The Competitive Carriers Association supports the FCC’s vacant channel proposal, “which is in the public interest and provides ample flexibility for low power television stations,” CCA said Tuesday in a news release. The FCC is proposing to set side vacant TV band channels in every market nationwide for unlicensed use after the TV incentive auction. “The Commission has spent countless hours engaging with both the broadcast and wireless industries to design an incentive auction and subsequent repacking process which will enable the most productive use of licensed and unlicensed spectrum,” said Steve Berry, CCA president: “The FCC’s proposed vacant channel policy clearly serves the public interest by making additional spectrum available for mobile broadband use, and it also addresses LPTV and TV stations’ concerns by extending the translator digital-transition date, allowing channel-sharing agreements and offering assistance in finding displacement channels after the incentive auction.”

There's a need for “straightforward, consistent methodology” for determining whether a public access licensee is actually using the 3.5 GHz spectrum and “accompanying interference protection rights,” CTIA and member companies said in a series of meetings with aides to FCC commissioners, according to a letter posted Tuesday in docket 12-354. CTIA also raised issues to be addressed in a recon order, “including license terms for PAL licensees, power limitations, and the ‘N-1’ auction process.” They also discussed the amount and kind of information “derived from registered Citizens Band Radio Service Devices and exchanged among one or more Spectrum Access Systems (SASs),” CTIA said. It said the FCC should "ensure that SAS operators internally cabin off any data from other portions of their respective business and prohibit them from using this data for any purpose other than for operation of the SAS.” CTIA members AT&T, T-Mobile, Qualcomm and Verizon were at the meetings with aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Mike O’Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel, the filing said. FCC commissioners are considering a second report and order on reconsideration on the shared spectrum band (see 1603110083).

Eighty-one percent of U.S. smartphone users stream video programming on their devices, said an NPD report Monday. While most video streaming takes place over Wi-Fi, video is the top driver of cellular data usage, with the average U.S. smartphone owner consuming nearly 3 GB of cellular data per month, NPD said. Analyst Brad Akyuz attributed growing video usage on smartphones to larger displays and free sponsored data from T-Mobile’s Binge On and Verizon Wireless’ go90 plans. Overall smartphone data usage is being driven by users 25 and younger, who spend twice as much time watching videos on YouTube and Netflix mobile apps as users over 25, NPD said. Smartphone users under 25 average 6.2 GB data consumption for video streaming monthly versus the 25-plus group who average 4.9 GB data for video usage per month, NPD said.

PoLTE Corp. is planning retail and carrier trials this year of its positioning over LTE (PoLTE) location services technology, it said Monday. PoLTE is positioning the technology to chipmakers, wireless carriers and handset manufacturers, which can use existing infrastructure to deliver location services to retail, enterprise, IoT and enterprise markets. PoLTE’s network-based services are said to be able to seamlessly transition from outdoor to indoor locations and track 4G or LTE phones independent of handset manufacturer or operating system. The PoLTE technology platform “enables location functionality, without modifying the handset in any way and protects the user’s privacy,” said the company. The technology goes beyond Wi-Fi and Bluetooth offerings “by providing a cost effective, scalable location services solution that is easy to deploy, use and maintain,” said CEO Russ Markhovsky.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau entered into a consent decree with Taylor Oilfield Manufacturing in which the company acknowledged operating an illegal cell jammer for less than two weeks. Taylor agreed to pay a $28,000 fine and comply with rules in the future, the bureau said. Taylor “cooperated with Commission agents, surrendered the jamming devices, and is a small company that had not previously violated any communications laws,” the bureau said in a notice in Monday's Daily Digest. Taylor operated the jamming device on its property in Broussard, Louisiana, in 2012, the bureau said.

Allowing longer wireless emergency alert (WEA) messages could be technically tricky, representatives from the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee told FCC Public Safety Bureau staff, ATIS said in a filing posted Monday in docket 15-91. Industry attendees came from AT&T, Comtech and Qualcomm: "As each 90 character message is independent, the messages may not be received in the order they were intended, and would rely upon the user to try to put the messages together in the correct order." On including URLs in WEAs, ATIS said "this may result in a large number of users simultaneously accessing a URL, which could result in network congestion," among other issues. ATIS offered “additional information about issues raised in its comments” on proposed changes to alerts, the group said. Its January comments expressed support for the expansion of the maximum permissible length of WEA messages from 90 to 360 characters and numbers, but said industry may need longer than the year proposed by the FCC to comply. ATIS warned that adding URLs or phone numbers to messages “could result in issues within the service provider infrastructure network and may increase the likelihood of severe network congestion resulting in the inability of subscribers to make calls.” ATIS supported Spanish alerts but opposed any requirement for other languages because of “technical challenges.”

