Companies like Nsight, a small wireless and wireline carrier in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, aren’t afraid to take on big carriers, but rules have to be different, Associate Legal Counsel Larry Lueck told an FCBA session on closing the digital divide Thursday. “When we talk about the digital divide, we live and breathe it every day,” he said. “We need to be treated differently because we don’t serve the big cities.” An FCC Wireless Bureau official said the agency is working hard to wrap up all the rules for a Mobility Fund II auction.

Companies like Nsight, a small wireless and wireline carrier in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, aren’t afraid to take on big carriers, but rules have to be different, Associate Legal Counsel Larry Lueck told an FCBA session on closing the digital divide Thursday. “When we talk about the digital divide, we live and breathe it every day,” he said. “We need to be treated differently because we don’t serve the big cities.” An FCC Wireless Bureau official said the agency is working hard to wrap up all the rules for a Mobility Fund II auction.

There’s a “good distance” between U.S. and Canadian positions on Canadian dairy supply management, automotive rules of origin, dispute panels, government procurement, and a U.S. proposal for a sunset clause in NAFTA that would automatically expire the deal after five years unless all parties agree to extend it, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said during an Oct. 18 press conference. “If we knew where the landing zone was today, we wouldn’t have so much work ahead of us,” Freeland said after the conclusion of the fourth NAFTA renegotiation round in Washington. “I don’t want to sugarcoat things, either for our negotiating partners or for Canadians.”

States are raising concerns about NTIA FirstNet funding level determinations developed for each state. The FLDs released last month laid out the amount of construction grant money a state or territory could receive if it opts out of the national network. Officials from Colorado and Washington, deciding whether to opt out, told us they believe the FLDs didn’t properly account for federal land such as national parks. FirstNet started the 90-day clock for governors to opt out after NTIA delivered the FLDs Sept. 29 (see 1709290040).

Two parties supported Gila River Telecommunications' petition for FCC waiver of a 2014 "National Average Cost Per Loop Freeze Decision," which took effect Jan. 1, 2016. The National Congress of American Indians said the freeze's impacts on Gila River's "bottom line are staggering," with the company expecting to lose $896,000 in support in 2017 and further reductions after that. "Other providers seeking to serve residents in Indian Country are expecting similar excruciating cuts, leaving Indian Country farther behind in the Digital Divide," commented NCAI Tuesday in docket 10-90, responding to a public notice (see 1709070027). The group noted it has a petition pending to reconsider the 2014 decision. Alexicon Telecommunications Consulting, which works with carriers serving tribal lands, said the FCC changed the way a high-cost loop support (HCLS) indexed cap rule was applied to address a "cliff effect" where carriers close to a national average loop cost risked losing all support. The freeze "spread the effects of the indexed cap among all carriers on a proportional basis," Alexicon commented. "While this helped with the 'cliff effect' it also resulted in reduced, sometimes dramatically so, HCLS for many companies." It said Gila River "has done everything in its power" to help the FCC make a decision, submitting its original petition "over 700 days ago," providing "substantial" supporting information and filing "almost continual updates."

​Roku landed a patent Tuesday for an audio device with a cooling fan that turns itself on and off automatically based on the volume level of the content being played. “This reduces the amount of time the cooling device is turned on during playback of the audio content,” says the patent (9,788,111), which is based on an application filed in March and names Roku Vice President Joe Hollinger and Principal Hardware Engineer Greg Garner as the inventors. Synching the operation of the cooling fan to the volume of the content “reduces audio interference, improves the user playback experience, and prevents overheating of the audio device which improves reliability and reduces audio device failure rate,” said the patent. An audio device “that is capable of playing a data stream encoded in various data formats may produce ambient noise during playback” because the device “may need to turn on a fan” to prevent overheating, it says. “This may be the case when the audio device is a small form factor device. This ambient noise may cause distortion in the playback of audio content.” Under the invention, the audio device “determines a volume level of the audio content using the data stream,” it said: The device “then controls a cooling device by comparing the volume level to a threshold value.” Roku representatives didn’t comment on plans to commercialize the invention.

