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The Wireless
Messaging News

This Week's Wireless News Headlines

• Rural Areas Are Looking for Workers. They Need Broadband to Get Them
• Apple Music announces Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos; will bring Lossless Audio to entire catalog
• Apple’s M1 is a fast CPU—but M1 Macs feel even faster due to QoS
• About Prism Systems International, Inc.
• NEWS - Amateurs’ Email Addresses Will Continue to Be Kept Private
• Technician's Corner
  • High-speed Internet service over a telephone line
• Acquisition Closing Marks Formation of the "New Zetron"
• Inside Towers
  • NTIA Offers Millions in Broadband Infrastructure Grants
• BloostonLaw Telecom Update
  • REMINDER: FCC FORM 395, EMPLOYMENT REPORT DUE JUNE 1
  • FCC Releases Tariff Review Plans for 2021 Annual Access Charge Tariff Filing
  • Reply Comment Deadline for Auction 108 Public Notice Extended to May 27
  • Comment Deadlines on CVAA Public Notice Extended to June 7, July 6
  • Demo Version of NORS Submarine Cable Reporting System Available; Reporting Begins Oct. 28
  • Graves, Guest Introduce High-Speed Broadband Bill
  • Capito, Hassan Reintroduce Rural Broadband Investment Bill
  • 800 MHz Band Rules Eliminated Effective June 14
  • FCC Form 481 Now Open for Certification
  • USAC Releases CAF Map Version 4.0
  • FCC Sends Robocalling Notice to VaultTel Solutions, Prestige DR VoIP
  • Deadlines
  • Calendar At-a-Glance
• Blooston Law Contacts
• Music Video Of The Week
  • “Jezebel”
  • Bernadette Seacrest

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This doesn't mean that nothing is ever published here that mentions a US political party—it just means that the editorial policy of this newsletter is to remain neutral on all political issues. We don't take sides.

A new issue of the Wireless Messaging Newsletter is posted on the web each week. A notification goes out by e-mail to subscribers on most Fridays around noon central US time. The notification message has a link to the actual newsletter on the web. That way it doesn’t fill up your incoming e-mail account.

There is no charge for subscription and there are no membership restrictions. Readers are a very select group of wireless industry professionals, and include the senior managers of many of the world’s major Paging and Wireless Messaging companies. There is an even mix of operations managers, marketing people, and engineers — so I try to include items of interest to all three groups. It’s all about staying up-to-date with business trends and technology.

I regularly get readers’ comments, so this newsletter has become a community forum for the Paging, and Wireless Messaging communities. You are welcome to contribute your ideas and opinions. Unless otherwise requested, all correspondence addressed to me is subject to publication in the newsletter and on my web site. I am very careful to protect the anonymity of those who request it.

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Rural Areas Are Looking for Workers. They Need Broadband to Get Them.

Rural communities have long complained about their lack of Internet access. The pandemic and President Biden’s infrastructure plan are giving them hope for a solution.

Weiler, a manufacturer of asphalt paving equipment, is based in Marion County, Iowa, a rural area outside Des Moines where broadband access is spotty at best. Credit ... Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times

By Ben Casselman
May 17, 2021

As a manufacturer of asphalt paving equipment, Weiler is exactly the type of company poised to benefit if the federal government increases spending on roads and bridges. But when Patrick Weiler talks about infrastructure, the issue he brings up first has next to nothing to do with his company’s core business.

It’s broadband Internet service.

Weiler is based in Marion County, Iowa, a rural area southeast of Des Moines. Internet speeds are fine at the company’s 400,000-square-foot factory, because Weiler paid to have a fiber-optic cable run from the nearby highway. But that doesn’t help the surrounding community, where broadband access can be spotty at best. That is a problem for recruitment — already one of the biggest challenges for Weiler and many other rural employers.

“How do you get young people to want to move back into these rural areas when they feel like they’re moving back into a time frame of 20 years ago?” asked Mr. Weiler, the company’s founder and chief executive.

Rural areas have complained for years that slow, unreliable or simply unavailable Internet access is restricting their economic growth. But the pandemic has given new urgency to those concerns, at the same time that President Biden’s infrastructure plan — which includes $100 billion to improve broadband access — has raised hope that the problem might finally be addressed.

“It creates jobs connecting every American with high-speed Internet, including 35 percent of the rural America that still doesn’t have it,” Mr. Biden said of his plan in an address to Congress last month. “This is going to help our kids and our businesses succeed in the 21st-century economy.”

Mr. Biden has received both criticism and praise for pushing to expand the scope of infrastructure to include investments in child care, health care and other priorities beyond the concrete-and-steel projects that the word normally calls to mind. But ensuring Internet access is broadly popular. In a recent survey conducted for The New York Times by the online research platform SurveyMonkey, 78 percent of adults said they supported broadband investment, including 62 percent of Republicans.

Businesses, too, have consistently supported broadband investment. Major industry groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers have all released policy recommendations in the last year calling for federal spending to help close the “digital divide.”

Quantifying that divide, and its economic cost, is difficult, in part because there is no agreed-upon definition of broadband. The Federal Communications Commission in 2015 updated its standards to a minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second. The Department of Agriculture sets its standard lower, at 10 m.p.s. A bipartisan group of rural-state senators asked both agencies this year to raise their standards to 100 m.p.s. And speed-based definitions don’t take into account other issues, like reliability and latency, a measure of how long a signal takes to travel between a computer and a remote server.

Megan Green left Marion County to go to college and start her career. When she moved home in 2017 to work for Weiler, her father’s company, it was like returning to an earlier technological era. Credit ... Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times

When the pandemic hit, Weiler sent home any workers who didn’t have to be on the factory floor. But many couldn’t work remotely because of slow Internet connections. Credit ... Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times

Regardless of definition, analyses consistently find that millions of Americans lack access to reliable high-speed Internet access and that rural areas are particularly poorly served. A recent study by Broadband Now, an independent research group whose data is widely cited, found that 42 million Americans live in places where they cannot buy broadband Internet service, most of them in rural areas.

According to the F.C.C.’s definition, most of Marion County has high-speed access to the Internet But residents report that service is slow and unreliable. And with only one provider serving much of the county, customers have little leverage to demand better service.

Marion County, with 33,000 people, has economic challenges common to rural areas: an aging work force, anemic population growth and a limited set of employers concentrated in a few industries. But it also has assets, including its proximity to Des Moines and a group of employers willing to train workers.

Local leaders have plans to attract new businesses and a younger generation of workers — but those plans won’t work without better Internet service, said Mark Raymie, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.

“Our ability to diversify our economic base is dependent on modern infrastructure, and that includes broadband,” he said. “We can say, ‘Come and work here.’ But if we don’t have modern amenities, modern infrastructure, that sales pitch falls flat.”

Mr. Weiler’s daughter Megan Green grew up in Marion County, then left to go to college and start her career. When she moved home in 2017 to work for her father’s company, it was like returning to an earlier technological era.

“Our cellular service is more spotty, our wireless is more temperamental, and we definitely only have one choice,” Ms. Green, 35, said. “It’s a bit of a generational thing. We rely on Internet access.”

Ms. Green moved home for family reasons. But finding others willing to do the same has been difficult. Broadband isn’t the only factor — shortages of housing and child care also rank high — but it is a major one. Recruiting is Weiler’s “No. 1 challenge,” Ms. Green said, despite wages that start around $20 an hour, before overtime.

