T-Mobile said it's permanently boosting LTE capacity in Atlanta before Super Bowl LIII. “Big crowds need to be able to stream, search, chat and share all they want,” T-Mobile said Tuesday.

Smartphones originated 51 percent of holiday retail traffic, Adobe Analytics reported Tuesday. Some $126 billion was spent online, up 16.5 percent over the year-ago span, with smartphones accounting for 31 percent, up 34 percent. Overall retail grew 4.5 percent. Christmas Day was again the season's most smartphone-centric shopping day. Visits and spending were 6 and 8 percent higher on weekends for mobile users, and the biggest mobile shopping days were Black Friday ($2.2 billion) and Cyber Monday ($2.1 billion). Conversions on smartphones declined 9 percent vs. the first eight months of 2018. Smartphone shoppers bought 30 percent less often than desktop shoppers, costing retailers $15 billion in lost sales.

The 28 GHz auction's bids stood at $696.2 million after six more rounds Tuesday. It closed at $695 million Friday (see 1901110041), the last day of bidding before Monday's snow day. The most recent round saw many spectrum blocks get bids as the number of those held aside has been falling.

The Blackfeet Tribe and other tribal interests asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to schedule oral argument in United Keetoowah Band v. FCC, No. 18-1129, the appeal of the FCC’s March wireless infrastructure order. The issues "are of profound importance, especially to" such "tribal petitioners because the FCC misrepresents its powers to unilaterally decide whether it must comply with federal law,” the tribe said (in Pacer). Petitioners sought separate time at oral argument, as they got court OK to file their own brief.

New Street Research said a review of filings on T-Mobile buying Sprint shouldn’t be “comforting for those who think a decision is near or nearly certain to be favorable.” The ex parte filings provide the best evidence of what is being examined at the FCC, and by extension, DOJ, New Street said. “We have not yet seen any robust filings on conditions, suggesting that as least so far, the policy makers have not signaled to opponents that they are favorably inclined but would like to know what conditions could ameliorate what they regard as minor harms,” the firm emailed investors Sunday. “We also have not seen new filings on the ‘cable-as-competitor argument’ or the argument that Sprint can’t compete in a 5G world. We interpret the absence to suggest those arguments weren’t working so the advocates are not spending time on them.” The companies didn't comment.

T-Mobile and Sprint committed to keeping New York jobs and disputed Communications Workers of America and Public Utility Law Project concerns at the New York Public Service Commission (see 1901040041). "New T-Mobile will maintain the total number of direct employees in New York for at least two years following the Merger," the carriers replied in case 18-C-0396. The new company’s 5G network investment will mean “thousands” of company jobs in New York, they said. Within a year, the new company plans to employ 3,600 more direct U.S. employees than the two companies would have separately, they said. The deal won't harm low-income or minority communities in New York, “core customers for both companies,” the carriers said: They opposed any conditions. CWA and PULP pay "little to no attention" to PSC jurisdiction, limited to the indirect CLEC acquisition of Sprint's wireline business.

The 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals disagreed with a lower court that last March rejected as untimely a T-Mobile lawsuit against a local zoning board that denied the carrier's wireless antenna application in Wilmington, Delaware (see 1803270047). The appeals court remanded the case Thursday to the U.S. District Court in Wilmington. While disagreeing with T-Mobile that the zoning board’s oral decision qualified as a final action, the court agrees “jurisdiction was proper in the District Court because the timing requirement in the [Telecom Act’s] review provision is non-jurisdictional” and the carrier’s “supplemental complaint therefore relates back and cures the ripeness problem with the initial complaint,” wrote Judge Kent Jordan. “The District Court should thus have reached the merits of the dispute.” Judge Richard Nygaard joined the decision; a third judge, Thomas Vanaskie, retired after argument and conference but before the opinion was issued. Friday, T-Mobile and Wilmington didn’t comment.

Bid commitments in the 28 GHz band auction reached $695 million Friday, up from $694.1 million Thursday, with provisionally winning bids on 2,934 of 3,072 licenses, FCC results show. There were just two small new bids in Friday's final round. The FCC plans to transition to stage 3 Monday, requiring a bidder to "be active on 100% of its current bidding eligibility in each round."

ABI Research forecasts the global smartphone market will rise 4.1 percent to just under 1.6 billion shipments in 2019, with 5G and flexible displays the “catalysts” that will “galvanize” the industry and drive replacement-device growth. For 5G to become the “silver bullet” that smartphone vendors are pinning their hopes on will require that they adopt new consumer messaging strategies, it said Wednesday.

Local governments rejected FCC and CTIA opposition to their request to stay the agency’s September wireless infrastructure order that partly takes effect Monday. In a Tuesday reply (in Pacer) at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Seattle and other cities disagreed they didn’t meet legal burdens of showing irreparable harm or a likelihood of success (see 1901020039). “Although Respondents argue that little significant will occur, that contention is belied by their argument that the Order provides ‘immediate regulatory relief,’" the cities said. Harms to local governments are real and imminent, the cities said. Shot clocks require local governments to respond within 60 days to requests for access to government-owned property, then allow applicants to challenge any action or inaction within 30 days, meaning “there is not merely a likelihood but a certainty that litigation will result,” they said. Significant cost associated with local governments complying with the order will be “irreparable injury,” but a stay’s harm to industry won’t be that much, cities said. Opponents failed to rebut the “central point” that the order “conflates" Communications Act section 253(a) and (c) "by finding that fees that exceed costs are prohibitory and the only fair and reasonable fees are those limited to costs,” the localities said. “If Congress intended to preserve fair and reasonable compensation from preemption even when it effectively prohibited an entity’s ability to provide service, then it cannot be true that fair and reasonable compensation is limited to only that which is not prohibitory. … The notion that Section 253 permits the FCC to accomplish via preemption what it cannot do via regulation simply underscores that the agency’s view of 'preemption' is untethered from Constitutional bounds.”