Responding to demand for high-fidelity music playback from mobile devices, Cirrus Logic bowed a MasterHiFi digital-to-analog converter with built-in headphone amplifier, it announced Tuesday. “Smartphone OEMs worldwide are accelerating product development efforts to give consumers a better listening experience that takes advantage of the growing accessibility to high resolution streaming and downloadable music content,” said Carl Alberty, vice president-audio products.

T- Mobile sought FCC approval to discontinue its @Home service nationwide. A filing said it has about 24,000 customers using the service and asked for approval to drop service on or after March 31. “@Home is intended for residential and small business subscribers who have a broadband connection and who subscribe to a T-Mobile wireless service,” said the filing. “To use the service, customers obtain a T-Mobile @Home routing device, insert a SIM card from T-Mobile, and attach it to a broadband connection device, such as a modem. The customers can then attach any regular telephone to the routing device, which routes the calls over the Internet.” The carrier said it wants to discontinue the offering because it's retiring the underlying unlicensed mobile access platform; the company alerted all @Home customers of plans to shutter the service.

The FCC and DOJ said an appellate court lacks jurisdiction to review a petition of Locus Telecommunications challenging a $5 million fine for marketing of prepaid calling cards the commission found deceptive (see 1510210053). The agencies told the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals the wireless and long-distance services firm hasn't paid and in such cases the Communications Act gives exclusive jurisdiction to challenge the agency's decision to a district court de novo trial. "The Government has initiated an enforcement action that is currently pending in district court to collect this forfeiture," said FCC/DOJ's response to the 3rd Circuit order suggesting the court may not have jurisdiction in Locus Telecommunications v. FCC, No. 16-4419. "If petitioner had first paid the forfeiture, the District of Columbia Circuit has held that the Communications Act places exclusive jurisdiction to review the agency’s order imposing the forfeiture in a court of appeals by way of a petition for review, and there are no court decisions holding to the contrary. Since Locus has not paid the forfeiture, however, this Court lacks jurisdiction to consider its petition for review." Locus didn't comment Tuesday.

The Competitive Carriers Association urged the FCC to revise its plans for a second phase of the Mobility Fund (MFII) “to ensure sufficient, predictable support for the preservation and deployment of wireless networks,” in a letter filed at the FCC Wednesday. The letter was signed by 18 of the group’s CEOs. “This letter makes clear that the FCC’s Mobility Fund II current plan is headed in the wrong direction,” CCA President Steve Berry said in a news release: Members are “seriously concerned that the FCC’s current plan for MFII will undermine their hard work serving areas that would have gone unserved absent their investment and USF support. The Commission is relying on inaccurate and inconsistent information to determine areas that will be eligible for MFII support, and I strongly encourage the FCC to perform a thorough review of its data and utilize the most accurate measurement analysis to identify coverage gaps.” The biggest concern is that the FCC plans to “immediately slash legacy USF in many areas where services consumers enjoy today could be reduced by a flash cut of support,” Berry said. “Rural areas are some of the most difficult to serve, and putting these funds ‘on the chopping block’ will directly impact carriers’ abilities to continue service and will harm consumers that live in or visit these areas. As these CEOs noted, a flash-cut is fiscally irresponsible, especially given the amount of budgetary planning required to maintain and build out networks.” A vote on the fund is teed up for the commissioners’ Feb. 23 meeting (see 1702030039).

U.S. retail e-commerce spending from desktop computers and mobile devices jumped 18 percent in Q4 to $109.3 billion, from Q4 a year earlier, comScore said in a Monday report. Online spending from a desktop computer jumped 13 percent to $86.6 billion and was 79.2 percent of total e-commerce spending, versus 83.1 percent in Q4 a year earlier, comScore said. Online spending from a mobile device jumped 45 percent to $22.7 billion, it said. Mobile’s 20.8 percent share of total e-commerce dollars in Q4 was its highest recorded share of online sales for a single quarter since comScore began measuring m-commerce in 2010, the company said: “This mobile share of digital commerce dollars grew considerably from 17 percent a year ago and from only 4 percent in Q4 2010. Smartphones and tablets have become increasingly important to online buying with every succeeding year.”