Wireless service slowly is being re-established in Puerto Rico, with 78.9 percent of cellsites down Tuesday, compared with 81.1 percent the day before, the FCC said in Tuesday's Hurricane Maria update. It said 18 of the island's 78 counties have no cellsites up, vs. 23 counties. It said satellite cells on light trucks and terrestrial cells on wheels have been deployed. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 60.3 percent of cellsites are out, same as Monday, including 100 percent of cellsites in St. John. The FCC said two Puerto Rico TV stations and nine radio stations are off the air. The FCC said both public service answering points in Puerto Rico are operational as of Tuesday, as are the 911 call centers in St. Croix and St. Thomas, with location information for wireless callers and VoiP callers intermittently available. Meanwhile, Hurricane Nate had "virtually no effect on communications" during the storm or afterward, with no TV or radio stations knocked out of service and one cellsite out in Alabama, the agency said in its update Monday. It deactivated its disaster information reporting system for Nate at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FCC said it granted an experimental license for Project Loon, led by Google parent Alphabet, to help provide emergency wireless service in Puerto Rico. The project provides coverage through a network of balloons. Loon has consent agreements to use land mobile radio spectrum in the 900 MHz band from carriers in the commonwealth, the FCC said Saturday. “More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, millions of Puerto Ricans are still without access to much-needed communications services,” Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. “We need to take innovative approaches to help restore connectivity.”

Wireless service slowly is being re-established in Puerto Rico, with 78.9 percent of cellsites down Tuesday, compared with 81.1 percent the day before, the FCC said in Tuesday's Hurricane Maria update. It said 18 of the island's 78 counties have no cellsites up, vs. 23 counties. It said satellite cells on light trucks and terrestrial cells on wheels have been deployed. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 60.3 percent of cellsites are out, same as Monday, including 100 percent of cellsites in St. John. The FCC said two Puerto Rico TV stations and nine radio stations are off the air. The FCC said both public service answering points in Puerto Rico are operational as of Tuesday, as are the 911 call centers in St. Croix and St. Thomas, with location information for wireless callers and VoiP callers intermittently available. Meanwhile, Hurricane Nate had "virtually no effect on communications" during the storm or afterward, with no TV or radio stations knocked out of service and one cellsite out in Alabama, the agency said in its update Monday. It deactivated its disaster information reporting system for Nate at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FCC said it granted an experimental license for Project Loon, led by Google parent Alphabet, to help provide emergency wireless service in Puerto Rico. The project provides coverage through a network of balloons. Loon has consent agreements to use land mobile radio spectrum in the 900 MHz band from carriers in the commonwealth, the FCC said Saturday. “More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, millions of Puerto Ricans are still without access to much-needed communications services,” Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. “We need to take innovative approaches to help restore connectivity.”

​Roku landed a patent Tuesday for an audio device with a cooling fan that turns itself on and off automatically based on the volume level of the content being played. “This reduces the amount of time the cooling device is turned on during playback of the audio content,” says the patent (9,788,111), which is based on an application filed in March and names Roku Vice President Joe Hollinger and Principal Hardware Engineer Greg Garner as the inventors. Synching the operation of the cooling fan to the volume of the content “reduces audio interference, improves the user playback experience, and prevents overheating of the audio device which improves reliability and reduces audio device failure rate,” said the patent. An audio device “that is capable of playing a data stream encoded in various data formats may produce ambient noise during playback” because the device “may need to turn on a fan” to prevent overheating, it says. “This may be the case when the audio device is a small form factor device. This ambient noise may cause distortion in the playback of audio content.” Under the invention, the audio device “determines a volume level of the audio content using the data stream,” it said: The device “then controls a cooling device by comparing the volume level to a threshold value.” Roku representatives didn’t comment on plans to commercialize the invention.

Wireless service slowly is being re-established in Puerto Rico, with 78.9 percent of cellsites down Tuesday, compared with 81.1 percent the day before, the FCC said in Tuesday's Hurricane Maria update. It said 18 of the island's 78 counties have no cellsites up, vs. 23 counties. It said satellite cells on light trucks and terrestrial cells on wheels have been deployed. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, 60.3 percent of cellsites are out, same as Monday, including 100 percent of cellsites in St. John. The FCC said two Puerto Rico TV stations and nine radio stations are off the air. The FCC said both public service answering points in Puerto Rico are operational as of Tuesday, as are the 911 call centers in St. Croix and St. Thomas, with location information for wireless callers and VoiP callers intermittently available. Meanwhile, Hurricane Nate had "virtually no effect on communications" during the storm or afterward, with no TV or radio stations knocked out of service and one cellsite out in Alabama, the agency said in its update Monday. It deactivated its disaster information reporting system for Nate at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FCC said it granted an experimental license for Project Loon, led by Google parent Alphabet, to help provide emergency wireless service in Puerto Rico. The project provides coverage through a network of balloons. Loon has consent agreements to use land mobile radio spectrum in the 900 MHz band from carriers in the commonwealth, the FCC said Saturday. “More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria struck, millions of Puerto Ricans are still without access to much-needed communications services,” Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. “We need to take innovative approaches to help restore connectivity.”