The FCC will consider two reports and orders and a Further NPRM, designed to eliminate what it called "outdated" regulations in the 800 MHz cellular service, said a Thursday release. The item is to get a vote at the March 23 commissioners’ meeting. “These actions would continue the transition of the 800 MHz Cellular Service (Cellular), the original radio spectrum used by cellphones in the United States, to a geographic licensing framework, increasing licensees’ flexibility to change their systems as needed to respond more quickly -- and at less cost -- to evolving market conditions and consumer demand,” the FCC said. “These actions would also update outmoded Cellular power and other technical rules, facilitating the widespread deployment of mobile broadband services in the Cellular band while also safeguarding public safety operations.” The FCC stressed in the draft order the importance of putting all spectrum available into play for commercial use as demand surges. “With the continued skyrocketing demand for mobile broadband, it is imperative that providers be able to use Cellular spectrum in addition to the Broadband Personal Communications Service (PCS), Advanced Wireless Services (AWS), and 700 MHz spectrum that are already largely used today to provide that service,” the FCC said. Chairman Ajit Pai's blog post on the March agenda mentions the item without more detail.

Worldwide smartphone shipment growth will rebound in 2017 to 4.2 percent, and 4.4 percent in 2018, after the category’s lowest annual growth rate of 2.5 percent last year, IDC forecast. Expect unit smartphone shipments of 1.53 billion in 2017, growing to 1.77 billion in 2021, it said. Android, forecast to ship 1.3 billion smartphones this year, will eventually see a decline, but the researcher doesn’t see a point during the forecast period where shipments will fall, amid introduction of features including augmented and virtual reality. Despite concerns over longer life cycles affecting demand, “so far we are not seeing any trend,” said analyst Ryan Reith. Non-phablet smartphone shipments declined 9.4 percent, analyst Anthony Scarsella told us.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s IoT Working Group scheduled its opening meeting Thursday noon-1 p.m. EST, NPSTC emailed. “This Working Group led by Chair, Barry Fraser, will examine the current state of IoT, identify public safety specific issues, and may create position reports for the NPSTC Governing Board or develop education and outreach documents,” NPSTC said. The meeting can be accessed by calling 510-227-1018, conference ID: 869-9040#. Also Thursday, NPSTC’s Emergency Medical Services Working Group will meet to approve the final draft of its rural considerations report. The meeting starts at 11 a.m. EST, NPSTC said. Call 510-227-1018, conference ID: 446-1830#.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved a waiver for Headsight to start selling unlicensed ultra-wide band (UWB) ground penetrating radar (GPR) for agricultural use. The technology operates in the UWB bandwidth contained in the 1-6 GHz frequency band, said a Wednesday order. The company needed a waiver of Part 15 rules, which don’t allow use of GPR for agriculture, OET said. “Our action here will permit the use of GPR technology in a variety of agricultural applications, such as mapping soil conditions and harvesting crops precisely and efficiently,” OET said. “This waiver is in the public interest because this device poses no greater risk of causing harmful interference to authorized users of this spectrum than those devices already permitted under the existing rules, while providing for innovative uses of GPR technology that will benefit the public through improved farming operations and higher crop yields.”

NetComm Wireless joined the CBRS Alliance, a group focused on the development and adoption of LTE-based solutions in the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service band, the company said Tuesday.

Smartphones, tablets and laptops with 10-bit depths that can reproduce 90 percent of digital cinema’s P3 color space and have peak luminance of 540 nits can qualify for the UHD Alliance’s new “Mobile HDR Premium” certification logo, the group said Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Qualified mobile devices also must have resolutions of 60 pixels per degree to earn the logo, the alliance said. A Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone with a 5.7-inch screen and 2560×1440 resolution qualifies when viewed from a distance of seven inches, according to an online Nvidia screen density calculator. An iPad Pro with a 10-inch screen and 2048×1536 when viewed from 13 inches also would qualify, as would a 1080p Lenovo Flex 4 laptop with a 14-inch screen viewed from 21 inches. Licensing of the Mobile HDR Premium logo will start April 1, the alliance said. “Portable devices are a primary mode of video consumption and the category itself is a key component of the rapidly expanding Ultra HD ecosystem,” said President Hanno Basse in a statement.