The experience of the past year has accentuated the problem. When the pandemic hit last year, Weiler sent home any workers who didn’t have to be on the factory floor. But they quickly encountered a problem.

“I was shocked to know how many of our employees could not work from home because they did not have reliable Internet access,” Ms. Green said. “We’re talking ‘seven minutes to download an e-mail’ type Internet access.”

While Internet speeds are fine at Weiler’s 400,000-square-foot factory, experts say rural areas in general cannot get reliable broadband service without government help. Credit ... Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times

Other local companies had a similar experience. In June, the Greater Des Moines Partnership, a regional business group, commissioned a study on how to improve the area’s digital infrastructure. With the state and federal governments considering significant investments, the group hopes its study will give it priority for funding, said Brian Crowe, the group’s head of economic development.

For Marion County and other rural areas, the widespread experiment with working from home during the pandemic could present an economic opportunity if the infrastructure is there to allow it. Many companies have said they will allow employees to continue to work remotely all or part of the time, which could free workers to ditch city life and move to the country — or take jobs at companies like Weiler while their spouses work from home.

“All of a sudden, it’s not going to be the case that in order to work for leading companies, you have to move to the cities where those companies are located,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist for Upwork, a platform for freelancers. “It’s going to spread opportunity around.”

But broadband experts say there is no way that rural areas will get access to high-speed, reliable Internet service without government help. If a place doesn’t have Internet access in 2021, there is a reason: generally too few potential customers, too dispersed to serve efficiently.

“The private sector’s just not set up to solve this,” said Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied the issue. He likened the challenge to rural electrification almost a century ago, when the federal government had to step in to ensure that even remote areas had access to electrical power.

“This is exactly what we saw play out in terms of economic history in the 1910s, ’20s, ’30s,” he said. “It really is about towns being left behind.”

50 years experience providing and supporting radio and paging customers worldwide. Call us anytime we can be useful!

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Leavitt sells and supports most pager brands. We stock Unication G1, G5, Secure and some Elegant pagers. Call or e-mail for price and availability.

PRESS RELEASE
May 17, 2021

Apple Music announces Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos; will bring Lossless Audio to entire catalog

The next generation of sound on Apple Music is coming to subscribers June 2021 at no additional cost

Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos and Lossless Audio are coming to Apple Music subscribers beginning June 2021.

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA — Apple today announced Apple Music is bringing industry-leading sound quality to subscribers with the addition of Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos. Spatial Audio gives artists the opportunity to create immersive audio experiences for their fans with true multidimensional sound and clarity. Apple Music subscribers will also be able to listen to more than 75 million songs in Lossless Audio — the way the artists created them in the studio. These new features will be available for Apple Music subscribers starting next month at no additional cost.

“Apple Music is making its biggest advancement ever in sound quality,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats. “Listening to a song in Dolby Atmos is like magic. The music comes from all around you and sounds incredible. Now we are bringing this truly innovative and immersive experience to our listeners with music from their favorite artists like J Balvin, Gustavo Dudamel, Ariana Grande, Maroon 5, Kacey Musgraves, The Weeknd, and so many more. Subscribers will also be able to listen to their music in the highest audio quality with Lossless Audio. Apple Music as we know it is about to change forever.”

Spatial Audio with Support for Dolby Atmos

Apple is bringing Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos to Apple Music. Dolby Atmos is a revolutionary, immersive audio experience that enables artists to mix music so the sound comes from all around and from above. By default, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Apple Music will be adding new Dolby Atmos tracks constantly and will be curating a special set of Dolby Atmos playlists to help listeners find the music they love. In addition, albums that are available in Dolby Atmos will have a badge on the detail page for easy discovery.

At launch, subscribers can enjoy thousands of songs in Spatial Audio from some of the world’s biggest artists and music across all genres, including hip-hop, country, Latin, pop, and classical. Apple Music is working with artists and labels to add new releases and the best catalog tracks, as more artists begin to create music specifically for the Spatial Audio experience. Together, Apple Music and Dolby are making it easy for musicians, producers, and mix engineers to create songs in Dolby Atmos. Initiatives include doubling the number of Dolby-enabled studios in major markets, offering educational programs, and providing resources to independent artists.

“Today marks the introduction of Dolby Atmos on Apple Music — a new music experience that is transforming how music is created by artists and enjoyed by their fans,” said Kevin Yeaman, Dolby Laboratories’ president and CEO. “We are working with Apple Music to make Dolby Atmos widely available to all musicians and anyone who loves music.”

J Balvin said: “I’m really excited to be part of this project with Apple Music because I always want to be a step ahead and I think this is one of those steps. With Lossless, everything in the music is going to sound bigger and stronger but more importantly, it will be better quality. Hearing myself and my music in Dolby Atmos for the first time, it was just crazy, it blew my mind, it’s indescribable. I think fans will really love this new experience.”

Gustavo Dudamel said: “There are no words to describe the immersive, overpowering experience of being a conductor, leading a performance of Mahler’s towering ‘Symphony of a Thousand.’ But now, technology is advancing to bring that experience closer to our ears, our minds, and our souls. Share with me this monumental, live performance with my beloved Los Angeles Philharmonic, remastered in Dolby Atmos audio technology for the first time on Apple Music alongside my collection of Deutsche Grammophon recordings with the LA Phil, in rich, remarkable 3D sound.”

Grammy Award-winning producer, songwriter, and composer Giles Martin said: “Since recording began, artists, producers, and engineers have tried to paint pictures with sound, transporting listeners to worlds they never knew existed, even when the sound came from a single speaker. Now with the dawn of immersive audio, we can take the music lover inside the music. From the feeling of hearing your favorite artist in the same room as you, to the experience of sitting directly in the middle of a symphony orchestra, the listening experience is transformative and the possibilities for the creator are endless. This is a quantum leap in technology – I have so far had the pleasure of mixing some of the greatest artists in history in Dolby Atmos. With this work I have found myself falling into albums I love. There is a unique experience of being able to fully immerse myself in music that, although is familiar, suddenly sounds new, fresh, and immediate. As a creator, it is beyond exciting that we can now share this incredible experience through Apple Music.”

Grammy Award-winning mixing engineer Manny Marroquin said: “Spatial Audio gives music a new identity. Every time I mix in Atmos it gives me goosebumps. The future has arrived.”

Lossless Audio

Apple Music will also make its catalog of more than 75 million songs available in Lossless Audio. Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the original audio file. This means Apple Music subscribers will be able to hear the exact same thing that the artists created in the studio.

To start listening to Lossless Audio, subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music can turn it on in Settings > Music > Audio Quality. Here, they can choose different resolutions for different connections such as cellular, Wi-Fi, or for download. Apple Music’s Lossless tier starts at CD quality, which is 16 bit at 44.1 kHz (kilohertz), and goes up to 24 bit at 48 kHz and is playable natively on Apple devices. For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz.¹

Mastering Engineer Piper Payne said: “The soul and life of the mix is sitting in the extra bits of data that are stored in the lossless file. As a mastering engineer, having the ability to convey the music to the listener at its highest quality is the end goal of what I work for every day.”

Availability

• Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos and Lossless Audio will be available to Apple Music subscribers at no additional cost.
• Thousands of tracks will be available in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos at launch, with more added regularly.
• Apple Music’s catalog of more than 75 million songs will be available in Lossless Audio.

