A Verizon 5G fixed wireless rollout likely would reach only a small portion of U.S. homes, New Street Research analyst Andrew Entwistle wrote investors Tuesday: The carrier likely will roll out 5G fixed wireless alongside the small cells it will deploy to improve capacity on its 4G mobile wireless network. While 5G fixed wireless could be capable of 1 Gbps speeds and rival cable's triple-play, it said, Verizon may reach an average of 12 homes per small cell node. Even if able to deploy 300,000 such nodes by 2030, that will result in an addressable market of 3 million or 2 percent of homes, it said. If Verizon gets 1.8 million subscribers by 2030, "this is hardly a threat to Cable's broadband business," New Street said. The analyst doesn't anticipate stand-alone 5G fixed wireless deployments will be common, because without the shared 4G/5G infrastructure, the costs "will be challenging." It said wireless carriers lacking fiber infrastructure "will face the greatest challenges in the 5G world," and cable and wireline companies are better positioned because 5G is dependent on fiber access. Verizon didn't comment Tuesday.

Sprint will give away mobile devices and free wireless internet for up to four years to 1 million low-income high-school students, the carrier said in a news release Tuesday. Sprint will team with nonprofits including EveryoneOn and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance. Students get a free smartphone, tablet, laptop or hot spot device with 3 GB of 4G LTE data monthly, Sprint said; speeds fall to 2G levels if a student exceeds the quota. "It’s a huge problem in America that we have 5 million households with children that lack internet connections," said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. "We are failing them.” A challenging aspect of "providing free wireless service for students is understanding the appropriate level of data usage to offer,” said Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen. “The pilot program can be used to better understand data usage levels and needs, and may justify an increase in the 3 GB data cap as usage grows.”

Governments, regulators, investors and industry need to work together on 5G, said Graham MacDonald, Intel director-Europe, Middle East and Africa policy, in a blog post urging the European Commission to show leadership. “In many instances, inflexible regulations can take an extraordinary amount of time to amend,” he said Thursday. “One of the biggest concerns is whether there will be sufficient spectrum in low, mid and high bands available for 5G to deliver the key usage scenarios envisaged." The EC should establish a timetable for the launch of 5G networks by the end of 2018 and of fully commercial 5G services by the end of 2020, he said.

Gartner forecast worldwide PC, tablet, "ultramobile" and mobile phone device shipments will drop for the second straight year in 2016, 3 percent to 2.4 billion units, led by mobile phone shipments. The global device market contracted 0.75 percent in 2015, the researcher reported Thursday. It's "not on pace to return to single-digit growth soon," said analyst Ranjit Atwal. All product segment shipments are expected to decline in 2016, except for premium “ultramobile” basic and utility tablets and entry-level phones that are expected to show single-digit sales growth this year, said Gartner. Total mobile phone shipments are on pace for a 1.6 percent decline in 2016, said Gartner. The smartphone segment continues to grow, but the rate is lagging, with 1.5 billion units forecast for 2016. It's "reaching global saturation with phones that are increasingly capable and remain good enough for longer," said analyst Roberta Cozza. Premium smartphones will grow 3.5 percent in 2017, she said.

Samsung Electronics expects to report a 7 percent Q3 sales decline to about 49 trillion won ($43.8 billion) when it releases results Oct. 27, the company said in a Friday announcement. Operating profit is expected to rise 5 percent to 7.8 trillion won ($7 billion), the company said. The Oct. 27 quarterly earnings report will be first since the Sept. 15 recall of the Galaxy Note7 (see 1609150069).

Licenses held by Spectrum 100, Western Spectrum Ventures and Eagle Group are no longer valid, the FCC Wireless Bureau said in a Friday order. The licenses were for trunked 800 MHz specialized mobile radio stations. The FCC investigated the status of the stations after an April “informal request” from Smartcomm, the bureau said. “The request includes a declaration of an employee of a Smartcomm affiliate, who stated that she performed a physical site inspection at both locations and observed no antennas mounted on towers at the authorized location and height, and that no building permits were filed with the county offices for either location.” The companies then confirmed the stations hadn't been operational since November, the bureau said. “Section 90.631(f) of the Commission's rules provides that the license for a trunked SMR station cancels automatically if the station is not placed in permanent operation, in accordance with the licensed parameters, within one year of license grant; or if the facilities have discontinued operation for ninety continuous days,” the bureau said. “The information provided by the Licensees is sufficient evidence that the Stations have not been in operation for ninety continuous days, and that their authorizations canceled automatically.”

Aggressive promotional activity from smartphone vendors in virtual reality and the launch of “premium smartphone VR solutions” will help drive the installed base of VR headsets to 81 million in 2020, from 4 million in 2015, IHS Markit reported Thursday. The researcher sees consumer spending on VR headsets reaching $7.9 billion in 2020 and spending on VR entertainment hitting $3.3 billion, it said. “While the VR headset installed base will escalate significantly to 81 million by 2020, we predict that expensive, higher-end headsets will dominate content monetization.” It forecasts a “polarization” in the VR market between lower-volume premium VR headsets, “which will have strong paid content conversion rates, and higher-volume cheaper smartphone VR headsets, which will monetize content at a lower rate.”

Samsung agreed to buy artificial intelligence platform company Viv Labs, founded by Siri co-creator Dag Kittlaus, said a Thursday announcement. The open AI platform lets developers build “conversational assistants” and integrate a natural language-based interface into apps and services, Samsung said. Other tech heavyweights in AI are Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. Kittlaus said in a May presentation that major tech companies are investing “billions of dollars” in the category.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Thursday on a requested waiver of the FCC’s 700 MHz buildout rules request by Bresnan Communications. Bresnan plans to assign the three licenses, all in Montana, to T-Mobile, said a bureau notice. Each of the licenses has an interim construction deadline requiring Bresnan to provide coverage to 35 percent of the geographic area of the licenses by Dec. 13 and a final construction deadline requiring it to provide coverage to 70 percent by June 13, 2019, the bureau said. “In the event it fails to meet the interim construction deadline, Bresnan would be subject to an accelerated final construction deadline of June 13, 2017 and therefore seeks a waiver to extend the final deadline until at least December 13, 2018.” Comments are due on the waiver request Oct. 26, replies Nov. 7.

Asia is poised to become the growth engine for mobile, with an estimated 1 billion additional people expected to connect to mobile networks by 2020, GSMA reported. About a third of the new users will come from India, an estimated 337 million, “underlining the country’s increasing position as the world’s most significant mobile growth market, overtaking China,” GSMA said. China is projected to add more than 200 million subscribers, with major net subscriber contributions expected from Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. “These six Asian markets will account for approximately 60 per cent of the 1.1 billion new subscribers added globally by the end of the decade,” GSMA said. Another major trend is that mobile internet is now the internet, GSMA said. “Today 46 per cent of the global population is using mobile phones to access the internet, a figure forecast to increase to 60 per cent by 2020,” the report said. "As there will only be a minimal increase in the number of fixed internet households over this period, the increase in mobile phone ownership will therefore be the key factor driving global internet penetration.” GSMA said even in low-income markets, the smartphone is “king,” and smartphones may now be the most commonly owned consumer electronics device globally. “In the UK, for example, smartphone penetration now stands at 71 per cent of mobile connections,” the report said. “This compares to 60-70 per cent across the rest of Europe, 75 per cent in the US, and above 80 per cent in some Asian markets such as South Korea and Singapore.” Smartphone growth has plateaued in most developed markets, GSMA said. “By contrast, the smartphone adoption rate in India stands at only 25 per cent and unit volumes are growing by 30 per cent a year.”