The Apple Inc. A1203 GSM Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, FCC ID: BCGA1203, is in compliance with the limits for general population uncontrolled exposure specified in FCC 2.1093.
The language might be dry but the subject matter is red-hot. That’s the bureaucratic go-ahead for one of the year’s hottest consumer releases, the Apple iPhone, which yesterday received the required certification from the Federal Communications Commission for sale to the public.
While the FCC’s action was not a surprise, it is nonetheless a critical step on the road to Apple’s participation in the burgeoning mobile phone market. FCC approval is required before a company can begin selling a device that uses the public airwaves. Not surprisingly, Apple was delighted with the news.
The iPhone has passed its required FCC certification milestones and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands and fingers on it. – Natalie Kerris, Director of Apple Music PR
said in a statement.
Features Under Wraps
As part of its filings with the FCC, Apple submitted a letter from Robert Steinfeld, the company’s EMC & Wireless Compliance Manager, requesting that photographs of the iPhone and the user manual remain temporarily confidential.
Although Apple has begun to market the device publicly, these documents reveal technical and design information that has not been publicly disclosed in such marketing and that is protected by Apple as confidential and proprietary trade secrets.
–Steinfeld
However, a few features of the upcoming phone were mentioned by the documents the FCC made public. As indicated in the opening sentence, the phone will come equipped with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. However, the FCC documents indicate that the phone will operate in the 850-MHz and 1,900-MHz bands for the U.S. markets; the documents do not mention that it will be a quad-band world phone, a capability that Apple has been promoting. The filings did confirm the widely reported assumption that the phone will use the EDGE wireless data standard. That standard is already lagging behind more recently implemented wireless data transmission rates, including those of AT&T/Cingular, the iPhone’s sole carrier.
Rebound from Rumors
Nonetheless, the FCC decision is helping Apple rebound from a rumor, first reported by the tech blog Engadget, that the release date for the iPhone was being pushed back until October. The original Engadget report sent Apple stock crashing on Wednesday to the (i)tune of $4 billion. The stock largely recovered later in the afternoon, after it was discovered that the e-mail was a hoax.