More information, including a comprehensive list of compatible devices, is available at apple.com/apple-music.

About Apple Music

Apple loves music. With iPod and iTunes, Apple revolutionized the music experience by putting a thousand songs in your pocket. Today, Apple Music takes this to the ultimate with over 75 million songs, thousands of playlists, and daily selections from the world’s best music experts, including all of the artists and hosts broadcasting daily across its Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country global live streams. Since 2015, Apple Music has welcomed tens of millions of subscribers in 167 countries and regions. Streaming seamlessly to iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Mac, HomePod, and CarPlay, Apple Music is the most complete music experience on the planet. Apple Music is also available on popular smart TVs, smart speakers, Android and Windows devices, and more — as well as online at music.apple.com.

Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it.

¹ Due to the large file sizes and bandwidth needed for Lossless and Hi-Res Lossless Audio, subscribers will need to opt in to the experience. Hi-Res Lossless also requires external equipment, such as a USB digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

Paging Transmitters 150/900 MHz

The RFI High Performance Paging Transmitter is designed for use in campus, city, state and country-wide paging systems. Designed for use where reliable simulcast systems where RF signal overlap coverage is critical.

• Commercial Paging systems.
• Healthcare Paging systems.
• Public Safety Emergency Services Paging systems.
• Demand Response Energy Grid Management.

Built-in custom interface for Prism-IPX ipBSC Base Controller for remote control, management and alarm reporting.

• Use as a stand-alone unit or in wide area network.
• Mix with other transmitter brands in an existing paging network.
• Adjustable from 20-250 watts.
• 110/240 VAC or 48VDC.
• Absolute Delay Correction.
• Remote Diagnostics.
• Configurable alarm thresholds.
• Integrated Isolator.
• Superb Reliability.
• Improved amplifier efficiency.
• Most reliable high-powered paging transmitter available.

Prism-IPX Systems LLC.

11175 Cicero Dr., Alpharetta, GA 30022
Ph: 678-242-5290 Email: sales@prism-ipx.com
prism-ipx.com

The Wireless Messaging News
Board of Advisors

The Board of Advisor members are people with whom I have developed a special rapport, and have met personally. They are not obligated to support the newsletter in any way, except with advice, and maybe an occasional letter to the editor.

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Apple’s M1 is a fast CPU—but M1 Macs feel even faster due to QoS

Howard Oakley did an excellent deep dive on M1 scheduling and performance.

JIM SALTER - 5/17/2021, 3:09 PM

The Apple M1 is a world-class processor—but it feels even faster than its already-great specs imply. Howard Oakley did a deep-dive investigation to find out why.

Apple's M1 processor is a world-class desktop and laptop processor—but when it comes to general-purpose end-user systems, there's something even better than being fast. We're referring, of course, to feeling fast—which has more to do with a system meeting user expectations predictably and reliably than it does with raw speed.

Howard Oakley—author of several Mac-native utilities such as Cormorant, Spundle, and Stibium—did some digging to find out why his M1 Mac felt faster than Intel Macs did, and he concluded that the answer is QoS. If you're not familiar with the term, it's short for Quality of Service—and it's all about task scheduling.

More throughput doesn’t always mean happier users

There's a very common tendency to equate "performance" with throughput—roughly speaking, tasks accomplished per unit of time. Although throughput is generally the easiest metric to measure, it doesn't correspond very well to human perception. What humans generally notice isn't throughput, it's latency—not the number of times a task can be accomplished, but the time it takes to complete an individual task.

Here at Ars, our own Wi-Fi testing metrics follow this concept—we measure the amount of time it takes to load an emulated webpage under reasonably normal network conditions rather than measuring the number of times a webpage (or anything else) can be loaded per second while running flat out.

We can also see a negative example—one in which the fastest throughput corresponded to distinctly unhappy users—with the circa-2006 introduction of the Completely Fair Queue (cfq) I/O scheduler in the Linux kernel. cfq can be tuned extensively, but in its out-of-box configuration, it maximizes throughput by reordering disk reads and writes to minimize seeking, then offering round-robin service to all active processes.

Unfortunately, while cfq did in fact measurably improve maximum throughput, it did so at the increase of task latency—which meant that a moderately loaded system felt sluggish and unresponsive to its users, leading to a large groundswell of complaints.

Although cfq could be tuned for lower latency, most unhappy users just replaced it entirely with a competing scheduler like noop or deadline instead—and despite the lower maximum throughput, the decreased individual latency made desktop/interactive users happier with how fast their machines felt.

After discovering how suboptimal maximized throughput at the expense of latency was, most Linux distributions moved away from cfq just as many of their users had. Red Hat ditched cfq for deadline in 2013, as did RHEL 7—and Ubuntu followed suit shortly thereafter in its 2014 Trusty Tahr (14.04) release. As of 2019, Ubuntu has deprecated cfq entirely.

QoS with Big Sur and the Apple M1

When Oakley noticed how frequently Mac users praised M1 Macs for feeling incredibly fast—despite performance measurements that don't always back those feelings up—he took a closer look at macOS native task scheduling.

MacOS offers four directly specified levels of task prioritization—from low to high, they are background, utility, userInitiated, and userInteractive. There's also a fifth level (the default, when no QoS level is manually specified) which allows macOS to decide for itself how important a task is.

These five QoS levels are the same whether your Mac is Intel-powered or Apple Silicon-powered—but how the QoS is imposed changes. On an eight-core Intel Xeon W CPU, if the system is idle, macOS will schedule any task across all eight cores, regardless of QoS settings. But on an M1, even if the system is entirely idle, background priority tasks run exclusively on the M1's four efficiency/low-power Icestorm cores, leaving the four higher-performance Firestorm cores idle.

Although this made the lower-priority tasks Oakley tested the system with—compression of a 10GB test file—slower on the M1 Mac than the Intel Mac, the operations were more consistent across the spectrum of "idle system" to "very busy system."

Operations with higher QoS settings also performed more consistently on the M1 than Intel Mac—macOS's willingness to dump lower-priority tasks onto the Icestorm cores only left the higher-performance Firestorm cores unloaded and ready to respond both rapidly and consistently when userInitiated and userInteractive tasks needed handling.

Conclusions

Apple's QoS strategy for the M1 Mac is an excellent example of engineering for the actual pain point in a workload rather than chasing arbitrary metrics. Leaving the high-performance Firestorm cores idle when executing background tasks means that they can devote their full performance to the userInitiated and userInteractive tasks as they come in, avoiding the perception that the system is unresponsive or even "ignoring" the user.

It's worth noting that Big Sur certainly could employ the same strategy with an eight-core Intel processor. Although there is no similar big/little split in core performance on x86, nothing is stopping an OS from arbitrarily declaring a certain number of cores to be background only. What makes the Apple M1 feel so fast isn't the fact that four of its cores are slower than the others—it's the operating system's willingness to sacrifice maximum throughput in favor of lower task latency.

It's also worth noting that the interactivity improvements M1 Mac users are seeing rely heavily on tasks being scheduled properly in the first place—if developers aren't willing to use the low-priority background queue when appropriate because they don't want their app to seem slow, everyone loses. Apple's unusually vertical software stack likely helps significantly here, since Apple developers are more likely to prioritize overall system responsiveness even if it might potentially make their code "look bad" if very closely examined.

