FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler won’t be at CES next week, but all three commissioners expected to be at the agency Jan. 20 are planning to attend, aides to all three confirmed. Wheeler withdrew from going to Las Vegas for the chairman’s annual interview with CTA President Gary Shapiro, usually the regulatory highlight of every CES. Past chairmen have used the keynote appearance as an opportunity to make news. An FCC spokesman said Wheeler had another commitment. FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai, Mignon Clyburn and Mike O’Rielly are expected to appear with FTC commissioners on a 2017 preview panel Thursday. FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez is scheduled to hold a one-on-one session with Shapiro.

President-elect Donald Trump touted Sprint’s Wednesday announcement that it would bring 5,000 jobs to the U.S., which a carrier spokesman confirmed to us was part of an earlier commitment from parent company SoftBank to bring 50,000 jobs to the U.S. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met with Trump earlier this month and made that pledge then (see 1612060073). “Yesterday’s announcement was a demonstration of how we are creating the jobs and fulfilling the commitment,” a Sprint spokesman said. “I just got a call by the head people at Sprint, and they’re bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they’re taking them from other countries, they’re bringing them back to the United States,” Trump said Wednesday, not mentioning the earlier pledge. “And Masa and some other people were very much involved in that, so I want to thank them.” Trump was “intimately involved” with making the deal happen, incoming press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday. “Sprint’s CEO called him yesterday. … Obviously we’ll continue to follow up on this and make sure it happens. But you’re going to see more and more of this. … I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.” A Sprint news release said it “will begin discussions immediately with its business partners, states and cities to determine the right locations in the U.S. to create these jobs” and it “expects to fulfill this commitment by the end of its fiscal year 2017 and will provide additional details when they are available.” The jobs “will support a variety of functions across the organization including its Customer Care and Sales teams,” Sprint said. The carrier issued a statement from CEO Marcelo Claure expressing excitement about working with Trump. The president-elect and Spicer also touted 3,000 jobs they said would be brought to the U.S. by OneWeb, a satellite firm SoftBank invested $1 billion in this month. SoftBank announced the jobs figure in its Dec. 19 release on that investment, saying it’s “expected to create nearly 3,000 new engineering, manufacturing and supporting jobs in the U.S. over the next four years.” There's speculation Sprint may try to merge with T-Mobile under the incoming administration (see 1612090053).

CTA President Gary Shapiro can’t sit back and placate critics of President-elect Donald Trump who “would have me spend the next four years just waiting for a new president,” he said in a Tuesday LinkedIn post in which he expressed hope that Trump's acumen as a business leader will be the "silver lining" of his presidency. To help the tech industry succeed, “we need the right public policies in place,” Shapiro said. “So I must identify opportunities to work with the incoming Trump administration to promote innovation, grow the economy, create high-wage jobs and collaborate on pro-tech policies.” Shapiro, after months of harshly criticizing Trump the candidate (see 1611090038), said he has been surprised “at the vitriol on social media” expressed about his public tweets and commentaries warming to “the positive actions a Trump presidency can produce,” he said. “America has voted, and I choose to be optimistic and see a positive path forward, especially regarding the economy.” Shapiro “genuinely” wants to work with the Trump administration “to foster our industry and build products and services that change our world for the better,” he said. Trump’s Dec.14 outreach to tech leaders in which the president-elect struck a conciliatory tone (see 1612140060) “underscores his commitment to working with our industry -- not against it,” Shapiro said.

Gigi Sohn, a top aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, has left the building. Sohn’s last day was Tuesday, an FCC spokesman confirmed. Sohn tweeted that starting Jan. 16 she will be a leadership in government fellow at the Open Society Foundations. “I want to thank my wonderful @FCC colleagues, from the security guards 2 the Commissioners 4 making me feel like one of the family.” Sohn tweeted Tuesday. Sohn was president of Public Knowledge before going to work for Wheeler three years ago.

The FCC is seeking comment on dozens of rules it adopted in 2001 through 2004 and on what kind of economic impact they have had or might have, it said in a public notice Wednesday. The agency said under the Regulatory Flexibility Act it will review in the next 12 months which rules might need to be amended or rescinded to minimize economic impact. Comments will be due 90 days after Wednesday's notice is published in the Federal Register, the agency said.

