With a federal decision on T-Mobile/Sprint likely close, the deal's fate is anything but certain. T-Mobile/Sprint also must pass state review, which some analysts see as a potential sticking point. Both stocks were down Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that DOJ staffers told the two companies the deal's unlikely to be approved as structured (see 1904160036). T-Mobile closed at $72.46, down 2.2 percent; Sprint at $5.64, down 6.16 percent. Analysts said the transaction's still alive, even if it’s in trouble.

Huawei and other Chinese companies pose a major challenge for the U.S. and other nations, said Jamil Jaffer, executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University's law school, during a Technology Policy Institute panel Tuesday. “The risk is real.” A Trump administration supply chain security executive order apparently is off the table (see 1903250055).

The FCC should treat the inside of large commercial aircraft the same as other indoor locations in rules allowing unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, Boeing said in a meeting with Office of Engineering and Technology staff. The FCC recently sought comment on unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, potentially a key band for the future of Wi-Fi (see 1903180047). The fuselage of an aircraft offers radio signal attenuation levels equal to or better than building construction materials, and unlicensed transmitters within large aircraft “operate at very low power levels,” Boeing filed, posted Monday in docket 18-295. “Unlicensed devices inside large aircraft should not be subject to automated frequency coordination requirements or database management systems because the transmissions from such unlicensed devices will be nearly undetectable at distances exceeding the wingtip." The plane maker said rules should be the same for aircraft in flight and parked.

Representatives of technology company Zebra and the NFL met with aides to all five commissioners on technology the company provides for real-time player and ball tracking used by all NFL teams. The ultra-wide band technology uses the 6 GHz band, which the FCC is considering for unlicensed use. Zebra said widespread use of the spectrum could case harmful interference to the technology. “A single Mobile Access Point on site could render a UWB solution inoperative,” Zebra said. "Even fixed 6 GHz infrastructure … would introduce unpredictability” and “proposed power levels would adversely impact UWB at significant distances.” The filings were posted Friday in docket 18-295.

An advisory board to the Pentagon took what some consider an unusual step of encouraging the department that arranged for the group to do more to free up spectrum for commercial use such as for 5G. The U.S. can’t be the world leader in 5G without more spectrum below 6 GHz, the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) reported. The independent federal committee, which advises the secretary of defense, said DOD must share much more mid-band spectrum and the department must revise how it views spectrum. “The current status quo of spectrum allocation is unsustainable," DIB said. Milo Medin, Google vice president-wireless services, and venture capitalist Gilman Louie wrote the report.

Broadcom told the Office of Engineering and Technology that unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band presents little risk to fixed service receivers, the topic of an ongoing FCC inquiry (see 1903190050). Broadcom shared with the OET staff its research on “the characteristics of Fixed Service receivers and, specifically, these receivers’ available link margin, and the relationship between various Fixed Service use cases and available link margin,” said a filing in docket 18-295 posted Monday. “Any meaningful interference to 6 GHz licensees is extremely unlikely due to the complementary radiofrequency and operational characteristics of Fixed Service and unlicensed RLAN [radio local access network] operations.”

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology waiver request for its WiTrack System, a swept-frequency ultrawide band indoor medical monitoring device. It uses up to 2.5 GHz in the 6 to 8.5 GHz band “to passively monitor mobility, breathing, and other physiological signals,” without requiring body-worn sensors, OET said. MIT needs a waiver because the device doesn’t comply with a requirement that a Part 15 UWB transmitter use a bandwidth wider than 500 MHz. “MIT states that its WiTrack System would not satisfy this definition because each frequency step is less than 500 MHz in bandwidth ‘at any point in time’ even though the total bandwidth needed for optimal performance exceeds 500 MHz, regardless of the fractional bandwidth,” said Friday's public notice. Comments are due April 18, replies May 3, in docket 19-89. The notice sets the initial comment date as April 18, 2018.

