Qualcomm unleashed its first corporate image campaign Monday hoping to make IoT technology relevant and to "humanize" it to mainstream consumers, according to a report in Adweek. A 1:16 YouTube video montage shows a child with a smartphone with a female voiceover that asks, “When will everything work together?” The ad points out the threats and benefits of technology. While a distracted adult male driver is fiddling with the touch screen on his car's navigation unit, his autonomous car screeches to a halt when onboard sensors track a runner jogging on a crosswalk in front of the vehicle. “When we connected the phone to the Internet, the phone became smart,” the voice says, showing a smartphone taking the heart rate of a child in bed. The video montage shows a drone flying through a disaster scene, with the suggestion it will provide aid, and that’s followed by a charging table with resonant wireless charging such as the Qualcomm-backed Rezence system. “When we connect billions more things, life will be even smarter,” the voice tells us. The commercial ends with the Qualcomm tagline, “Why Wait,” with “#whywait to join the discussion.”

Public safety groups urged the FCC and Department of State to “intensify” efforts to implement a 2012 agreement with Mexico on the 800 MHz transition along the border. The 800 MHz rebanding is “essentially complete” everywhere else, but the border region has lagged behind, the groups said Monday. Mexican officials haven't directed Mexican 800 MHz operators in the border area to retune their radios, the groups said. Public safety operations along the border still face the “risk of harmful interference” due to the delay, the groups said. APCO signed the letter, as did the International Association of Chiefs of Police, International Association of Fire Chiefs, National Association of State EMS Officials and National Sheriffs’ Association.

The FCC made several changes to its rules to implement decisions made at the World Radiocommunication Conferences held in 2007 and 2012. Typical of the changes, the Monday order revises its table of frequency allocations to allocate the 135.7-137.8 kHz band to the amateur service on a secondary basis, raise the secondary amateur service allocation in the 1900-2000 kHz band to primary status and allocate the 5091-5150 MHz band to the aeronautical mobile service on a primary basis “for Federal and non-Federal use, limited to aeronautical mobile telemetry (AMT) for flight testing of aircraft and ‘Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System.’”

The FCC should still sell spectrum blocks, even if they're compromised by interference, in the TV incentive auction, T-Mobile representatives said in a meeting with members of the FCC’s Incentive Auction Task Force. “Spectrum with impairments of up to 50 percent nonetheless retains considerable value and should be auctioned. Impairments are best avoided, of course,” T-Mobile said. “But where impairments cannot be avoided, impairments should be placed in the uplink blocks, where solutions are easier to implement, rather than the downlink band, where solutions are more costly and time consuming.” T-Mobile also reiterated its position that the FCC should hold the incentive auction as scheduled in early 2016 and increase the quantity and quality of the reserve spectrum sold in the auction. Reserve spectrum is set aside for competitors to Verizon and AT&T. “Specifically, the Commission should increase the reserve to 50 percent of the available spectrum” and sell the least impaired blocks as reserve spectrum, T-Mobile said. The ex parte filing on the meeting was posted in docket 14-14 Monday.

Competitive carriers formed a new coalition, SaveWirelessChoice, to fight against what they see as Verizon and AT&T domination of the wireless market. Initial members include Comptel, the Competitive Carriers Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, C Spire, Dish Network, NTCA, the Rural Wireless Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and other companies and associations. “The members of SaveWirelessChoice are united by a single issue that holds massive consequences for U.S. consumers, businesses and the entire broadband economy -- and that is whether the future of wireless will be dominated by a duopoly or by competition,” said CCA President Steve Berry. The 600 MHz spectrum offered in the TV incentive auction is “the last prime spectrum real estate available,” the group said in a news release. “It is critical to ensure that smaller wireless providers have fair access to enough low-band spectrum to meaningfully compete against the country’s two largest carriers -- AT&T and Verizon -- who already own nearly three quarters of this valuable spectrum nationwide.” Public Knowledge joined the Save Wireless Choice Coalition, the group said in a news release Monday. “We can’t let AT&T and Verizon, the two largest carriers, completely dominate the wireless market by buying up all the spectrum licenses,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “This lack of competition drives prices up for consumers and encourages carriers to overlook updating their own networks.” Mobile Future fired back. “As consumer demand for mobile connectivity skyrockets, all wireless carriers need access to additional spectrum to support the millions of data hungry consumers devouring exponentially more bandwidth each year," the group said. "With Sprint leading the spectrum holdings pack and T-Mobile loudly touting more spectrum per subscriber than any other wireless provider, calls to 'help' Sprint and T-Mobile through spectrum set asides at taxpayer expense are misguided and gratuitous.”