There were about 556 million registered mobile money accounts in 92 countries at the end of 2016, GSM reported Tuesday. That included 174 million accounts active over the previous days, said a news release. Some 35 mobile money services have more than 1 million active accounts, and there are more than 4.3 million mobile money agent outlets, GSMA said. “The average cost of sending international remittances using mobile money is less than half the cost of doing so via a global money transfer operator.”

CTIA President Meredith Baker met with FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly to discuss the need for streamlined siting rules, said a filing Monday in docket 16-421. “CTIA highlighted the importance of sound policies at the federal, state, and local levels to facilitate the rapid and efficient deployment of wireless infrastructure to support 4G LTE and 5G networks,” the filing said. It called for action on a small cell public notice, which “would streamline local review of wireless infrastructure applications, clarify actions that prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting wireless service, and ensure that compensation for use of public rights of way is cost-based, fair, and reasonable.” Earlier in February, Baker made similar arguments to Chairman Ajit Pai (see 1702030048).

The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment on the privacy and security plan for the National Emergency Address Database submitted by NEAD and the major wireless carriers. “The NEAD, which is being developed for the purpose of identifying the dispatchable location of wireless 911 callers when the caller is indoors, is a database that will use media access control (MAC) address information of fixed indoor access points to locate nearby wireless devices,” the bureau said in a Tuesday public notice. NEAD LLC is a nonprofit entity under CTIA that will oversee development of and manage the NEAD platform and be the NEAD administrator, the bureau said. The plan says information in the NEAD on wireless access points “will generally come from three sources” -- carrier records of wireless access points; records from large “enterprise systems,” for example hotels, restaurants and retail stores; and “eventually, individual consumers, who will be able voluntarily to input information about their wireless access points not otherwise provided to the NEAD along with information necessary for verification,” the bureau said. “The Plan describes the consumer privacy protections that will be incorporated into the operation of the NEAD platform. It also describes ‘comprehensive controls’ to support the security and resiliency of the NEAD platform.” Comments are due March 20, replies March 30, said the notice in docket 07-114.

Sixteen of the world’s leading mobile operators agreed to leverage their big data to address natural disasters and epidemics, said GSMA Director General Mats Granryd in a keynote at the Mobile World Congress Tuesday, streamed from Barcelona. The operators have more than 2 billion subscribers, he said. “We will establish scalable common processes and build an ecosystem to support timely planning and response to crisis.” GSMA will launch a pilot this summer, he said. Initial trials are to start in June, with Bharti Airtel in India, Telefónica in Brazil and Telenor in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, said a GSMA news release. None of the major U.S. carriers is on the list, though T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom is participating. Granryd also said the wireless industry is fully committed to meeting UN sustainable development goals. SDG No. 1 is no poverty, he said. “Mobile money is driving social and financial, economic impact for millions of people in the developing markets,” Granryd said. “Over the last 10 years, mobile money has done more to extend the reach of financial services than traditional brick and mortar banks have done in the last 100 years.” SDG No. 5 is gender equality, he said. “The mobile industry is focused on increasing women’s access to and use of mobile services in low- and middle-income countries around the world.” Data continue to show that 200 million more men than women have mobile phones worldwide, he said. Women “are missing out on key social-economic opportunities and that cannot be right,” he said. Last year, GSMA launched a connected women initiative and 24 operators made 32 commitments to close the gender gap, he said. GSMA is committed to working on all of the SDGs as an industry, Granryd said. The environment is also important to GSMA, and as of Tuesday, the group, all its events and offices, were certified carbon neutral in 2016, Granryd said. “We are committed to lowering our environmental impact and actively committed to fighting against climate change.” Companies must support the U.N.’s SDGs, said Takashi Niino, CEO of NEC, who also spoke Tuesday. “Profit is no longer just about the bottom line,” Niino said. “It is about generating sustainable benefits and a sustainable future.”