The Wireless ISP Association urged the FCC to move forward with changes to TV white spaces rules, in a meeting with Office of Engineering and Technology staff. “The WISPA representatives stated that ongoing regulatory uncertainty has raised concerns in the fixed broadband industry about the continuing availability of equipment and investment in white space deployment,” said a filing in docket 14-165. “We urged the Commission to move forward as quickly as possible to adopt rules in the subject proceeding that would provide regulatory certainty and increased flexibility consistent with many of the Commission's proposals.” Among the changes WISPA seeks is immediate incorporation of power and directional antennas into the white spaces database and the permitting of channel bonding and aggregation.

NAB is leaning on the FCC to strengthen the TV white spaces (TVWS) database, after filing an emergency petition in March asking the agency to suspend operation of the database system until “serious flaws” are corrected (see 1503190056). NAB officials, including Bruce Franca, a former deputy chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, met last week with OET Chief Julius Knapp and others at the FCC to lay out their concerns that problems persist. “Our updated examination of the TVWS database reveals that the database is, once again, riddled with inaccuracies despite the fact that the FCC has made aggressive efforts to clean up the errors,” NAB said. “This confirms that the problem of inaccurate information in the database is one that will not stop -- and will likely accelerate -- unless and until the Commission changes its rules to ensure location data is built into the device and input with limited human involvement.” NAB said it earlier called attention to obviously false names, such as “John Doe” or “Sue Q. Public,” and “Anytown, CA” in the database. “Remarkably, months after NAB focused considerable attention on such errors, someone registered a device in the TVWS database under the name ‘John Doe,’” the association said. “This device was registered as being located in the middle of an empty field, with a contact e-mail address of ‘jd@example.com,’ and a contact telephone number of 232-555-1212.” The FCC deleted the entry, but only after NAB brought it to the agency’s attention, the group said. One device was registered as being in the middle of Lake Michigan, NAB said. “This device remained registered in that location nearly two months after NAB brought this example to the FCC’s attention.” NAB on Thursday filed an ex parte notice on the meeting in docket 14-165. The FCC is aware of the issue and is taking a close look after seeking comment on the NAB petition, a spokesman said. “The commission is committed to ensuring that the white spaces database is correct, and have taken the appropriate steps to do so," the spokesman said. "We continue to work with the spectrum of stakeholders to accomplish that, including NAB, database providers and equipment manufacturers.”

Qualcomm unveiled a new version of LTE-unlicensed, MuLTEfire, which operates only in unlicensed spectrum, industry officials said Wednesday. Qualcomm didn't put out a news release on the development. Qualcomm is promoting three versions of LTE-U, a spokeswoman emailed Wednesday. LTE-U “operates in downlink-only mode in two parts of the 5 GHz band,” the unlicensed national information infrastructure-1 and UNII-3 bands, the spokeswoman said. Licensed assisted access involves modes “supporting both downlink-only and uplink and downlink operations” using an anchor channel in a licensed spectrum band, she said. The third version is MuLTEfire, which “operates entirely in unlicensed spectrum and, nevertheless, is envisioned to deliver enhanced capacity and a superior user experience than today's unlicensed technologies,” the spokeswoman said. “Qualcomm is working with service providers and equipment manufacturers around the world on these technologies.” NCTA said Qualcomm’s announcement of MuLTEfire is “welcome, though long overdue” as a unlicensed-only version of LTE-U. Still, NCTA said in a statement “it is irrelevant to the fundamental harm that Americans will face unless meaningful technical protocols are adopted to ensure that LTE-U technology does not impair the performance of Wi-Fi technology that uses unlicensed frequencies today.” Since hundreds of millions of Wi-Fi enabled devices and routers are in use, “the ongoing failure of LTE providers in the U.S to recognize and meaningfully address the potential for substantial consumer harm is a cause for increasing concern,” NCTA said. “In the absence of an open and reinvigorated industry process to develop and adopt protections that will prevent such harms, it will fall to policymakers to take the steps necessary to ensure that consumers are protected and to insist that providers use appropriate controls that promote fair use and will prevent LTE-U technology from steamrolling Wi-Fi operations."

Collision avoidance systems should be standard on all new passenger and commercial vehicles, said the National Transportation Safety Board in a report released Monday. NTSB said only four of 684 passenger vehicle models in 2014 came with a complete forward-collision avoidance system as a standard feature. “You don’t pay extra for your seatbelt,” NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said in a news release. “And you shouldn’t have to pay extra for technology that can help prevent a collision altogether.” The FCC is examining whether Wi-Fi and other unlicensed devices can also safely use the 5850-5925 MHz band, dedicated to vehicle-to-vehicle crash avoidance systems. Cisco has been working with automakers on a “Listen, Detect and Avoid” protocol that would allow shared use of the spectrum (see 1505070051).