Verizon updated FCC officials on its allegations that Dish Network manipulated bidding in the AWS-3 auction, said an ex parte filing posted Monday. Dish indirectly captured the second-most spectrum of any player in the auction, behind AT&T, but at a discounted price through designated entities (DEs) Northstar and SNR Wireless (see 1501300051). Verizon officials were accompanied at the meetings described in the filing by Leslie Marx, professor of economics at Duke University, said the filing in docket 14-78. “Dr. Marx concluded that the auction data reveal extensive evidence of collusion by DISH, Northstar and SNR, which violates antitrust law and the Commission’s rules and policies,” Verizon said. “DISH and the DEs frequently bid on the same licenses in the same rounds while other bidders were active, which created the false perception that multiple other parties were interested in those licenses (though did so generally without bidding each other up),” Verizon said. “After competing bidders dropped out, DISH and the DEs avoided bidding against one another. This conduct is indicative of a bidding ring, intended to drive out competitors and then suppress rivalry among the ring members.” The two Dish DEs appeared to divide markets between them, Verizon said. Dish also “colluded with the DEs to exit the auction early, without risk and without penalty,” Verizon said. “It did this by ensuring that, when DISH exited the auction following round 20 when it was the high bidder on several hundred licenses, the DEs topped its previous high bids on virtually all those licenses.” Verizon said its representatives met with Wireless Bureau Chief Roger Sherman and Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, among others. Dish is confident it complied with the law during the auction, a spokesman responded. “Our approach -- which was fully and publicly disclosed ahead of the auction -- was based on DE investment structures that have been approved by the FCC in past wireless spectrum auctions, including structures used by Verizon,” he said. “Participation by small businesses through the DE program helped make the AWS-3 auction, on a gross and net basis, the most successful spectrum auction in FCC history.”

Acer is expanding its smartphone business to the U.S. with its June introduction of the Liquid M220 smartphone at $79.99 through Microsoft stores. Acer concedes that smartphones are a “busy market,” CEO Jason Chen told a company event in New York Thursday. “Some people say it’s not a very healthy industry.” Acer’s smartphones’ “reach” now extends to more than 50 countries, he said. In smartphones, “we doubled our business again last year,” he said. So volatile is the smartphone space that “more people will try to exit the segment than will try to enter the segment,” Chen said. That’s because “there’s only one company that’s making any profit meaningfully in this segment, and we know which one,” Chen said, in one of several unnamed nods to Apple made by Acer executives throughout the presentation. “If there’s not enough profit, people will try to exit, and our strategy here is to make sure we go through our own learning curve while the industry is going through its consultation process." Windows 10 “is a big, big thing for us,” said S.T. Liew, president of Acer’s Smartphone Business Group, of the M220 smartphone soon to debut in the U.S. “This year was the first time that here in smartphone we decided that we shall do a Windows 10 phone and we shall make it successful.”

Friday’s release of the Apple Watch prompted the National Safety Council to issue an advisory warning consumers that smart watches and driving don’t mix. “Numerous studies have shown that drivers using cell phones significantly increase their risk of being involved in a crash,” the council said in a statement. Smart watches, “which have capabilities similar to smart phones, could be even riskier,” the council said, citing a study by the U.K.’s Transport Research Lab. “Drivers wearing smart watches can call, text, email and surf the web, but the watch also vibrates when it receives a notification,” the council said. “That vibration could be very difficult to ignore,” as human “impulse” will be to look at one’s wrist, it said. “This could take a driver’s eyes off the road and mind off the drive -- a recipe for disaster.” Anyone who buys a smart watch should turn it off or remove it before getting behind the wheel, the council said. “All calls can kill, and no text, email or social media update is worth a life.” Apple representatives didn’t comment.

Declan Byrne, president of the WiMAX Forum, and officials from Hitachi, Honeywell and the Federal Aviation Administration updated FCC officials on the forum's efforts to “develop a consensus within the aviation industry over possible service rules to facilitate the deployment of the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System,” an ex parte filing said. The World Radiocommunication Conference approved a global allocation for AeroMACS in 2007, a presentation by the group said. The core band is 5091-5150 MHz. In an earlier filing, NTIA said AeroMACS is an airport surface local area network. The filing was posted in docket 12-338.

NTIA asked for expressions of interest from individuals interested in being on the FirstNet board. Four of the 12 appointments of nonpermanent members to the board are expiring in August, NTIA said in a notice in Thursday's Federal Register. “The Secretary of Commerce may reappoint individuals to serve on the FirstNet Board provided they have not served two consecutive full three-year terms,” the agency said. Expressions of interest can be filed at NTIA through May 15.