If you're interested in more of the gritty details of how QoS levels are applied on M1 and Intel Macs—and the impact they make—we strongly recommend checking out Oakley's original work here and here, complete with CPU History screenshots on the macOS Activity Monitor as Oakley runs tasks at various priorities on the two different architectures.

Providing Expert Support and Service Contracts for all Glenayre Paging Systems.

The GL3000 is the most prolific paging system in the world and Easy Solutions gladly welcomes you to join us in providing reliable support to the paging industry for many more decades in the future.

Easy Solutions provides cost effective computer and wireless solutions at affordable prices. We can help in most any situation with your communications systems. We have many years of experience and a vast network of resources to support the industry, your system and an ever changing completive landscape.

• We treat our customers like family. We don’t just fix problems . . . We recommend and implement better cost-effective solutions.
• We are not just another vendor . . . We are a part of your team. All the advantages of high priced full-time employment without the cost.
• We are not in the Technical Services business . . . We are in the Customer Satisfaction business.

Experts in Paging Infrastructure

• Glenayre, Motorola, Unipage, etc.
• Excellent Service Contracts
• Full Service—Beyond Factory Support
• Making systems More Reliable and MORE PROFITABLE for over 30 years.

Please see our web site for exciting solutions designed specifically for the Wireless Industry. We also maintain a diagnostic lab and provide important repair and replacement parts services for Motorola and Glenayre equipment. Call or e-mail us for more information.

Easy Solutions
3220 San Simeon Way
Plano, Texas 75023
Vaughan Bowden
Telephone: 972-898-1119
Telephone: 214 785-8255
Website: www.EasySolutions4You.com
E-mail: vaughan@easysolutions4you.com

GLENAYRE INFRASTRUCTURE

Service Contracts

I would like to recommend Easy Solutions for Support of all Glenayre Paging Equipment. This Texas company is owned and operated by Vaughan Bowden. I have known Vaughan for over 35 years. Without going into a long list of his experience and qualifications, let me just say that he was the V.P. of Engineering at PageNet which was—at that time—the largest paging company in the world. So Vaughan knows Paging.

GTES is no longer offering support contracts. GTES was the original group from Vancouver that was setup to offer support to customers that wanted to continue with the legacy Glenayre support. Many U.S. customers chose not to use this service because of the price and the original requirement to upgrade to version 8.0 software (which required expensive hardware upgrades, etc.). Most contracts ended as of February 2018.

If you are at all concerned about future support of Glenayre products, especially the “king of the hill” the GL3000 paging control terminal, I encourage you to talk to Vaughan about a service contract and please tell him about my recommendation.

Click on the image above for more info about advertising here.

INTERNET Protocol Terminal

The IPT accepts INTERNET or serial messaging using various protocols and can easily convert them to different protocols, or send them out as paging messages.

An ideal platform for hospitals, on-site paging applications, or converting legacy systems to modern protocols.

Additional/Optional Features

• Database of up to 5000 subscribers.
• 4 serial ports on board.
• Up to 8 phone lines (DID or POTS).
• Can be configured for auto-fail-over to hot swap standby.
• 1RU rack mount unit appliance—no moving parts.
• Easily secure legacy system messages leaving site for HIPAA compliance.
• Only purchase the protocols/options you need.
• Add Paging Encryption for HIPAA compliance on site.

Prism-IPX Systems LLC.

11175 Cicero Dr., Alpharetta, GA 30022
Ph: 678-242-5290 e-mail: sales@prism-ipx.com
prism-ipx.com

NEWS - Amateurs’ Email Addresses Will Continue to Be Kept Private

May 18, 2021

Starting on June 29, all applications filed with the FCC must include an e-mail address for FCC correspondence. After receipt of the initial announcement that all future applications would require an e-mail address, the ARRL out of concern for the privacy of its Members, requested that Amateur e-mail addresses not be made public. This week the FCC agreed, stating in an e-mail to the ARRL counsel that it will continue to “mask” Amateurs’ e-mail addresses from public view in the Universal Licensing System (ULS). The FCC will use the e-mail address supplied by Amateurs to correspond with applicants, including to send a link to the official electronic copy of the license when an application is granted.

The FCC is transitioning to fully electronic correspondence and no longer mails hard-copy licenses. Amateurs are able to view, download, and print their official license grant using the ULS. When a license is first granted, each applicant will receive an e-mail with a direct link to the license. Although the link expires in 30 days, the license itself will remain available in the ULS and may be downloaded at any time by signing into the licensee’s account using their FCC Registration Number (FRN) and password.

On or after June 29, a valid e-mail address must be provided with each application, and must be kept current by filing a modification application as necessary. Under the amended Section 97.23, “The e-mail address must be an address where the grantee can receive electronic correspondence. Revocation of the station license or suspension of the operator license may result when correspondence from the FCC is returned as undeliverable because the grantee failed to provide the correct e-mail address.”

Applicants lacking an e-mail address should consider using the e-mail address of a friend or family member on their FCC applications.

Reminder:

Due to changes the FCC has made to its licensing system, starting on May 20, all Amateur exam applicants must provide their FRN to the Volunteer Examiners (VEs) before taking an Amateur exam. Prospective new FCC licensees will be required to obtain an FRN before the examination and provide that number to the VEs on the Form 605 license application. An FCC instructional video provides step-by-step instructions on how to obtain an FRN through the FCC’s COmmission REgistration System (CORES).

The FRN is used afterward by the applicant to download the official license document from the FCC’s Universal Licensing System (ULS), to upgrade a license, apply for a vanity call sign, and to submit administrative updates (such as address and e-mail changes) and renewal applications.

/NNNN

ARRL Central Division
Director: Kermit A Carlson, W9XA
w9xa@arrl.org

Paging Data Receiver PDR-4

The PDR-4 is a multi-function paging data receiver that decodes paging messages and outputs them via the serial port, USB or Ethernet connectors.

Designed for use with Prism-IPX ECHO software Message Logging Software to receive messages and log the information for proof of transmission over the air, and if the data was error free.

• Option—decode capcode list or all messages.
• Large capcode capacity.
• Serial, USB and Ethernet output.
• POCSAG or FLEX page decoding, special SA protocols.
• Receivers for paging bands in VHF, UHF, 900 MHz.
• Message activated Alarm Output.
• 8 programmable relay outputs.
• Send notifications of a system problem.

• Synthesized Receiver Tuning.
• Selectivity better than 60 dB.
• Frequencies 148-174, 450-470, 929-932 MHz.
• Image Rejection better than 55 dB.
• Spurious Rejection better than 55 dB.
• Channel Spacing 12.5 or 25 kHz.
• Power 5VDC.
• Receiving Sensitivity 5µV at 1200 bps.

Prism-IPX Systems LLC.

11175 Cicero Dr., Alpharetta, GA 30022
Ph: 678-242-5290 e-mail: sales@prism-ipx.com
prism-ipx.com

Wireless Network Planners
Wireless Specialists

R.H. (Ron) Mercer Consultant 217 First Street East Northport, NY 11731
Telephone: 631-786-9359
www.wirelessplanners.com
wirelessplannerron@gmail.com

Technician's Corner

High-speed Internet service over a telephone line is called aDSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) and requires two lines that are “bonded” together. Fortunately most existing telephone lines wired through a standard RJ-11 jack already have four wires (two pairs). Asymmetric simply means that the download and upload speeds are not symmetric or not the same. Download is generally much faster than upload.

