T-Mobile has picked up almost a million subscribers in Q3 so far from its three national competitors, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, it said Tuesday in a news release. “All three wireless carriers tried to match Un-carrier signature moves this quarter, like getting rid of overages and introducing unlimited data plans, but as usual, they came up short,” said CEO John Legere. “Our Q3 results so far have surpassed Q2 in postpaid phone and prepaid nets, and we are adding customers from ALL of the other guys at an increasing rate.” Legere also released a flurry of tweets about the early results. “We’ve surpassed Q2 in postpaid phone & all prepaid net adds!” he said in one. “Who knew the competition was so generous!” Legere also tweeted that FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, in Seattle for the Competitive Carriers Association conference, had visited his company's headquarters in nearby Bellevue, Washington.

Some 3 billion people remain unconnected worldwide and another 2.4 billion are connected only to voice and simple text services, GSMA said in a report. The IoT “is developing rapidly, but the level of penetration remains low,” GSMA said. The report is on industry progress on sustainable development goals. SDG 1 focuses on “eradicating poverty, providing equal access to economic resources, and building the resilience of the poor,” and SDG 9 seeks “resilient infrastructure, sustainable and inclusive industrialisation, and innovation.” This "first-of-its-kind report offers critical insights into the transformative impact of the mobile industry on individuals, societies and economies around the world, in developed and developing markets,” said Mats Granryd, GSMA director general.

Privacy issues for drones and how to address them will be the focus of the FTC's Oct. 13 event on unmanned aerial systems, said the commission, releasing a detailed agenda Tuesday. Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen will open the half-day event, which will feature academics, privacy advocates from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center and industry representatives from AirMap, Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, DJI, Drone Manufacturers Alliance, Precision Hawk and the Small UAV Coalition. The 1-4:30 p.m. event will be at FTC's Constitution Center at 400 7th St. SW.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau approved a waiver, signing off on Puerto Rico’s late filing of its “substantial service” showing for its license for 700 MHz state channels under call sign WPTZ852. Rules require state channels to certify they were providing or prepared to provide substantial service to one-third of their population or territory by June 13, 2014, the order said. The commonwealth missed that deadline and filed two waiver requests, the bureau said. “Finally, on May 19, 2016,” Puerto Rico filed the required showing, the bureau said. “Puerto Rico states that its interim substantial service filing was late because the original employee assigned to the project no longer works for the Commonwealth so it had to contract a ‘new person’ to ‘finish the supervision of this project.’” Puerto Rico also said its radio system provides service to more than 33 percent of its population and territory and was built before the original 2014 deadline, the bureau said: Granting the waiver would serve the public interest.

Samsung Electronics America estimates about 500,000 units of replacement Galaxy Note7s have arrived in the U.S. and will be ready for distribution starting Wednesday to consumers who want to trade in their originals under the voluntary recall program worked out with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (see 1609150069), the company said in a Tuesday statement. A refund option also is available under the recall for Note7 owners who don't want a replacement. A CPSC notice Thursday said about a million Note7 devices sold in the U.S. would be affected by the recall, which the agency said was precipitated by 92 reports of the device overheating or catching fire. Samsung also announced the rollout of a software update for new Note7 devices. The software updates will display a green battery icon on the status bar on the top right hand of the screen, Samsung said. The green icon indicates consumers have a new Galaxy Note7 with an unaffected battery, it said. "For those not heeding" the recall notice, a separate software update also "will be pushed to all recalled devices," it said. "Once installed, users will be prompted with a safety notice that urges owners to power down and exchange their recalled device. The notice will appear every time a user powers up or charges their device."

Intracom joined the Competitive Carriers Association as an associate member, said a company release Monday. Intracom said StreetNode, its FCC-compliant 4G small-cell backhaul solution operating at 28 GHz and 60 GHz using software-defined radio, facilitates small-cell system deployment "on lamp posts, at bus stops and on walls incorporating unique features such as auto-aligning and zero-touch provisioning." John Tenidis, marketing head of Intracom's wireless solutions portfolio, said the company will use its CCA membership to collect feedback from regional carriers.

