The American Petroleum Institute filed a letter at the FCC supporting the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s October 2013 4.9 GHz national plan. NPSTC said critical infrastructure industries (CII) should be allowed to use the band on a shared co-primary basis with public-safety agencies and frequency coordination in the band. API represents oil and gas producers and associated industries. The NPSTC plan “includes frequency coordination to help minimize interference, bandwidth limits to increase spectral efficiency, provisions for new airborne and robotic applications to enhance incident response and opportunities for spectrum access by critical infrastructure,” API said. “Allowing CII to share 4.9 GHz spectrum with public safety would provide an efficient use of the spectrum and would provide for a migration point for those applications currently grandfathered in the 3.65 GHz band.” The filing was posted Friday in docket 07-100.

Sprint is putting new emphasis on pursuing business customers and hired a former executive from Vodafone to do so, it said Friday. Jan Geldmacher, who formerly led Vodafone Global Enterprise, is joining Sprint as president-enterprise, reporting directly to CEO Marcelo Claure. “Sprint’s network, now performing at its highest levels, is prepared to serve national business clients with many lines, devices and mobility issues,” Sprint said in a news release. “Under Geldmacher’s leadership, Sprint will begin aggressively targeting and serving enterprise companies of all sizes.”

The 800 MHz Transition Administrator (TA) said the 800 MHz rebanding continues to progress, now focused on some of the last licensees to retune, along the border with Mexico. “The primary focus” during Q1 “continued to be the reconfiguration of Mexican border licensees,” the TA said in a quarterly report. As of March 31, all of the 127 frequency reconfiguration agreements expected for Mexican border licensees had been submitted to the TA, the report said. Mexican border licensees “retuned, reflashed, or replaced approximately 24,900 radios (first touches) in the first quarter … raising the total number complete to approximately 119,300 radios as of March 31,” the TA said. The administrator said all retunings must proceed on schedule. “A delay in the completion of an implementation task by a licensee that has a downstream impact on other licensees (i.e., by blocking another licensee’s replacement frequencies or because the first touch of its subscriber units needs to be completed before an interoperable licensee can retune its infrastructure) can have a cascading effect and cause delays for other dependent licensees and, in some cases, for an entire region,” the report said. The 800 MHz rebanding has been underway for almost 12 years, since the FCC approved its 800 MHz rebanding order, aimed at addressing interference to public safety radios in the band by Nextel, which later merged with Sprint. This month is the order's 12th anniversary. The rebanding initially was expected to be completed in June 2008. Sprint had paid out $1.95 billion as of March 31, to cover the cost of the rebanding, the TA said.

Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri believes 4G as a business “is far from finished,” he said on a Thursday earnings call. The “underlying demand” for 4G for capacity and speed “remains strong and is not simply on hold waiting for 5G to happen,” Suri said. “Thus, 4G will have to continue to develop even as the focus starts to move towards 5G.” Nokia’s view “at a high level” is that 5G will be rolled out “relatively quickly in a small number of countries,” such as the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea, Suri said. In other countries, "4G and evolutions of 4.5G, in particular, will prevail for some time,” he said. Even in countries that move more quickly than others toward 5G adoption, “4G is not going anywhere just yet,” he said. Long term, Nokia sees 5G being a “complement” to 4G “for some time,” rather than “a full replacement as we have seen in previous generations,” he said. “Early 4G systems were not built to support features such as multiple carrier aggregation that are already in demand today,” Suri said. “This means that modernization of both hardware and software will need to take place in many networks prior to large-scale 5G deployment.” Though it’s clear there will be some “dip in the market” as the industry transitions “from one technology generation to the next, some of that will likely be mitigated by one or more additional waves of 4G evolution,” he said.

