Continue reading
Several More 911 Waiver Requests Filed
Several additional wireless carriers have submitted indoor 911 location accuracy waiver petitions. June 2 was the deadline for wireless carriers to file certifications of compliance with the FCC’s initial indoor 911 location accuracy benchmark. In its request in PS docket 07-114, ATN International, Inc., requested “an extension of time until January 1, 2018 within which to come into compliance with respect to its CDMA networks that are used to serve ATN subscribers, and requests a five-year waiver, through and including April 3, 2022, with respect to UMTS networks that it uses to serve incoming GSM and UMTS roamers.” It cited the technical challenges it faces in deploying 911 location accuracy services in St Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in Pima County, Ariz.
Flat Wireless LLC said, “As a small regional provider of wireless telecommunications services operating in rural areas of the western United States, Flat Wireless endures significant financial burdens in implementing and maintaining an indoor 911 call location service across its entire network, which has rendered it unable to comply with certain reporting requirements for the deployment of such services. Moreover, Flat Wireless has not received a request to date from any Public Safety Answering Points (‘PSAPs’) in its service area for its indoor 911 call location data. Continue reading
NTCA Seeks Temporary Waiver for Indoor 911 Certification
June 2, 2017–NTCA has filed a petition for a temporary waiver of today’s deadline for wireless carriers to file certifications of compliance with the FCC’s initial indoor 911 location accuracy benchmark. In its petition in PS docket 07-114, NTCA noted that nine small, rural wireless carriers had filed as of yesterday “nearly identical” petitions seeking temporary waivers of the compliance certification requirement, which the group said shows that the issues they raise “have applicability beyond the specific petitioners.”
“The Commission should therefore grant the pending petitions as soon as possible, and in the wake of such an order, adopt a broader industry waiver wherein any small, rural wireless carrier is not required to procure and implement new location accuracy technology until a reasonable time after the PSAPs within its service territory can receive and/or use indoor location accuracy data and Phase II Enhanced 911 (‘E911’) data, and present the wireless operator with valid service requests,” NTCA argued. Continue reading
FCC, OSHA Offer Tower Safety Guidelines
June 1, 2017–Following nearly three years of deliberations, the FCC and the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration today issued a set of voluntary guidelines that communications tower companies and contractors should follow to help improve safety conditions at tower sites. “The guide is a result of the long-standing commitment of both agencies to ensuring the safety of tower workers,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dorothy Dougherty said in a joint statement, adding: “The guide is an important step to reduce the tragic number of fatalities involved in communications tower work.”
The FCC and OHSA noted they held a workshop in October 2014 (TR Daily, Oct. 14, 2014) and another in February 2016 (TR Daily, Feb. 11, 2016) during which industry stakeholders, employee safety advocates, and others discussed “best practices that could reduce injuries and fatalities among tower employees.” The first workshop was held in the wake of an expanded focus by OSHA on communications tower safety as tower worker deaths rose.
The new guidelines are the result of those workshops and additional discussions, they said. “These best practices are focused on the ways in which each level in the contracting chain can build a positive culture of safety and accountability,” the FCC and OSHA said. Continue reading
AMTRAK Granted Waiver to Deploy Wireless Network
June 1, 2017–The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology granted Amtrak a waiver today to allow it to deploy a wireless trackside network (TSN) within the Northeast Corridor “under the specifications that apply to fixed point-to-point operation in both the 5.15-5.25 GHz (U-NII-1) and 5.75-5.85 GHz (U-NII-3) bands.”
OET said in a letter in ET docket 16-415 that the waiver is conditioned on several provisions, including that “[t]he total number of stations, including both trackside and train-based stations, operating pursuant to this waiver must be fewer than 1,000”; “[s]tations operating under this waiver are only permitted to operate within the right-of-way along the Boston-to-Washington, D.C. segment of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor”; and “[c]ommunication is only permitted from trackside stations to train-based stations – no direct-to-consumer connections are permitted.”
Courtesy TRDaily