Representatives of TracFone met with FCC Wireline Bureau staff to explain the company’s push to get the FCC to stay or voluntarily defer the Dec. 1 effective date of a rule reducing from 60 to 30 days the period for de-enrolling Lifeline customers who don't use the service. The change would mean higher costs for Lifeline providers and Universal Service Administrative Co., “and, most importantly, would disrupt service to many low-income Lifeline-eligible households who are enrolled in the Lifeline program and who intend to remain,” TracFone said in a filing in docket 11-42. “The most common reasons for non-usage include temporary absence from the country, illness or incapacity and misplaced or broken handsets,” the carrier said. TracFone said about 25 percent of those de-enrolled after 60 days of non-usage re-enroll the following month and that number is likely to “increase dramatically” if the non-usage period is reduced to 30 days.

CTIA took on some recent filings urging the FCC to impose tough privacy rules on ISPs, in a document at the agency. Among the arguments countered were those by Paul Ohm, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, who said in a June filing that if the final rules follow the proposed rules, “they will help give consumers what they have repeatedly asked for and deserve: a modicum of choice and control over the way information about them is collected and used online.” The arguments “fail to resolve gating questions that have plagued this proceeding from the beginning,” CTIA said. Ohm’s arguments, for example, ignore “Congress’s decision to require opt-in consent in only two very specific cases: in connection with (1) the use or disclosure of call location information concerning the user of a CMRS device or IP-enabled voice service for non-specified purposes, and (2) the use of automatic crash notification data for purposes other than such notification,” CTIA said. The FCC should stick instead with the FTC’s “effective, technology-neutral, sensitivity-based” approach to privacy, CTIA said in docket 16-106.

​Social media is increasingly important to public safety agencies, FirstNet said in a Friday blog post. “These days, you probably use social media to update your audience on what you are doing, share an interesting article or two, and catch up on the day’s news,” the authority said. “Government agencies -- federal, tribal, state, and local -- are using social media in many ways to keep the public informed and hopefully safer.” FirstNet cited the use of Twitter by many government agencies. “When a natural disaster such as a tornado, wildfire, or hurricane hits,” the National Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency and National Guard “are among many agencies who are communicating key info to the public on social media platforms,” FirstNet said. “Just check out the hashtags #SMEM, #LESM, etc., and you’ll see,” he said, referring to the hashtags for social media emergency management and law enforcement in social media.

Ford sees autonomous vehicles accounting for one in 10 miles traveled in the U.S. by 2030, CEO Mark Fields told the company's Analyst Day conference Thursday at its Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters. Ford’s intent is to introduce a “Level 4" fully autonomous vehicle in 2021, Fields said. A Society of Automotive Engineers standard published in January 2014 defines Level 4 as “high automation” in a vehicle, meaning it will have an automated system capable of handling “all aspects” of driving tasks, “even if a human driver does not respond appropriately to a request to intervene.” The first Level 4 vehicle Ford introduces will be “specifically designed” for “commercial mobility services” such as ride-sharing and ride-hailing, and won’t have a steering wheel, brake pedal or gas pedal, said Raj Nair, chief technical officer. “I love driving, but I hate my commute,” he said. If he had the opportunity for a vehicle to pick him up from home every day and drive him to work in a manner that would be cheaper than personally owning a vehicle, “I would jump on it,” he said. “I think that’s true for a lot of our customers. And so this is why we think this could really be a game changing aspect of how personal mobility is viewed in the future.” Ford projects that autonomous vehicle sales could account for up to 20 percent of total vehicle sales by 2030, Nair said. “Couple that along with the opportunity of not just manufacturing and selling the vehicles, but participating in the transportation of the service opportunity, participating in the vehicle management as the service opportunity, you could see why this is such a large opportunity for Ford Motor Company.”