When I asked my ISP (Internet Service Provider) to upgrade my aDSL Internet service to a higher speed at first it wouldn't work at all. After the technicians diagnosed the issue (on site and remotely) we found two problems. The first one I had already suspected; the lightning suppressor that I had installed, AFTER one port on my computer got fried during a thunderstorm, only protects the two wires on line one. Bypassing the suppressor and some central office tweaking got me a slight increase in speed.

The second problem turned out to be a little bit more complicated. A standard telephone line will not pass high-speed data due to its physical construction. (Not enough twists in the wires according to the technician — but also the shielding that the better Cat cables have.) The technology of high-speed data over FT-45/Ethernet cables was covered here in previous issues of the newsletter and is well known, but I had never given it much thought as applied to telephone lines. I don't even know if there are telephone lines rated for high-speed data like the various Cat ratings of Ethernet cables.

Some folks are complaining that they are paying for more speed than they are actually receiving. While that may be true, the fault may sometimes lie with the user's in-house wiring, and not the ISP.

Anyway my Internet speed was not going to improve without changing my telephone line to Cat5 or better. The drawing below illustrates how I plan to solve both problems. The first solution splits the two telephone lines into Line 1, and Line 2, then adds a second lightning suppressor for Line 2.

The second solution substitutes Cat7 Ethernet cable for my telephone line. The extra wires in the Cat7 cable will not be used. The Frontier tech gave me this advice as being the cheapest and most practical way to solve my problem.

By the way, my telephone wires run under the house in a crawl space to my office. Unfortunately the insulation on the telephone wires tastes just like bubblegum to mice. They chewed through the previous cable in several places. I had already replaced them once with “Techflex® Rodent Resistant Braided Cable Sleeving.” So I will have to use that again with the new Cat7 cable.

The Cat7 outputs on the right go to my computers and my home theater system. The Cat7 input on the left comes from the telephone company demarcation* point where the shield is grounded (one end only). Here is a parts list with links to the suppliers that I used:

This info may save someone from the grief, expense, and the learning curve that I went through to improve my Internet connection.

* “In telephony, the demarcation point is the point at which the public switched telephone network ends and connects with the customer's on-premises wiring. It is the dividing line which determines who is responsible for installation and maintenance of wiring and equipment—customer/subscriber, or telephone company/provider.” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Also called the “Customer Access Point” or “CAP.”

UPDATE: The changes described above produced an increase in speed from:

Of course the ISP (Frontier) charges for these upgrades and for the technician's visit as well.

A Digital Subscriber Line bond consists of two or more DSL lines joined together. It is achieved by using multiple broadband-enabled phone lines and a bonder device. The bonder device is needed in order to merge the lines together and increase your overall Internet speed.

Brad Dye, Ron Mercer, Allan Angus, Vic Jackson, and Ira Wiesenfeld are friends and colleagues who work both together and independently, on wireline and wireless communications projects.

Click here for a summary of their qualifications and experience. Each one has unique abilities. We would be happy to help you with a project, and maybe save you some time and money.

Note: We do not like Patent Trolls, i.e. “a person or company who enforces patent rights against accused infringers in an attempt to collect licensing fees, but does not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in question.” We have helped some prominent law firms defend their clients against this annoyance, and would be happy to do some more of this same kind of work.

Some people use the title “consultant” when they don't have a real job. We actually do consulting work, and help others based on our many years of experience.

“If you would know the road ahead, ask someone who has traveled it.” — Chinese Proverb

Remote AB Switches

ABX-1 switches are often used at remote transmitter sites to convert from old, outdated and unsupported controllers to the new modern Prism-IPX ipBSC base station controllers. Remotely switch to new controllers with GUI commands.

ABX-1

ABX-3 switches are widely used for enabling or disabling remote equipment and switching I/O connections between redundant messaging systems.

ABX-3

Common Features:

• RJ45 for A, B and Common connectors.
• Manual push button or use Prism IP commands to switch one or more relays.
• Single or Dual Port Control card for IP or Serial connection.
• Form C relay—control local connection.
• Power Loss Indicator.
• Rear Panel Connector for controlling the switch externally.
• Power Source: 5VDC for ABX-1; 12VDC for ABX-3.

Prism-IPX Systems LLC.

11175 Cicero Dr., Alpharetta, GA 30022
Ph: 678-242-5290 e-mail: sales@prism-ipx.com
prism-ipx.com

Acquisition Closing Marks Formation of the "New Zetron"

By Zetron, Codan Limited
May 10, 2021 Updated May 10, 2021

REDMOND, Wash., May 10, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Zetron, a global leader in integrated mission critical communications technology, announced today that the previously announced planned acquisition by Australian-based Codan Limited has been completed. Preliminary details of the acquisition agreement were first unveiled in an Australian Securities Exchange announcement on March 31. Since that announcement, all transaction requirements have been subsequently satisfied and the acquisition has now closed.

Zetron will now be integrated with the North American-based critical communications division of Codan Communications, a Codan Limited portfolio company. The newly merged business will operate under the name Zetron and continue to develop and market the current respective solutions of both businesses. The new Zetron has more than 300 global employees, doing business in over 150 countries on all seven continents of the world. The company will be headquartered in Redmond, Washington (USA), with additional operations in Victoria, BC (CAN), Brisbane, QLD (AUS), and regional sales offices located within the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions.

"The new Zetron combines two businesses that have shared strikingly similar business principles for decades, centered on solution quality and unrivalled customer flexibility, interoperability and service," said Scott French, President of Zetron. "By combining those respective strengths with a highly complementary and integrated solutions portfolio, the new Zetron will bring a uniquely comprehensive range of end-to-end mission critical communications solutions and exceptional customer experiences to our markets."

Zetron has a robust portfolio of innovative communications solutions relied on by customers worldwide to serve hundreds of millions of people daily. The company's legacy as a leader in command and control systems quality and service, is now augmented by Codan Critical Communications' strengths in fixed and transportable base station, repeater, paging and related Land Mobile Radio (LMR) technologies that enable and extend communications capabilities in even the most challenging geographies. Customers range from single position rural emergency communications centers, to large urban command and control centers in federal government, public safety, transportation, utilities, healthcare, education, and other critical communications markets.

Experienced Joint Partners Weigh In

Strategic partnerships have historically been vital to the growth of both Zetron and Codan Critical Communications. Because the solutions of the formerly separate companies are highly complementary, serve similar markets, and are often integrated in end user environments, the companies already naturally share numerous channel partners that are experienced in selling and servicing solutions from both companies.

"The new Zetron represents a really great pairing of companies and solutions," said Michael J. Deakins, President of Valence Mission Critical Technologies, which has been a Zetron partner since 2003 and of Codan Critical Communications since 2006. "While the two were terrific as separate companies, I see the potential for them to be even better together. With dozens of joint customers already, and as a company that specializes in systems integration, Valence embraces the idea of 'one stop shopping' and believes the new Zetron will really benefit both our company and the customers we serve."

Stolz Telecom serves more than 300 critical communications customers across Texas and Oklahoma, and has been a Zetron partner since 2009, and with Codan since 2015. Stolz Telecom President, Robert Stolz said, "Quality and solution interoperability have been core tenets of both Zetron and Codan. I expect putting them together behind products that already strengthen the communications capabilities of one another will provide our customers with significant added value and flexibility."