Action is coming on the 5.9 GHz band, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly promised attendees at a Wi-Fi event Wednesday evening, hosted by the Wi-Fi Alliance and Broadcom. The band is allocated to dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) technology, which automakers have been slow to deploy and the commission since 2013 has been looking at sharing with Wi-Fi (see 1301160063). O’Rielly and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said last month they favor a broad-based Further NPRM looking at the future of the band (see 1902140057). Chairman Ajit Pai has declined to offer a timetable, saying the band raises some tough issues. “I don’t want to give anyone the impression that we’re abandoning 5.9,” O’Rielly said Wednesday. “That is a high priority for me. … We’re going to see something on 5.9 in the very near future.” O’Rielly said the FCC shouldn’t wait. “We can’t let the 75 MHz at 5.9 sit there and stagnate for another 20 years, counting on something that’s probably not coming,” he said. The FCC faces big challenges on unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, the subject of a recent rulemaking (see 1903180047), O’Rielly warned. He said branding a new generation of technology as Wi-Fi 6 makes sense: “Simplifying that is very helpful to everybody.” Wi-Fi Caucus Chairs Reps. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., stressed the importance of Wi-Fi in brief remarks. McNerney said getting the 6 GHz band reallocated for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed will require a “big lift,” but “that’s what tech lives for, is big lifts.” There are “big benefits” to Wi-Fi, McNerney said. “It’s going to connect people,” he said. “It’s going to make businesses thrive in my district. … It’s going to put students in touch with their educational material.” Latta said if people don’t have broadband and access to Wi-Fi, they’re “way behind … you’re not even in the game.”

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance warned that an FCC NPRM on the 6 GHz band doesn’t pay enough attention to what will happen if interference occurs. “The NPRM devotes only a single paragraph -- five sentences -- to this critical discussion,” said a Wednesday news release. “But EWA has asked ‘who is responsible for shutting down secondary consumer devices and for the resulting liability?’ There are out-of-pocket costs incurred in identifying and resolving interference problems for which someone must be accountable.” The group also filed replies (see 1903180047).

Big tech companies, plus Broadcom and the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC), separately told the FCC they fear nothing from indoor, low-power unlicensed use of 6 GHz spectrum and shouldn’t require frequency coordination. Replies were due Monday on an NPRM, in docket 18-295, with some other commenters urging caution (see 1903180047). “Comments make it clear that in the vast majority of locations, times, and configurations, [radio local access networks] would not be positioned to even potentially cause harmful interference to incumbents,” the tech companies said. Some commenters raise concerns, they said: “With few exceptions, these commenters either provide no empirical support for these claims or repeat flawed arguments that have already been presented and addressed in prior phases of this proceeding.” The filing was signed by Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Marvell Technology, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Ruckus Networks. Broadcom separately said fixed-service proponents warn of a threat that doesn’t exist. “FS interests now focus on unlikely corner-case interference scenarios in arguing for additional regulation, Broadcom said: “In the vast majority of situations, however, RLANs will not be positioned to raise any harmful interference concerns at all. And an analysis of FS system operations shows that if the unrealistic combination of improbable events conjured by FS interests somehow were to occur, it would not degrade FS operations in the real world.” The record shows “diverse and strong support” for allowing unlicensed use across all 1,200 MHz from 5925 to 7125 MHz, and “broad support” for low-power and indoor-only use in the U-NII-6 and U-NII-8 segments without a coordination requirement, PISC said. “Base policies on risk-informed interference assessments and not unrealistic worst-case scenarios.” The Open Technology Institute at New America, Consumer Federation of America, Public Knowledge, Consortium for School Networking, Access Humboldt and X-Lab signed. They advised caution. NAB warned “no commenter has proposed an effective mechanism for protecting important broadcast auxiliary services operations” in the U-NII-6 and U-NII-8 bands. “Uncoordinated unlicensed use” here “risks crippling interference to licensed BAS services,” NAB said. Given the “already diverse and critical use of the spectrum, it is not surprising that … comments question the viability of adding millions or possibly billions of unlicensed devices into the band without causing interference to higher priority services that already rely on the spectrum,” said the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council.