T-Mobile and Sprint are reportedly close to agreeing to terms of a deal, reported Reuters. The most likely scenario is that T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom will own a majority of the equity and Sprint parent SoftBank 40 percent to 50 percent, New Street Research wrote investors. Wireless industry lawyers said Friday they remain skeptical until something is announced since bankers can hype these deals while discussions are ongoing. Free Press raised an alarm in a Friday news release. “No one but [President] Donald Trump’s pals on Wall Street wants to see this competition-killing, investment-killing and job-killing merger,” Free Press said. NAB said in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr the agency should look closely at “how T-Mobile’s possible merger with Sprint may impact how the Commission approaches repacking” after the incentive auction (see 1709220035). Sprint closed up 6.1 percent to $8.52. The companies didn't comment.

Revenue in the global wrist-worn wearable market will advance at a 13 percent compound annual growth rate through 2021 to $38 billion, a Thursday Technavio report said. Integration of wearables for sports and fitness use with smartphones will allow manufacturers to offer “highly sophisticated analyses” aided by technologically advanced apps, it said. The opportunities created a market for startups that allow developers to access devices and enhance functionality, analyst Ujjwal Doshi said: Most of the wrist wearables “serve a single purpose or a specific set of related functions for a user.”

The Asus ZenFone 4 Pro, with gigabit LTE and 802.11ad multi-gigabit Wi-Fi, offers a peek into the 5G mobile experience, said Qualcomm Thursday, announcing that the phone is powered by its Snapdragon mobile platforms. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 modem is said to boost download speeds over 4G LTE and its TruSignal dual-antenna technology is said to extend coverage beyond current technologies. The 802.11ad Wi-Fi allows users to share 4K videos “in seconds,” and the ZenFone 4 Pro’s Wi-Fi hotspot provides end-to-end gigabit wireless connectivity with 802.11ad access and gigabit LTE backhaul on compatible networks even in crowded locations, Qualcomm said. The chipmaker's Spectra 180 image signal processor has dual 14-bit image signal processing, which along with its Adreno 540 graphics processing unit, enable 360-degree visual capture, it said.

Operators of a mobile app, which promised cash incentives to users who made fitness and nutrition goals, settled with the FTC and will pay $940,000, including refunds for allegedly billing tens of thousands of consumers without their consent, said the agency in a Thursday news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 on the complaint and stipulated final order, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, which must still approve it. The FTC said Pact charged consumers even if they met their goals or canceled service. Pact and principals, Yifan Zhang and Geoffrey Oberhofer, violated the FTC Act and Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, said the commission. Consumers would get "more than $940,000 in earned cash rewards and refunds for improper charges as part of a $1.5 million judgment, the rest of which is suspended," said the FTC. The settlement prohibits the company from misrepresenting itself about rewards to consumers and from charging users "without their express, informed consent." Pact agreed not to use a negative-option billing feature, which treats a consumer's silence when given the option of canceling an offer as consent for being charged. The company didn't comment.

Google will pay HTC $1.1 billion for an unspecified number of its employees and for a non-exclusive license to use HTC patents under a “cooperation agreement” the companies announced jointly Thursday. Many of the HTC employees were already working with Google to develop Pixel smartphones, they said. Google will continue to have access to HTC's intellectual property to support future Pixel smartphone development, they said. The agreement expected to close in early 2018 “represents a significant investment by Google in Taiwan as a key innovation and technology hub,” they said. It gives Google a "platform to showcase how technology on the Android platform should be implemented," wrote David McQueen, research director at ABI Research. It also becomes a "reference for Google’s OEM partners on how to implement technology innovation coming from Google Labs and to fully utilize the most recent releases of the Android OS," he said. He cautioned that Google "has been down this path before" with Nexus-branded products. "Although no one could argue about the superior capabilities of the Nexus devices, they have not been the most attractive in terms of industrial design," he said.

Free Press Policy director Matt Wood said he spoke with aides to Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel about concerns with the forthcoming mobile wireless competition report. Wood said he discussed a letter the group sent to Chairman Ajit Pai (see 1709200051). The letter, he said, “explained that the draft of the forthcoming annual report had deleted historical context for wireless investment over the course of the past several years -- fixating instead, improperly, on a single year’s investment changes,” said the filing, in docket 17-69. “The draft report also deleted passages, routinely included in prior years’ annual reports, on the cyclical nature of such investments and the impropriety of expecting capital expenditures to increase by the same amount year after year.”

The NFC Forum added tag and reader certification to its global certification program, it said in a Wednesday announcement. It will allow tag/inlay, near-field communication reader and handset manufacturers to be able to test and verify performance and interoperability of NFC components.

U.S. tower companies will lose 4-9 percent of their market capitalization if Sprint and T-Mobile combine (see 1709190048), New Street Research wrote investors Tuesday evening. Among the major players, Crown Castle faces the biggest “downside,” the firm said. “We have maintained for months that a Sprint/T-Mobile merger was the most likely transaction, with the most likely structure leaving [Deutsche Telekom] in control,” said analyst Jonathan Chaplin of New Street in a Wednesday note. “We upgraded Sprint to Buy back in January when this outcome started to come into focus.”

The FCC should leave the rules for the 3.5 GHz band largely as they are, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld in a meeting with Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology. The FCC is expected to rewrite rules for the shared band, especially provisions on the licensed segment (see 1708010058). “The record contains diverse and overwhelming opposition to proposals to change the Priority Access License rules as proposed by T-Mobile and CTIA,” Feld said, according to a filing in docket 12-354. “Billions of dollars in capital are ready to be invested in the 3.5 GHz band under the current rules.” Feld also said the FCC should “quickly finalize its sharing rules” for the 37 GHz band and allocate three 6 MHz TV channels in every market for unlicensed use.

T-Mobile raised its “prioritization point” Wednesday to 50 GB of data per month, from 32 GB. When customers hit that point, they have to get behind other users in the line and could see slower connection speeds in congested areas, Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray blogged. He stressed it isn't a cap and customers don't face throttling: “50GB of data usage means a T-Mobile customer is basically the top 1 percent of data users, and to put it in context, you could stream a full 2 hours of Netflix every single day … and never even reach that point!” T-Mobile customers are streaming more than 1 million hours of Netflix per day, Ray said.