T-Mobile is picking up a large number of “high quality” subscribers, but most are coming from AT&T or Verizon, rather than from Sprint, T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said Thursday at the Walls Fargo financial conference. Carter’s boss, CEO John Legere, has repeatedly said T-Mobile will soon pass Sprint in total subscribers (see 1410280049). Carter said T-Mobile welcomes a more competitive Sprint. “I think that’s a common myth in the wireless industry that Sprint has to fail in order for T-Mobile to be successful,” he said. T-Mobile is getting “the vast majority” of subscribers leaving AT&T and Verizon, Carter said. The company picks up subscribers at twice the rate it losses them through porting, he said. T-Mobile is watching Sprint closely and it’s “refreshing” to see the company emerge “rejuvenated,” he said. He added that like T-Mobile, the subscribers Sprint picks up will come mostly from “the duopoly.” Carter said T-Mobile is already offering 700 MHz handsets and is aggressively building out the 700 MHz spectrum it bought from Verizon. “It’s a game changer for us,” he said. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, who spoke to the conference Wednesday, said he has made a lot of progress since taking over three months ago. “Sprint is a great company,” he said. “It has an incredible set of employees who are eager to win, who are eager to get back on the winning track.” Claure said that when he started, Sprint was getting only 10 percent of gross customer adds industrywide. “When you’re 10 percent, that means you are not even part of the conversation, you’re irrelevant,” he said.

The FCC Wireless Bureau extended the comment deadline on Recco's waiver request to permit equipment authorization and licensing of Recco’s avalanche rescue system. Initial comments were due Thursday (see 1410140175). The new deadline is Dec. 5 for initial comments, Dec. 22 for replies, the bureau said Wednesday. “The posting of the underlying requests to the Commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System was delayed, which has impeded prospective commenters’ review of the requests,” the bureau said.

The FCC’s long-awaited AWS-3 auction gets underway Thursday with 70 bidders qualifying to take part, including AT&T, Dish Network, T-Mobile and Verizon. “Americans’ demand for mobile Internet access anytime, anywhere will only continue to grow,” wrote Scott Bergmann, CTIA vice president-regulatory affairs, in a blog post Wednesday aimed at consumers. “When you add the Internet of Things which is expected to fuel everything from transportation to utilities and health care, the demand will only continue to grow. This spectrum will help to meet this demand.”

U.S. shoppers who own a Samsung Galaxy S or Galaxy Note device can add "Card Linked Offers" via the Samsung Wallet app for automatic coupon redemption at checkout as a result of a new partnership between Samsung and Coupons.com. The partnership will mean mobile savings for more than 20 million Samsung flagship devices in the U.S., the companies said Monday. With a single tap, shoppers can add coupons from top national retailers and restaurants directly to their Visa, American Express and MasterCard accounts, they said. "We are striving to enhance Samsung Wallet through strategic partnerships and to connect users to more useful content," Samsung said. "As coupon redemption continues to play a more and more prominent role in the mobile shopping experience, our service will allow consumers to save money more conveniently when shopping," online or offline, it said.

The FirstNet Finance Committee plans a special meeting Nov. 17 via teleconference, FirstNet said Monday in the Federal Register. The board will post an agenda online before the meeting. The teleconference is to begin at 9:30 a.m.

Gogo continued to urge the FCC to take action on the air-to-ground mobile broadband service proposed by Qualcomm. Gogo repeated its preference for dividing the proposed 500 MHz band into four nationwide 125 MHz licenses, it said in an ex parte filing in docket 13-114. With a 125 MHz license, each ground station could support forward link capacity of about 400 Mbps, Gogo said. The number of ground stations in a network can be increased “through cell splitting without additional interference to satellites operating in the band,” it said. Auctioning four nationwide licenses wouldn’t increase the potential for harmful interference to primary services in the band, it said. Licensees wouldn’t be operating co-frequency with one another “and aggregate interference would be limited on a per-Hertz basis,” it said. The filing pertained to a meeting with the Wireless Bureau.

AT&T’s buy of Iusacell for $2.5 billion (see 1411070053) gives AT&T less than 10 percent of the wireless market in Mexico, “but could set the stage to later on add regional assets in Mexico that America Movil is attempting to sell or even assets from the bankrupt Nextel International,” BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said Monday in a research report. “The bigger question that will likely emerge is what AT&T plans are for Brazil, which is on the cusp of wireless market consolidation.” Analysts also commented on AT&T’s announcement that it will spend less on capital expenditures in 2015 than in 2014, a 14 percent cut from $21 billion to $18 billion. The announcement seems like a negative for tower, fiber and other infrastructure companies but “the headline may appear worse than the reality” since AT&T “will continue to spend on some important initiatives such as wireless capacity and GigaPower,” wrote Wells Fargo's Jennifer Fritzsche.

The FCC International Bureau dismissed as moot a Dec. 17, 2004, petition by Wilkinson Barker seeking review of Foreign Ownership Guidelines issued the previous month. The law firm sought reconsideration of the rules as applied to common carrier and aeronautical radio station applicants, licensees and spectrum lessees, the bureau said Monday. Wilkinson Barker asked the agency to revise the guidelines to say the stricter review requirements in Communications Act Section 310(b)(3) apply only to direct foreign ownership of licensees and that Section 310(b)(4) applies to all indirect foreign ownership. “Since the filing of the Petition, the Commission has adopted a forbearance approach to section 310(b)(3),” the bureau explained.

AT&T’s decision to drop its plans for an in-flight connectivity service confirms that there are high barriers to entry in the in-flight connectivity business, said Evercore ISI analysts. AT&T announced the change of plans in a Reuters report. At the time that AT&T announced its plans to develop the service, Evercore analysts cited FCC approval of spectrum use for air-to-ground service and high equipment switching costs as barriers to entry, analysts said in a research note. Gogo is the only company to combine telecom service provider DNA with aeronautical DNA, and “both are necessary to be successful longer-term,” they said. No current competitors are telecom service providers, “and speculated competitors have no background in the aeronautical space,” they said. Last week, AT&T announced its intent to acquire Iusacell (see 1411100034), a wireless company in Mexico, an AT&T spokesman said. "At the same time, and after a thorough review of our investment portfolio, the company decided to no longer pursue entry into the Inflight Connectivity industry." AT&T will focus its capital on transformative investments, such as international and video, he said.

Wireless carriers will deploy more than 4 million public Wi-Fi hot spots and 20 million home spots in 2015, consultant Mobile Experts said in a report. "Even if we exclude homespot deployments, the number of Wi-Fi access points will reach the level of millions for cable operators and public venues during 2015, outstripping the capacity of new LTE base stations,” said Joe Madden, principal analyst, in a news release. “Several large mobile operators have made a gigantic blunder, by ignoring the opportunity to deploy Wi-Fi or utilize Hotspot 2.0 -- so cable operators and other service providers are jumping on the opportunity.”