Motorola Solutions hopes to have a role in FirstNet and is part of at least one of the bids in response to the request for proposals to help build the national public safety network, CEO Greg Brown said on an earnings call. “We've obviously participated in the RFP response,” Brown said. “I think we're very well positioned for a combination of reasons. No. 1 is our expertise in public safety. No. 2, is our go-to-market strength and customer intimacy and sales force.” Motorola also has a “unique ability” to link public safety LTE with the public safety local area network systems that already are installed, he said. “I like the position that we have,” Brown said Thursday. “I like how we have responded to the RFP, and we'll leave it up to the customer to decide what the right architecture and consortium is to go forward.” Motorola, traditionally a major supplier of public safety radio systems, was rumored to be a likely contender for the FirstNet contract as part of a consortium (see 1606100064). Motorola Solutions also reported Q2 earnings.

T-Mobile saw a positive in National Advertising Review Board (NARB) panel recommendations on the carrier’s “Ditch and Switch” campaign (see 1608030066), a spokesman emailed. “We’re pleased that the NARB found that our ‘Ditch and Switch’ advertising campaign is clear and accurate, while providing good guidelines for future ads.”

The automotive business is experiencing “an unprecedented social and technological transformation” due to increasingly intelligent connectivity and autonomous vehicles, with the car “getting an upgrade as never seen before,” said Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal on an earnings call Thursday. The company reported a 12 percent rise in revenue in fiscal Q1 to $1.9 billion but cautioned on 2018 revenue due to staggered timing of automotive program launches. Longer term, the company believes it will have revenue growth from its automotive backlog, higher margin automotive services and increasing demand for connected car and autonomous driving technologies. Last-quarter revenue at its connected car unit rose 11 percent to $843 million from the year-ago period, the company said. Shares closed up 7 percent Thursday to $87.54.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau said it will allow three electric utilities owned by FirstEnergy to share 700 and 800 MHz public safety frequencies with Ohio’s Multi-Agency Radio Communications System, consistent with a request by the state. In making the request, the state and the utilities said public safety agencies and the public “rely on the safe and reliable operation of the FirstEnergy electric grid,” the bureau said. But the order contains a caveat. Future use of the 700 MHz spectrum depends on the outcome of the commission’s pending rulemaking on nongovernmental use of 700 MHz public safety broadband spectrum, the bureau said. “In response to a request for declaratory ruling filed by the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, the Commission declined to address the scope of permissible non-governmental use of 700 MHz broadband spectrum by utilities,” the bureau said. “We emphasize to the Parties that they accept the instant waiver at their own risk and that our decision does not prejudge the outcome of the pending rulemaking, supra, or any other future action the Commission may take to define permissible non-governmental use of 700 MHz public safety spectrum.”

Samsung and carriers began taking preorders Wednesday for the Samsung Galaxy Note7, sweetening the deal for the pricey premium phone with a free Samsung Gear Fit2 (valued at $179, but selling at Best Buy for $149) or a 256 GB memory card (valued at $249 but selling at Amazon for $199) while supplies last. Terms are $0 down and $36/month over 24 months, said the Verizon website. Verizon is offering a waived activation fee to online customers and will credit up to $300 on a trade-in of select working devices for new activations only. AT&T Wireless gave an $879 retail price broken out to $0 down and $29.34 over 30 months to qualified buyers. It's offering a buy-one-get-one deal for the phone under its Next plan ($70 minimum data plan per month), with the second phone free after $695 in payments, said the website. Qualcomm, meanwhile, took credit for technologies in the Note7 in a news release Wednesday saying the phone uses the Snapdragon 820 processor with an integrated X12 LTE modem, Adreno 530 graphics processor, 680 DSP and Haven, which it called a “secure foundation” for iris scanning. The Snapdragon 820 supports 4K video capture and playback and support for slow motion video at 240 frames per second, Qualcomm said.

It’s a “misconception” that the increasing number of competitors entering the “crowded” wearables market created a “significant headwind” for Fitbit, CEO James Park said on an earnings call. "Most of these entrants have not altered the competitive dynamics.” Smartphone penetration “provides a reasonable point of comparison for addressable opportunities in different markets,” he said Tuesday. By the end of Q2, Fitbit shipped a “lifetime total” of 35.6 million devices in the U.S., he said. That’s 15 percent of the base of 230 million smartphones, he said. “In terms of unit shipments versus the addressable market, we're not even close,” which means "opportunity for growth,” he said. The company's stock closed up 13 percent Wednesday to $14.93.