About Zetron

Zetron, a Codan Company, is a trusted provider of mission critical communications systems worldwide, it's ALL we do. With a comprehensive portfolio of technology solutions, including integrated next generation call taking, dispatch, CAD, mapping, fire station alerting, logging/reporting, Land Mobile Radio (LMR) communications and more, Zetron is relied on by customers in federal/state/local government, public safety, transportation, utilities, healthcare, and other markets on all seven continents of the world. Zetron's relentless pursuit of quality, durability and interoperability has made it one of the most enduring and consistently trusted brands in mission critical communications for decades. Our solutions are backed by world class technical support, training, project management and professional services, as well as a global network of highly capable partners and system integrators dedicated to exceeding the unique needs of Zetron customers. For more information, visit: http://www.zetron.com.

NTIA Offers Millions in Broadband Infrastructure Grants

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Wednesday made available nearly $300 million in grant funding for the deployment of broadband infrastructure. Grants will be awarded to partnerships between a state, or political subdivisions of a state, and providers of fixed broadband service.

NTIA’s Broadband Infrastructure Program was established by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, which defined the priority order.

NTIA will accept applications for projects that are designed to:

• Provide broadband service to the greatest number of households in an eligible service area;
• Provide broadband service to rural areas;
• Be most cost-effective in providing broadband service; or
• Provide broadband service with a download speed of at least 100 Mbps and an upload speed of at least 20 Mbps.

NTIA will group applications based on the priority above that each application addresses.

“As a former governor, I know that state and local leaders have the best understanding of the gaps in their broadband infrastructure. This program will allow states and localities to partner with providers to target this funding toward the areas where it is most needed and can do the most good,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

“NTIA has built durable partnerships with the states through our state broadband leaders network, and with local governments and their broadband initiatives through our technical assistance offerings and other efforts,” said Acting NTIA Administrator Evelyn Remaley. “We are eager to put these relationships to work to ensure a successful program that expands broadband infrastructure in communities that need it most.”

Find more information about the program, including requirements for grant applications, in the Notice of Funding Opportunity published on grants.gov. NTIA is also holding a series of webinars about the program. The next webinars are planned for June 9 and 10.

Selected portions [sometimes more — sometimes less — sometimes the whole updates] of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update and/or the BloostonLaw Private Users Update — newsletters from the Law Offices of Blooston, Mordkofsky, Dickens, Duffy & Prendergast, LLP — are reproduced in this section of The Wireless Messaging News with kind permission from the firm's partners. The firm's contact information is included at the end of this section of the newsletter.

REMINDER: FCC FORM 395, EMPLOYMENT REPORT DUE JUNE 1

Common carriers, including wireless carriers, with 16 or more full-time employees must file their annual Common Carrier Employment Reports (FCC Form 395) by May 31. However, because the 31st is a Holiday this year, the filing will be due on June 1. This report tracks carrier compliance with rules requiring recruitment of minority employees. Further, the FCC requires all common carriers to report any employment discrimination complaints they received during the past year. That information is also due on June 1. The FCC encourages carriers to complete the discrimination report requirement by filling out Section V of Form 395, rather than submitting a separate report.

Clients can send their scanned Form 395 (PDF format) to rdr@bloostonlaw.com for filing, ahead of the deadline date.

BloostonLaw Contact: Richard Rubino.

Headlines

FCC Releases Tariff Review Plans for 2021 Annual Access Charge Tariff Filing

On May 14, the FCC issued an Order setting the Tariff Review Plans (TRPs) to be used by incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs) to substantiate their interstate access service tariff revisions filed in 2021. The 2021 TRPs implement the transitional rate changes and recovery rules adopted in the USF/ICC Transformation Order and the 8YY Access Charge Reform Order. The 2021 TRPs for rate-of-return incumbent LECs also implement the universal service reforms and related tariffing requirements adopted in the Rate-of-Return Reform Order and the Rate-of-Return BDS Order.

The 2021 TRPs can be accessed here: https://www.fcc.gov/2021-tariff-review-plans

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Mary Sisak.

Reply Comment Deadline for Auction 108 Public Notice Extended to May 27

On May 17, the FCC issued an Order granting a motion to extend the deadline for filing comments in response to the FCC’s Auction 108 Comment Public Notice. According, reply comments are now due May 27.

According to the Order, the FCC received 17 comments in response to the Auction 108 Comment Public Notice, including from T-Mobile, which “claimed that the Commission’s list of potential licenses to be auctioned omitted licenses that should be available for bidding and included licenses that should not be available.” On May 10, Fish & Richardson, P.C. (Fish) filed a motion to extend the reply comment filing deadline by 10 days, seeking “additional time to review the proposed license inventory in response to comments filed by T-Mobile and other parties on May 3, 2021, which identify discrepancies between the initial license inventory and commenters’ information about the list of potential licenses to be auctioned.”

As we reported in a previous edition of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, this is the EBS white space auction, and the FCC proposes to offer county-sized geographic overlay licenses for unassigned spectrum in the 2.5 GHz (2496–2690 MHz) band. The band will be licensed with up to three blocks of spectrum. The first license block (New Channel 1) will include channels A1–A3, B1–B3, C1–C3 (49.5 megahertz); the second license block (New Channel 2) will include channels D1–D3, the J channels, and channels A4–G4 (50.5 megahertz); and the third license block (New Channel 3) will include channels G1–G3 and the relevant K channels (16.5 megahertz of contiguous spectrum and 1 megahertz of the K channels associated with the G channel group). Licenses will be issued for 10-year, renewable license terms, and licensees in this band may provide any services permitted under terrestrial fixed or mobile allocations.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Cary Mitchell and John Prendergast.

Comment Deadlines on CVAA Public Notice Extended to June 7, July 6

On May 18, the FCC issued a Public Notice announcing that the deadlines for filing comments and reply comments on its Public Notice of April 7 seeking comment on whether updates are needed to the FCC’s rules implementing Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA). Comments are now due June 7, and reply comments are now due July 6.

The extension is a result of a request by the Accessibility Advocacy Organizations and Researchers (AAOR), for three reasons: “first, due to the scope of the CVAA Public Notice, which “explicitly flags for review nearly a dozen distinct dockets dating back a decade” and implicates several others; second, because of the parties’ involvement in other proceedings pending before the Commission; and third, because the law firms preparing the AAOR’s comments are “legal clinics housed in law schools, which are currently in the midst of transitions at the end of the spring academic semester that result in the departure of numerous student attorneys and temporarily limit the capacity of the clinics.”

As we reported in a previous edition of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, the CVAA was enacted more than 10 years ago to help “ensure that individuals with disabilities are able to fully utilize communications services and equipment and better access video programming.” The Commission adopted rules to fulfill these statutory objectives. Specifically, with respect to access to video programming, the Commission adopted rules supporting access to audio description, closed captioning of Internet-protocol (IP) delivered video programming, accessible emergency information, and accessible user interfaces (making functions such as captioning and audio description settings accessible and usable to individuals with disabilities), and video programming guides and menus.

Further, the Commission adopted rules regarding access to advanced communications services (defined as interconnected voice over IP (VoIP), non-interconnected VoIP services, electronic messaging services, and interoperable video conferencing services), the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program, and accessible Internet browsers on mobile phones. Carriers file the Annual Accessibility Record-keeping Certification on April 1 of each year to certify they are complying with the FCC’s rules.