If the FCC changes its current rule mandating that old wireless phones be able to call 911 it should give the wireless industry time to adjust, Verizon officials told an aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a meeting. The FCC sought comment a year ago on whether it should eliminate the 20-year-old requirement that “nonservice-initialized” (NSI) handsets -- cellphones no longer connected to a carrier network -- still must be able to connect to 911 (see 1504020047). Public safety groups supported dropping the requirement, but wireless carriers raised concerns (see 1506080043). The docket, 08-51, has been mostly quiet in recent months. Verizon said in a filing posted Monday representatives explained the technical steps Verizon has made to comply with the commission’s existing rule. “These include long-standing network routing and translation configurations that bypass established call authentication processes for 911 calls made over Verizon’s CDMA network,” Verizon said. “Verizon explained that removing this bypass to comply with the proposed rule change could lead to certain situations in which 911 calls from service-initialized handsets are snared in the call authentication process.” If the FCC changes the rule, “We emphasized the importance of allowing carriers sufficient time to comply with any rule change, and the key role that customer education by public safety stakeholders would play in making such a threshold change to this longstanding 911 policy,” Verizon said. Public safety requested the rule change, citing prank calls to call centers made on NSI phones.

Apple and the federal government are headed for a closely watched showdown in U.S. District Court in Riverside, California, Tuesday over an order to compel the company to help FBI investigators get access to an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 San Bernardino mass shooting (see 1602170068). Federal Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym will hear the case -- scheduled for 1 p.m. PDT -- that may have wider international implications. Apple wants Pym to dismiss the case, saying the government is misapplying the All Writs Act to force Apple to create new software that would help investigators break into the device (see 1603160060) and would set a precedent to permit the government to create back doors for all devices. DOJ and the FBI have argued the act has been "regularly invoked" and have mostly said it wouldn't set a precedent (see 1603110010). But FBI Director James Comey acknowledged earlier this month at a congressional hearing that any decision could be "potentially precedential," though not binding (see 1603010013). Some who expect the case would head to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and possibly up to the Supreme Court (see 1602220026) have said the case could have reverberations across the world and affect millions of people (see 1603040023). “The outcome of this case could not be more important for the future of privacy and security in the digital age," American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Alex Abdo said Monday in a statement. "If the FBI wins, it will have gained the power to force the tech companies to hack their customers. This is a reckless pursuit that threatens to undermine the security of all our devices, not just the one phone at issue in the case.” But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote in a Time opinion piece Thursday that "Apple is not fighting for privacy; it's fighting for profit." The FBI's request isn't different from other Fourth Amendment approved searches and wouldn't affect Americans' privacy, he said.

The move of major U.S. wireless carriers to installment sales for handsets “has been a big driver of improved industry profitability given the accounting treatment,” UBS said Friday in a note to investors. But the plans also have a second effect, lengthening upgrade cycles for postpaid phones, UBS said. Postpaid subscribers now keep handsets for 3.3 years on average, up from 2.8 years in 2011, the firm said. “This is putting pressure on upgrade rates, which is in turn driving lower churn and fewer gross adds. We believe this will be a key theme for 1Q earnings, driving another quarter of strong sector profitability, especially at AT&T and Verizon.” At Sprint, UBS predicted low upgrade rates and churn in Q1 “will drive slower, albeit positive, sub growth.” T-Mobile will benefit with continuing strong growth, the analysts said. UBS also said it's paring back estimated handset losses for AT&T and continues to expect slight handset growth at Verizon. “In aggregate, we estimate the upgrade rate will reach a record low for the group [UBS estimates 6.2 percent], while postpaid churn continues to improve,” UBS said. “These metrics have been closely correlated for the past 2 years, and apart for record activity in 4Q14 with the iPhone 6, both have consistently fallen.”

The FCC established a pleading cycle on US Cellular’s proposed buy of a single lower 700 MHz B-block license from Hershey Cooperative Telephone. The block covers a single cellular market area in Nebraska. “The Applicants assert that, as a result of this proposed transaction, USCC would hold sufficient Lower 700 MHz spectrum in this CMA to allow for a 10 X10 megahertz LTE deployment,” a public notice said. The buy would give a US Cellular subsidiary 61 MHz of below 1-GHz spectrum in four counties around Keith, Nebraska, the PN said. The FCC also sent both companies a series of questions on the deal.