AT&T and Verizon are seeing pressure on earnings and average revenue per user as competition intensifies, UBS wrote investors Wednesday. The firm raised its target price for T-Mobile from $63 to $80 per share, saying it's the best positioned of the major wireless carriers as the TV incentive auction reaches its end stage. “After a highly competitive end to 2016, 1Q shows no signs of relief as T-Mobile launched new all-in pricing, Sprint introduced its most aggressive unlimited family plan to date, and Verizon brought back unlimited data, causing AT&T to drop the DTV bundling requirement,” UBS said: “These moves are expected to impact flow share while weighing on service revenue and margin trends for the group. While the move to unlimited could eventually be neutral to ARPU [average revenue per user], it will initially provide a headwind due to lower overage and the optimization of plans. This, combined with greater promotional activity, will likely weigh on margins as well.”

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) joined local government commenters asking the FCC to move with caution on a Mobilitie petition asking the agency to pre-empt state and local authority over rights of way (see 1703070013). Highways raise unique concerns, AASHTO said. “Since rights-of-way definitions, access restrictions, and safety considerations differ between the states, the rights granted to states to allow and regulate utilities or any other non-highway use of rights-of-way must not be infringed,” the group said in a filing Wednesday in docket 16-421. “FCC action must not conflict or handcuff states’ efforts to maintain highway and traffic safety and the highway’s aesthetic quality, nor with federal, state, or local laws or regulations.”

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called in a witness for Thursday’s meeting as commissioners take up an order and Further NPRM on contraband cellphones (see 1703020063). Robert Johnson, who was shot six times in an attack allegedly ordered using a contraband phone being used inside a South Carolina prison, will testify, tweeted Matthew Berry, FCC chief of staff. Jackson, a captain at the Lee Correctional Institution, testified about the 2010 attack in a field hearing Pai held last year in South Carolina, also hosted by ex-Gov. Nikki Haley (R).

The FCC would slow launch of the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service if it rewrites the rules for the band now, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, in a meeting with Erin McGrath, aide to commissioner Mike O’Rielly. O’Rielly said last week he was asked by Chairman Ajit Pai to take charge of a review and restructuring of the rules (see 1703160029). Since the days after the November election, FCC Republicans have been expected to push forward changes to the rules (see 1611180037). O’Rielly has said the rules for the priority access licensees (PAL), the licensed component of the service, didn’t offer wireless companies enough certainty to ensure a successful PAL auction. Calabrese said in a filing Tuesday in docket 12-354 he counseled against reopening the rules on the geographic size, renewability or duration of the PALs: “Revisiting such basic aspects of the Order, which was adopted on a 5-0 vote nearly three years ago (with Recons on this same issue resolved nearly a year ago), would create uncertainty and tremendous delay on a historic policy innovation to promote spectrum sharing and access for a wide array of users and uses.” Calabrese backed FCC action on the vacant channel NPRM: “I reiterated the strong support of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) for the Commission’s still-pending proposal to preserve at least one vacant television channel in every market nationwide for unlicensed use. Leading chipmakers and other tech industry stakeholders have steadfastly maintained that the post- auction band plan and repacking policies must ensure at least three channels of 6 megahertz of unlicensed access in every market nationwide, especially in the most populated metro markets, to enable many emerging unlicensed use cases."

CTA President Gary Shapiro is concerned about the U.S. ban on carrying on laptops, tablets and other larger electronics for passengers flying to the U.S. from much of the Middle East and North Africa because of concerns about terrorism, he said in an emailed statement. Passengers will have to keep the devices in their checked luggage. The ban was announced Monday. “CTA generally opposes bans on the use of consumer technology products in flight, unless there is a specific technical or security justification,” Shapiro said. “CTA led the successful effort to expand the use of non-transmitting portable electronics devices (PEDs) during all phases of flight in the United States. We recognize, however, that specific national security concerns may on occasion warrant a temporary ban on use of electronics in-flight. We anxiously await more detailed information on the rationale for the restrictions put in place … on certain airlines flying into the U.S. Overall, any ban on the use of PEDs in flight related to security concerns should be narrowly tailored, transparent and, ideally, time-limited.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a Wednesday blog post, said the new restrictions “have provoked a growing sense of insecurity among personal and business travelers flying between America, the Middle East and Turkey, and rightly so. Travelers to and within the United States were already concerned over reports of increasing levels of warrantless inspection of their devices at the border of the United States.” Requiring travelers to check electronic devices raises new privacy concerns, the group said: “If someone else has physical access to your device almost all information security guarantees are off the table. Data can be cloned for later examination.”