BloostonLaw Contact: Sal Taillefer.

Demo Version of NORS Submarine Cable Reporting System Available; Reporting Begins Oct. 28

On May 14, the FCC issued a Public Notice announcing that a demonstration-only version of the updated Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) filing portal for submarine cable outage reporting will be available for anticipated filers to facilitate planning and compliance with the new reporting rules. Official reporting requirements are effective October 28. Carriers interested in accessing the demonstration portal may contact the firm for more information.

In a Report and Order of 2016 and Order on Reconsideration of 2019, the FCC adopted a new information collection that requires submarine cable licensees to report specific unplanned outages greater than 30 minutes on a portion of the cable system between submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) or greater than four hours when it affects a fiber pair. Licensees must submit this information using the FCC’s NORS.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens, John Prendergast, and Sal Taillefer.

Law and Regulation

Graves, Guest Introduce High-Speed Broadband Bill

On May 13, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-MO) and Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) introduced the Eliminating Barriers to Rural Internet Development Grant Eligibility (E-BRIDGE) Act. According to a press release, the bill “removes hurdles for broadband projects under [Economic Development Administration] grants, including difficult last-mile efforts that often delay rural broadband deployment. It also ensures that local communities can partner with the private sector in carrying out broadband projects and gives communities more flexibility in complying with their funding match requirements.”

“Over the last year, Americans have had to work, go to school, buy food and supplies, and receive critical medical care all without leaving their homes. The one thing that has made this feasible for many is high-speed broadband. Unfortunately, too many of our communities, particularly in rural America, still lack broadband access. In some cases, just completing that ‘last mile’ is what stands in the way of connecting people to a job or the services they need,” Graves said. “The E-BRIDGE Act bill will help spur projects that get our rural and poor communities online, for better preparing them for medical emergencies such as the current pandemic and for attracting jobs and business for future economic development.”

“The E-BRIDGE Act would implement modern approaches to economic development and create new opportunities for individuals to work, attend school, socialize, and access healthcare in every corner of our country,” said Guest. “This legislation is a strong step towards meeting the goal of ending the digital divide and delivering broadband to every American community.”

Capito, Hassan Reintroduce Rural Broadband Investment Bill

On May 18, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) reintroduced the Rural Broadband Financing Flexibility Act. According to a one-pager released by the Senators, the bill would:

• Support investments in rural high-speed Internet deployment by permitting state and local governments to issue tax-favored Private Activity Bonds and Direct Payment Bonds for broadband infrastructure. Private Activity Bonds are tax-exempt bonds issued by state and local governments used to finance projects in partnership with the private sector, and Direct Payment Bonds allow state and local governments to receive a direct payment covering 35 percent of their interest payments to investors. Each state would be guaranteed $25 million in bonding authority each year, with an additional $1.25 billion in authority allocated among the states according to rural population.
• Create a new federal investment tax credit covering 10 percent of an Internet provider’s investment in gigabit speed-capable broadband infrastructure in rural areas. Specifically:
  • Guarantee each state $5 million in investment tax credits annually - with additional credits available based on rural population - which can then be awarded to rural broadband projects
  • Give states and towns flexibility in prioritizing projects for investment tax credits by empowering states and localities to nominate broadband projects for investment tax credits and giving states authority to prioritize projects when applications exceed annual tax credit limits.
  • Ensure accountability and provide guardrails by requiring broadband projects to be nominated by state or local governments; requiring Treasury, alongside the FCC and USDA, to certify that nominated broadband projects would serve rural areas lacking gigabit-capable broadband infrastructure.

“Since launching Capito Connect in 2015, I’ve been pursuing every angle to ensure rural areas get reliable, affordable connectivity,” Senator Capito said. “This legislation will provide additional funding opportunities for communities looking to invest in rural broadband. I’m proud to team up with Senator Hassan again to reintroduce this legislation that will help close the digital divide in West Virginia and across rural America by incentivizing buildout and expanding financing options.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has made even more clear that Granite State families and small businesses need fast and reliable Internet access to succeed in today’s economy,” Senator Hassan said. “This bipartisan bill would provide rural communities in New Hampshire with new financing options to expand their broadband infrastructure so that every household can get connected.”

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Sal Taillefer.

800 MHz Band Rules Eliminated Effective June 14

On May 14, the FCC published in the Federal Register its Order concluding its 800 MHz rebanding program. As a result, the rules associated with the 800 MHz rebanding are eliminated effective June 14.

As we reported in a previous edition of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, the FCC initiated the 800 MHz rebanding program in 2004 to alleviate harmful interference to 800 MHz public safety radio systems caused by their proximity in the band to the 800 MHz commercial cellular architecture systems, principally those operated by Sprint. Nearly seventeen years after that 800 MHz Report and Order, the FCC reports that the 800 MHz band reconfiguration program has achieved its objective—substantially alleviating the interference risk to public safety in the 800 MHz band.

BloostonLaw Contacts: John Prendergast and Richard Rubino.

FCC Form 481 Now Open for Certification

On May 14, USAC announced that high cost and/or Lifeline program recipients may now certify FCC Form 481. The filing is due by July 1, 2021. As we reported in a previous edition of the BloostonLaw Telecom Update, the Form was open for population but not certification, due to the need for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to grant Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) approval to FCC Form 481. Approval has since been received, and the certify button and bulk certification options are now active in the system, and carriers can make their final certifications.

All eligible telecommunications carriers participating in the high cost and/or Lifeline programs, with the exception of carriers that only participate in Mobility Fund Phase I, must file FCC Form 481 on an annual basis.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens and Sal Taillefer.

Industry

USAC Releases CAF Map Version 4.0

On May 18, the Universal Service Administrative Company released version 4.0 of the Connect America Fund Broadband Map (CAF Map),” an interactive online map that shows the impact of the Connect America Fund (CAF) on broadband expansion to close the digital divide in rural America.” . The dataset that serves as the foundation for the map can be found here.

USAC will update the CAF Map with additional broadband deployment data in future releases as carriers participating in these CAF programs file and certify more locations annually in the HUBB, and as USAC adds more CAF programs to the map. Information in the map is also subject to change as carriers increase network speeds, revise geographic coordinates and address information, and/or correct inaccuracies.

USAC notes that in certain instances, the FCC cost model identifies areas as eligible for CAF support even though these areas appear to be in or near urban centers. In other instances, a carrier’s historic study area (service territory) crosses state lines, and locations deployed in one state may therefore count towards deployment obligations in another state.

FCC Sends Robocalling Notice to VaultTel Solutions, Prestige DR VoIP

On May 18, the FCC sent cease and desist letters to VaultTel Solutions and Prestige DR VoIP demanding that they immediately cease carrying illegal robocall campaigns on their networks and report to the Commission the concrete steps they implemented to prevent a recurrence of these operations.

Investigations by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, in conjunction with the industry-led Traceback Consortium, indicate that these companies each transmitted multiple illegal robocall campaigns on their networks. Should this practice not end immediately, other network operators will be authorized to block traffic from these companies altogether.

“We need to use every tool we have to get these junk calls off of our networks,” said Rosenworcel. “From these new cease-and-desist letters to STIR/SHAKEN implementation to large fines and our robocall mitigation database, we are going to do everything we can to protect consumers from these nuisance calls. We’re not going to stop until we get robocallers, spoofers, and scammers off the line.”

