A new broadcast television standard, technical advancements and pilot projects that test new capabilities and applications are providing public television stations more ways to support public safety through datacasting.

The FCC granted a request by the county of San Diego for a waiver of FCC rules to allow it to submit a letter of concurrence from a short-spaced licensee that lacks the requisite certification that the licensee is constructed and operational

Sen. Ted Cruz stepped in on the issue of 700 MHz interference with public-safety communications networks at the Mexican border. The senator sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requesting their quick attention to Altán Redes (Altán), which plans to begin operations of its wholesale wireless 700 MHz network in Mexico.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai appointed Jeffrey Prince as chief economist of the FCC. Prince serves as a professor of business economics and public policy at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

The FCC is seeking comment on a request by Hydroid for a waiver of the FCC’s rules to allow the operation of unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) devices that emit steerable directional beams at power levels that exceed the limits in the 5.725 – 5.85 GHz band.

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau entered into a consent decree to resolve its investigation into whether Frank Reimer operated an illegal GPS signal jamming device in the vicinity of the Newark International Airport in New Jersey.

Airbus Aerial was granted a waiver by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operations in Grand Forks, North Dakota, without the need for a visual observer.

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau proposed fines and issued a formal industry warning related to devices that apparently caused interference to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) terminal doppler weather radar station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Enforcement Bureau proposed three separate $25,000 fines against wireless internet service providers Boom Solutions, Integra Wireless, and WinPR.

USTelecom said its pilot program to more accurately map broadband coverage pinpointed flaws in the current mapping and found that using state-of-the-art technology and datasets can help precisely identify and geocode every structure in a geographic area that can receive broadband.

An Illinois district judge denied a motion from Hytera Communications to dismiss a patent infringement suit brought against it by Motorola Solutions in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.