The U.S. delegation should push for an agenda item on spectrum for unmanned aerial systems at the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2019, Nokia Networks said in comments posted by the FCC Tuesday. WRC-15 is to start Nov. 2 in Geneva and one of the items will be a look at whether spectrum for drones should be taken up at the following meeting (see 1505200052). The FCC WRC Advisory Committee has been unable to reach consensus on that question. The U.S. “has been investing heavily” in the sector “including for the delivery of broadband communications to underserved, rural, and remote areas and areas suffering from disasters,” Nokia said. It said the U.S. shouldn't ignore the need for more globally harmonized spectrum for broadband. “The amount of spectrum required to support mobile broadband services is expanding exponentially,” Nokia said. “Correspondingly increasing is the desirability for the existing and newly identified spectrum to be harmonized globally across frequency range, channel plans, and emissions requirements.” The filing was in docket 04-286.

Consumers generally don't like their pay-TV or Internet service, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's "ASCI Telecommunications and Information Report 2015" released Tuesday. Based on surveys of more than 70,000 consumers, the ASCI report looks at consumers' happiness with everything from their pay TV and Internet to phone service. Both pay-TV and Internet service received the lowest overall satisfaction rankings among the industries ASCI covers, with index scores of 63 each and with customer satisfaction for pay TV down 3.1 percent from the 2014 survey, while Internet was unchanged, the organization said. Among pay-TV providers, Verizon and its FiOS service was ranked highest, with an index score of 71, followed closely by AT&T's U-verse at 69 and satellite companies DirecTV and Dish, at 68 and 67, respectively. U-verse and FiOS were also the highest-ranked ISPs, with index scores of 69 and 68, respectively. Consumers' happiness with pay-TV service was down nearly across the board, as those surveyed gave lower rankings to everything from picture quality to understandability of bills, compared with 2014 numbers. The satisfaction with ISP service was more mixed, as consumers were happier with performance during peak hours but bearish on video streaming quality. Consumer satisfaction also was down 5.5 percent for wireline phone service and down 2.8 percent for wireless phone service, with Vonage and TracFone, respectively, garnering the highest consumer satisfaction rankings in those industries with Vonage rating 73 on the index and TracFone 77.

An FCC examination of LTE-unlicensed and licensed assisted access technology must be technology neutral, CTIA officials told FCC staff, said an ex parte filing in docket 15-105. The FCC released a public notice seeking comment on both (see 1505050047). Comments are due June 11 in docket 15-105. Technological neutrality “will allow industry to innovate and evolve broadband services to best serve wireless consumers,” CTIA said. “This approach also will allow industry standards bodies to determine the most appropriate technical capabilities for providing LTE technology under Part 15.”

Annual IP traffic will likely triple between 2014 and 2019, when it will reach 2 zettabytes, said a news release Wednesday releasing the Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast. Some of the growth will come from increasing mobile access and demand for video services, which will represent 80 percent of global IP traffic by 2019, the study said. Global IP traffic will reach 168 exabytes per month by 2019, up from 59.9 exabytes per month in 2014, Cisco predicted.

Mobile Future laid down a marker, responding Friday to various FCC filings calling for a larger reserve set-aside for competitive carriers as part of rules for the TV incentive auction. “Restricting competition in the auction through set-asides will result in lower auction proceeds, jeopardizing the Commission’s ability to purchase the maximum amount of spectrum from broadcasters, and leading to less repurposed spectrum to meet skyrocketing consumer demand for mobile broadband,” Mobile Future said. “The issue of whether and how much spectrum to set aside for select carriers was exhaustively debated and decided last year.” Competitive carriers got a set-aside of 30 MHz in every market. Companies including Dish Network, Sprint and T-Mobile “do not need even more protection from bidding competition,” the group said. “Their filings simply revisit already settled policy decisions and fail to present any new facts to support a larger set-aside.”

CTIA President Meredith Baker wants a new national plan on spectrum for wireless broadband, given that the U.S. is already half way through the administration’s 2010 plan calling for 500 MHz of new spectrum in 10 years, she said at an Accenture broadband conference. “I encourage you to look back at the numbers,” Baker said in her prepared remarks. “They seemed like aggressive estimates. Turns out those estimates simply captured the skyrocketing growth in mobile usage.” Five years ago, the FCC forecast 41 petabytes of monthly data use in the U.S., but the actual amount was 10 percent higher, she said. “By 2012 and 2013, traffic was 25 percent higher than the FCC’s projected growth rates,” Baker said. Wireless industry growth depends on licensed spectrum, Baker said. “When and how we introduce 5G in the United States depends, in part, upon whether we keep our spectrum policy as forward-looking as our industry,” she said. “The question we face is will the U.S. continue to embrace licensed spectrum, the approach that has made us the global leader in 4G.” Baker also said too much emphasis now is on spectrum sharing. Shared spectrum is a “complement” not a “replacement” for licensed spectrum, she said. “Clearing spectrum will never look easy, particularly years before an auction,” she said. “To be fair, it will never be easy. But it can be done and needs to be done if we are to remain the global leader in mobility.”