Apple joining the Wireless Power Consortium, which backs the Qi wireless charging standard, is the first time the company “confirmed involvement with any wireless power standard body and points strongly to the expectation that the next iPhone will include wireless charging technology,” IHS Markit analyst Vicky Yussuff wrote Monday. Competitors such as Samsung, which has offered wireless charging since 2015, had success with wireless charging adoption, making it something Apple “can no longer ignore,” said Yussuff. IHS consumer survey data show more than 90 percent of consumers want wireless charging on their next device. Just over 200 million wireless charging-enabled devices shipped in 2016, and the research firm expects that to jump to 375 million this year with part of the forecast attributed to Apple devices, said Yussuff. Apple didn't comment.

Proposed National Highway Traffic Safety Administration guidelines on distracted driving typify the type of pending regulations that a Jan. 20 White House memo called on agencies to halt to afford the incoming Trump administration an opportunity to review them. So said CTA President Gary Shapiro in a letter Monday to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Mark Sandy, Office of Management and Budget acting director. CTA thinks the proposed guidelines “raise substantial questions of law and policy,” and therefore “merit a careful review” by DOT and OMB, as the White House memo prescribed, Shapiro said. “While NHTSA maintains that the proposed guidelines would be voluntary and nonbinding, in practice they could have a sweeping effect on the multibillion dollar market for mobile devices and apps.” In the letter, Shapiro repeated what he told the Senate Commerce Committee Feb. 1 when he testified that “by issuing guidelines on how smartphones, tablets and even wearable fitness devices function when near a driver, NHTSA has exceeded its authority and invited uncertainty and litigation” (see 1702010036).

The FCC should "reform its data collection process which determines what areas of the country are eligible to receive funding" in its planned mobility fund auction, the Competitive Carriers Association said in a filing posted Friday in docket 10-208 on meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Wireline Bureau staffers. CCA also said the FCC "should implement a tiered phase down period" for USF legacy support "over several years." The group "understands the Commission plans to phase down legacy support immediately in certain areas not eligible for the reverse auction, which will have the effect of eliminating competition and widen the digital divide," it said. AT&T, Atlantic Tele-Network and Buffalo-Lake Erie Wireless Systems offered a revised, detailed joint proposal Thursday for the mobility fund auction that would target subsidies for areas without 4G LTE service. The parties met with FCC staff to discuss the proposal, according to a filing posted Friday. A mobility fund auction order is tentatively set for consideration at the Feb. 23 commissioners' meeting.

Virtual-reality devices endured a “content-starved market introduction” but are “ready to thrive off a swath of new and compelling content choices,” ABI Research said in a Thursday report. It sees total VR device shipments reaching 110 million by 2021. Though smartphone-reliant VR devices such as Samsung Gear VR “dwarf” other VR device types in terms of shipments, stand-alone devices will have a 405 percent compound annual growth rate through 2021, compared with only a 42 percent CAGR for mobile-device-based VR products, it said. “Mobile VR built a solid foundation for the overall market over the past few years, but standalone VR devices will eventually drive it,” ABI said. “Low cost and high accessibility has, and will continue to, drive VR adoption with mobile devices and associated VR accessories. However, a trend toward standalone devices is surfacing, and will continue over the next five years until mobile and standalone VR devices see parity in terms of shipments.”

A federal judge granted LG MobileComm USA’s motion for a default judgment of $168 million in damages against 17 Chinese defendants and their U.S. affiliates for infringing LG trademarks by selling counterfeit and knockoff LG Tone headsets and other LG products. U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino in San Diego also granted LG’s motions for a permanent injunction and for recovery of lawyers’ fees, said her Monday order (in Pacer). The $168 million in damages was $2 million for each trademark the defendants were found to have violated, the order said. With LG’s “hard-earned success came freeloading counterfeiters and knockoff artists, who seek to dupe and confuse potential consumers into buying poorly performing, shoddy products under the false pretense that such goods are made or authorized by us," said Chang Ma, president of LG Electronics Mobile USA, in a statement. With the ruling, "along with other judgments against various other defendants, LG has successfully slammed shut a sizable portion of counterfeits and knockoffs" of its popular LG Tone headset line being sold in the U.S, the company said.