Deadlines

JUNE 1: FCC FORM 395, EMPLOYMENT REPORT. Common carriers, including wireless carriers, with 16 or more full-time employees must file their annual Common Carrier Employment Reports (FCC Form 395) by May 31. However, because the 31st is a Holiday this year, the filing will be due on June 1. This report tracks carrier compliance with rules requiring recruitment of minority employees. Further, the FCC requires all common carriers to report any employment discrimination complaints they received during the past year. That information is also due on June 1. The FCC encourages carriers to complete the discrimination report requirement by filling out Section V of Form 395, rather than submitting a separate report.

BloostonLaw Contact: Richard Rubino.

JUNE 30: STUDY AREA BOUNDARY RECERTIFICATION. In addition to the obligation to submit updated information when study area boundaries change, all ILECs are required to recertify their study area boundary data every two years. The recertification is due this year by June 30. Where the state commission filed the study area boundary data for an ILEC, the state commission should submit the recertification. However, where the state commission did not submit data for the ILEC and the ILEC submitted the study area boundary data, then the ILEC should submit the recertification by June 30.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Sal Taillefer.

JULY 1: FCC FORM 481 (CARRIER ANNUAL REPORTING DATA COLLECTION FORM). All eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) must report the information required by Section 54.313, which includes information on the ETC’s holding company, operating companies, ETC affiliates and any branding in response to section 54.313(a)(8); its CAF-ICC certification, if applicable; its financial information, if a privately held rate-of-return carrier; and its satellite backhaul certification, if applicable.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens, Gerry Duffy, and Sal Taillefer.

JULY 1: MOBILITY FUND PHASE I ANNUAL REPORT. Winning bidders in Auction 901 that are authorized to receive Mobility Fund Phase I support are required to submit to the FCC an annual report each year on July 1 for the five years following authorization. Each annual report must be submitted to the Office of the Secretary of the FCC, clearly referencing WT Docket No. 10-208; the Universal Service Administrator; and the relevant state commissions, relevant authority in a U.S. Territory, or Tribal governments, as appropriate. The information and certifications required to be included in the annual report are described in Section 54.1009 of the FCC’s rules.

BloostonLaw Contacts: John Prendergast and Sal Taillefer.

JULY 31: FCC FORM 507, LINE COUNT DATA (A-CAM AND ALASKA PLAN RECPIENTS). Sections 54.313(f)(5) and 54.903(a)(1) of the FCC’s rules requires all rate-of-return telecommunications carriers to provide line count information on FCC Form 507 to USAC, the universal service Administrator. Carriers receiving Connect America Fund Broadband Loop Support (CAF BLS) must submit this information annually on March 31st of each year, and may update the data on a quarterly basis. Carriers that receive Alternative Connect America Model (A-CAM) I, A-CAM II, or Alaska Plan support are required to file by July 1st of each year. For 2020, the FCC has extended the A-CAM filing deadline until July 31.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Gerry Duffy and Sal Taillefer.

JULY 31: CARRIER IDENTIFICATION CODE (CIC) REPORTS. Carrier Identification Code (CIC) Reports must be filed by the last business day of July (this year, July 31). These reports are required of all carriers who have been assigned a CIC code by NANPA. Failure to file could result in an effort by NANPA to reclaim it, although according to the Guidelines this process is initiated with a letter from NANPA regarding the apparent non-use of the CIC code. The assignee can then respond with an explanation. (Guidelines Section 6.2). The CIC Reporting Requirement is included in the CIC Assignment Guidelines, produced by ATIS. According to section 1.4 of that document: At the direction of the NANPA, the access providers and the entities who are assigned CICs will be requested to provide access and usage information to the NANPA, on a semi-annual basis to ensure effective management of the CIC resource. (Holders of codes may respond to the request at their own election). Access provider and entity reports shall be submitted to NANPA no later than January 31 for the period ending December 31, and no later than July 31 for the period ending June 30. It is also referenced in the NANPA Technical Requirements Document, which states at 7.18.6: CIC holders shall provide a usage report to the NANPA per the industry CIC guidelines … The NAS shall be capable of accepting CIC usage reports per guideline requirements on January 31 for the period ending December 31 and no later than July 31 for the period ending June 30. These reports may also be mailed and accepted by the NANPA in paper form. Finally, according to the NANPA website, if no local exchange carrier reports access or usage for a given CIC, NANPA is obliged to reclaim it. The semi-annual utilization and access reporting mechanism is described at length in the guidelines.

BloostonLaw Contacts: Ben Dickens and Gerry Duffy.

Calendar At-a-Glance

May
May 27 – Reply comments on Auction 108 Public Notice are due.
May 31 – FCC Form 395 (Annual Employment Report) is due.

June
Jun. 1 – FCC Form 395 Employment Reports are due.
Jun. 1 – Applications for USDA Distance Learning and Telemedicine Program are due.
Jun. 7 – Comments are due on Accessibility Rules.
Jun. 7 – Reply comments are due on 12.2-12.7 GHz Band NPRM.
Jun. 10 – Comments are due on Semiconductor Shortage study.
Jun. 16 – 15-Day Access Tariff Filings are due.
Jun. 23 – Petitions to suspend 15-Day Access Tariff Filings are due.
Jun. 24 – 7-Day Tariff Filings are due.
Jun. 15 – Reply comments are due on Semiconductor Shortage study.
Jun. 28 – Replies to Petitions to Suspend 15-Day Access Tariff Filings are due (NOON ET).
Jun. 28 – Petitions to Suspend 7-Day Tariff Filings are due (NOON ET).
Jun. 30 – STIR/SHAKEN Implementation Certifications are due.
Jun. 30 – Replies to Petitions to Suspend 7-Day Tariff Filings are due (NOON ET).
Jun. 30 – Biannual Study Area Boundary Recertifications are due.

July
Jul. 1 – FCC Form 481 (Carrier Annual Reporting Data Collection Form) is due.
Jul. 1 – FCC Form 690 (Mobility Fund Phase I Auction Winner Annual Report) is due.
Jul. 6 – Comments are due on Accessibility Rules.
Jul. 27 – Auction 109 – AM/FM Broadcast Auction begins.
Jul. 31 – Carrier Identification Code (CIC) Report is due.

“Jezebel”

Bernadette Seacrest
@Velvet Note, Alpharetta, GA
Sat May/15/2021

Bernadette Seacrest - vocals
Kris Dale - 6 string bass
Darren Stanley - drums

MENSA MEMBER

If you are curious about why I joined Mensa, click here.

Brad Dye
P.O. Box 266
Fairfield, IL 62837 USA

Life is good!

I am a person in
long-term
recovery.

CONTACT INFO & LINKS

Skype: braddye
Twitter: @BradDye1
Telephone: +1-618-599-7869
E–mail: brad@braddye.com
Wireless: Consulting page
Paging: Home Page
Marketing & Engineering Papers
K9IQY: Ham Radio Page

Amateur Radio
K9IQY

• ex KN9IQY, KN4BK, KM5NK, WB4JCF, ZP5TQ, WA4VXU, WA9RVL, /TI2, /9Y4, /6Y5, /KP4, HH2FJ
• Licensed FCC Amateur Radio operator since 1957
• Licensed FCC First-Class-Commercial Operator/Engineer since 1964