Nearly 80% of U.S. digital minutes in August were spent on mobile devices, reported Comscore Wednesday, citing “the explosion of streaming service choices and user generated short-form video.” Video viewing on mobile devices grew 65% from August 2017 to August 2020, outpacing viewing on desktop, which grew 21%. Digital retail spending on mobile was 31% of Q2 digital retail, up from 16% five years ago. Average online monthly purchases grew from two in Q2 2019 to 4.5.

Seek comment on rules for a 2.5 GHz auction, T-Mobile asked the FCC in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-120. The carrier is expected to be the top player in that auction. “The time between the Commission’s issuance of a Public Notice seeking comment on auction procedures is generally between six and nine months,” T-Mobile said. “To meet these timing requirements and auction the 2.5 GHz band in the first half of 2021 … the Commission must issue a Public Notice on auction procedures in December.”

T-Mobile will cover 40 million in the U.S. with 5G using its 2.5 GHz spectrum by the end of this week, with 100 million by the end of this year and 200 million by the end of 2021, said Neville Ray, president-technology, at a BCG/New Street Research conference Tuesday. “We have spent a long time leveling the playing field on coverage.” Midband 5G will give his carrier an advantage over AT&T and Verizon, he said. “That is where folks are going to see a really differentiated, high-capacity, high-speed performance layer,” he said: “They are going to see it from T-Mobile with broad coverage and ubiquitous coverage very, very fast.” No carrier could provide enough coverage to reach a broad market using high-band spectrum, he said. Millimeter wave has its place but will never “deliver a phone in your hand, wherever you go, with multi-GB speed,” he said: “It is mythical.” Ray said that when the pandemic started, he got nervous as some local governments shut down their permitting offices. Most have gone to online processing, he said. “They worked through the pandemic, work effectively with us, and so now I have this huge volume of permits.” Sprint integration should be mostly complete within two years, and changing over billing could take more time, he said. “We still have a lot of wood to chop.”

ARRL opposed fees for amateur radio licensees in comments posted Tuesday in docket 20-270 in response to an August NPRM. “Licensees in the Amateur Radio Service were not subject to application fees under the earlier statutory provision, and nothing in the current statute or its legislative history conveys any Congressional intent that applications for amateur radio licensees be subject to application fees,” ARRL said. CTIA sought tweaks to proposed rules. “Assess fees based on the complexity of the transaction,” the group said: “Application processing fees for wireless assignment, transfer of control, and de facto transfer lease applications should be based on whether the application is subject to the Commission’s ‘immediate approval’ or ‘general approval’ procedures, since this is a better gauge for determining the Commission’s processing costs than only the number of call signs included in the application.” Assess fees on a per-application basis when all call signs are subject to the same review and “exempt applications from fees when minimal (if any) staff review is required,” CTIA asked. Take into account that “wireless services include a significant variety of systems that will be treated as comparable for application fee purposes under the proposed streamlined approach,” commented the Enterprise Wireless Alliance: The current licensing regime is “both incomplete in that some services cannot be charged a filing fee and … overly complex.”

IEE Sensing asked the FCC to grant a waiver of Part 15 rules to permit equipment certification of the VitaSense sensor to provide unattended child detection functions in a completely stopped vehicle. “Such a waiver would well serve the public interest by saving lives, without creating any risk of harmful interference,” the company said in a Monday petition. The device operates across 4 GHz of spectrum at 60-64 GHz.

Verizon Business plans a virtual event with Apple for global enterprise customers Thursday at 1 p.m. EST to showcase the iPhone 12 lineup. The companies will unveil an iPhone 12 offer for enterprises and bow new options for enterprise 5G, showing how Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband can be used in manufacturing, field service and healthcare, said the carrier Monday. Registration is available here.

Dish Network agreed to lease space on up to 20,000 Crown Castle towers, they said Monday. “DISH will receive certain fiber transport services and also have the option to utilize Crown Castle for pre-construction services,” the companies said. “The agreement encompasses leases on towers located nationwide, helping DISH facilitate its buildout of the first open, standalone and virtualized 5G network in the U.S.” New Street said the deal is positive for Crown Castle and the broader tower sector. Crown Castle has “30% of the US tower market, which could suggest that DISH intends to build to 65,000 towers if DISH’s network build is evenly distributed across the tower companies,” the firm told investors.

Midband spectrum will be the differentiator among carriers as 5G unfolds, with Verizon and AT&T likely to be the big spenders in the upcoming C-band auction, Wells Fargo’s Eric Luebchow told investors Monday. He forecast that Verizon will spend more than $21 billion in the auction, and AT&T $8 billion. T-Mobile “will likely continue to have after the C-band auction, the industry's leading sub-6 GHz portfolio,” he said. By the time the C band is built out, T-Mobile “will have a mid-band 5G network to the vast majority of the U.S.,” he said. Wells Fargo predicted Verizon’s share of the postpaid market will be steady at 43% over the next five years, while T-Mobile will increase its share from 28% to 31%, mostly at the expense of AT&T. “As they rapidly build out a nationwide 5G mid-band network, [T-Mobile] will be the predominant share-taker and only true ‘growth’ story in an otherwise mature marketplace,” Luebchow said.

A field test by CTIA and Southern Co. found interference is an issue for unlicensed low-power indoor and very-low-power outdoor use of the 6 GHz band, CTIA said in an FCC filing posted Monday in docket 18-295. The test focused on a 6 GHz link between Fortson and Columbus, Georgia. Because commercial devices aren’t available, “the testing emulated unlicensed devices by using a vector signal generator, with programmable power levels, modulation, channel size, and duty cycle to replicate the expected radio transmissions of an unlicensed 6 GHz device,” CTIA said: The tests found a device can “reduce the microwave link fade margin by a considerable amount, by 3 to 4 dB in indoor tests, and 5 to 11 dB outdoors.” Commissioners could take up a further 6 GHz order in December (see 2011130045).

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved a waiver for Piper Networks to operate an ultra-wideband train positioning system in the 4243-4743 MHz band in the Greater New York City area and Harris County, Texas. “Piper’s system, which it calls the Enhanced Transit Location System (ETLS), is designed for use on subways and commuter trains to calculate the position of a moving train and provide that information to the trains’ communication-based train control system,” OET said Friday in an order in docket 19-246. “Operation in any other geographic area is not permitted” and would require a separate waiver, OET said.