The New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) Department protested a Dec. 1 petition by CTIA seeking changes to the FCC’s new wireless emergency alert rules. Implementing embedded references mustn't be deferred past one year, as CTIA requests, the agency said. “Delaying support for Spanish-language Alert Messages would unnecessarily continue to [under serve] communities and if the Commission were to change the deadline to be concurrent with support for 360-character messages on 4G-LTE and future networks and devices, the deadline should be two years, not thirty months,” NYCEM told the FCC. “All devices, not only new devices, capable of receiving Alert Messages, should support embedded references, even if the device is not internet-capable.” The NYCEM filing was posted in docket 15-91. The FCC approved the rules in September over a partial dissent by Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who highlighted industry concerns (see 1609290060).

The FCC listed dozens of major items and other significant proceedings that are under development or review and that pertain to the Regulatory Flexibility Act in Friday's Federal Register. The list -- compiled twice annually -- includes more than 70 separate docket items and their status.

Most GPS devices don't suffer lengthy signal reacquisition problems when in the presence of adjacent band LTE signals, said a Ligado-commissioned study it summarized in a filing Friday in docket 11-109. The study was done by Roberson and Associates and looked at 18 GPS devices made by Trimble, Topcon, NavCom, Motorola, Garmin and Furuno and how quickly they reacquired GPS signals both in and out of the presence of LTE signals of varying strengths and in different bands, said the filing. A variety of GPS companies signed off on Ligado's broadband terrestrial low-power service plans over the past year (see 1612060023).

Globalstar's revised terrestrial low-power service broadband plans got FCC commissioner approval, with the agency on Friday issuing an order for rules changes regarding terrestrial use of the 2473-2495 MHz band for low-power mobile broadband use. The revised proposal -- which has the company dropping its plans to use unlicensed spectrum (see 1611100031) -- went on circulation last week (see 1612190052) after numerous former opponents signed off (see 1612130020 and 1612090043). While the Hearing Industries Association last week said that it still needed more technical details regarding what kind of interference problems Globalstar's service poses for unlicensed users of the 2.4 GHz band (see 1612150041), the FCC in the order said that while there is a benefit to using weak Bluetooth signals for hearing assistance devices and other unlicensed devices operating in the spectrum, especially to preserve battery life, "this design choice does not warrant constraints on users of the spectrum outside the licensed bands." The agency also said that it repeatedly has made the point that unlicensed devices don't get protection from harmful interference and thus more tests to determine the interference susceptibility those devices face from operations in adjacent bands "are unwarranted." Globalstar CEO Jay Monroe said the company anticipates "a busy 2017 as we plan to put our terrestrial authority to use for American consumers and pursue similar authority internationally.” Commissioner Mike O'Rielly -- who was the subject of heavy Globalstar lobbying over the summer -- said in a statement he was "somewhat surprised by the path this proceeding took and the public spectacle that occurred earlier this summer. I did not expect to be the deciding vote on the item, as originally circulated, but once there I went about my normal review to understand the proposal's details and the concerns raised in the record. It was never my intent, nor do I believe that I was the cause of delay in reaching a decision regarding Globalstar’s original proposal. Moreover, it should be noted that I found a lot of merit in that request and did not foreclose the possibility of voting in favor of it under certain circumstances, until the new proposal was put forth." And Commissioner Ajit Pai, in a separate statement said that he opposed Globalstar's original proposal that would have "given [it] special rights to unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4 GHz band ... [departing] from our successful and long-standing policy of promoting innovative, shared access to these spectrum commons" but that the revised proposal eschews use of unlicensed spectrum while still giving the company more flexibility with its licensed spectrum.

Verizon continues to invest in its network, with $17.8 billion in capital spending last year, said Donna Epps, who directs Verizon’s domestic public policy team, in a blog post. “We remain committed to working with policymakers to keep Americans working to strengthen these vital communications systems,” she said. Policymakers at the state and local level “will also play an important role in the coming year,” Epps wrote. “Local leaders can help incent investment in broadband infrastructure -- like in Boston, where Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced a partnership with Verizon this year to replace the city’s copper-based infrastructure with a state-of-the-art fiber-optic network. FiOS became available to order in the first Boston neighborhoods earlier this month, less than eight months since the mayor’s announcement this past spring.” Congress also has a role to play and needs to update communications law, Epps said. “A lot has changed since the Telecommunication Act was updated last in 1996. Services most Americans take for granted today did not even exist then, and large portions of the law pertain to services that no longer exist or have become completely irrelevant such as competition for long-distance phone service.”