“Rampant discounting” by mass merchants in categories including electronics and smartphones influenced consumer thinking, said First Insight CEO Greg Petro, citing survey results Monday. Seventy-six percent of baby boomers won't pay full price when shopping for home electronics, smartphones and some other products, and 83 percent of smartphone buyers said discounts influenced their decisions. Two-thirds of millennials surveyed were planning to buy a smartphone and 65 percent were planning to buy home electronics in the next 12 months. The survey of 750 was conducted this month.

Smartwatches haven't fully caught on, Movado executives told analysts. Of the “emerging” smartwatch business, President Ricardo Quintero said Monday that “early results confirm that this category is relevant, but technology has not caught pace with what consumers are looking for.” Apple has "played a disruptive role in the fashion watch category,” he noted. With the introduction of Movado Connect, among the first smartwatch lines to support Google’s redesigned Android Wear 2.0 platform (see 1703080045), “we will begin to enter the fully connected smartwatch space,” Quintero said. CEO Efraim Grinberg identified "a saturation, slowdown and commoditization of the fitness band category, and some of the major players are downtrending.”

Non-service initialized (NSI) phone calls “are a growing burden and must be addressed if PSAPs [public safety answering points] are to provide acceptable service levels to the public,” said the Greater Harris County 9-1-1 Emergency Network. The Texas group met with the FCC Public Safety Bureau March 1, said a March 20 ex-parte letter in docket 8-51. NSI phones are retired wireless devices that can still make 911 calls because the FCC requires it. The commission asked comment last year on dropping the policy (see 1609140030). NSI calls are at least 10 percent of total call volume, but they are seldom emergencies, Harris County said. The county doesn’t seek to inhibit anyone from calling 911, “but with the growing numbers and the fact there is no subscriber information or ability to place a callback, the service to the public is not adequate,” it said. The county, which includes Houston, warned the FCC that 911 app developer claims that their apps provide better information to the public are often inaccurate or misleading. On the Next-Generation 911 transition, it said it's “imperative … that a competitive choice-driven market is fostered and maintained.”

The Rural Wireless Association met with an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly on its request that the FCC review a December Wireless Bureau waiver of 700 MHz buildout rules for Bresnan Communications (see 1612210038). Bresnan plans to assign the three licenses, covering parts of Montana and Wyoming, to T-Mobile. “RWA discussed the history of the rulemaking proceeding that resulted in the adoption of the 700 MHz buildout requirements and the Commission’s intent that such requirements achieve its goal of preventing the warehousing of 700 MHz spectrum,” the association said in a filing posted Monday in docket 16-319. T-Mobile, meanwhile, reported on meetings with aides to all three commissioners, at which it asked the FCC to reject RWA’s application for review as being without merit. “As the Commission’s records reflect, T-Mobile has consummated the underlying transaction in this proceeding,” T-Mobile said in a filing. “Finality is therefore critical because T-Mobile has already begun to expend significant resources to meet the aggressive performance requirements established by the Bureau, delivering much needed competition for wireless services to rural areas in Montana.”

Fashion is expected to bring back wearables growth after smartwatches stalled in 2016, IDC reported Monday. New vendors, emerging form factors and expanded distribution are projected to drive overall wearables shipments from 102.4 million units last year to 237.5 million in 2021. Fashionable design “will take center stage," said analyst Jitesh Ubrani, as technology companies “will be forced to step up their game and offer a wider selection of sizes, materials, and designs in order to appeal to a broader audience,” Ubrani said. Smartwatches struggled as a mass-market category on a “limited and unclear value proposition," said analyst Ramon Llamas. Smartwatches will “hyper-segment” into categories, for specialized needs such as communication, he said.