A federal appeals court sided with Verizon Wireless in a Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit that Craig and Belen Schultz of Iowa filed against the carrier. The sides consented to arbitrate the case, said a decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. When the parties were unable to agree on a written settlement, each filed a motion to enforce its version with a U.S. District Court in Iowa. “The magistrate judge denied the cross motions,” the 6th Circuit said Friday. Verizon next renewed its motion to compel arbitration, which was granted by the lower court, the 6th Circuit said. The appeals court affirmed that decision. “We agree with the district court that Craig Schultz agreed to arbitration when the Schultzes stated in an October 25, 2014, pleading: ‘Plaintiffs consent to this matter being sent to arbitration,’” the 6th Circuit said. “The court did not clearly err in finding that Craig Schultz, as an ‘Account Manager’ who used one of the phone lines to which the Customer Agreement applied, had activated phone service and thus accepted the Verizon contract, including an agreement to arbitrate this billing dispute.” Judge James Loken wrote the decision for a unanimous three-judge panel.

FCC commissioners gave the Telecommunications Industry Association partial relief from an October 2014 700 MHz narrowband transition order. In January 2015, TIA sought revisions, saying it may not be feasible for a manufacturer to complete all the requirements for the Project 25 Compliance Assessment Program certification at the time it submits a device to the FCC for approval (see 1501060055). “We agree and modify our rules to allow CAP compliance or the equivalent to be completed after equipment certification but prior to the marketing or sale of that equipment,” the FCC said in the Monday order. “Thus, we ensure that potential users will have the benefit of CAP testing or the equivalent, and compliance with P25 interoperability standards without disadvantaging radio manufacturers. We find our decision correctly balances manufacturers’ need for flexibility against the public’s interest in interoperability.” Responding to a request for clarification by the National Regional Planning Council, the FCC also clarified that states may delegate administration of the air-ground channels to the 700 MHz Regional Planning Committees. The FCC also raises further issues for comment, including on the amendment of its trunking rules, in an accompanying Further NPRM.

The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced it's “finally” closing in on an approved LTE-unlicensed coexistence test plan, said Joan Marsh, AT&T vice president-federal regulatory. The alliance also determined in a not-so-pleasant surprise that the test plan should include LTE-U’s cousin, licensed assisted access (LAA), Marsh said in a Monday blog post. Part 15 of FCC rules “has always stood for the principle of permission-less innovation,” Marsh wrote. “Any device consistent with the Part 15 rules was promptly authorized. It was a clear regulatory paradigm that led to an explosion of unlicensed devices. With LTE-U, that paradigm was subject to a tectonic shift toward a ‘mother-may-I’ standard, with the role of mother being played by an ever-changing number of actors.” This oversight must be rejected for LAA, she said. “AT&T has no interest in undermining the vibrant Wi-Fi ecosystem that exists today,” she said. “But with LTE-LAA, the ‘mother-may-I’ paradigm must be rejected so the wireless industry can move forward. Make no mistake, the rest of the world is not waiting for permission -- Deutsche Telecom conducted the first LTE-LAA over-the-air trials last November in Germany.” The LTE-U tests in the U.S. have been controversial, with industry groups clashing over whether the alliance is moving quickly enough to open a path for LTE-U (see 1608020054). Some LTE-U advocates urged the FCC to step in and force resolution (see 1606300052).

Intel’s collaboration with Mobileye to bring “highly and fully automated driving” to BMW vehicles within five years (see 1607010052) is “a significant strategic relationship” among the companies, Doug Davis, senior vice president-general manager of Intel’s IoT Group, told the Intel Developer Forum Thursday in San Francisco. In that three-company alliance, Intel plays “a significant role in the compute capability” of autonomous vehicles, and Mobileye “obviously plays an important role in all of that camera and sensor data” for self-driving cars, “and then we fuse it all together to create that solution,” Davis said. What’s also important in the collaboration is “the focus on creating an open standard for interfaces within the industry,” he said. “We see that this technology needs to move very rapidly and we share that vision” promoting an “open platform that can be built upon by others” and commercialized in short order, he said. “At the network level, Intel’s leadership in accelerating 5G is critical” to the future of autonomous vehicles, Davis said. “This is really important, because 5G is the only network technology capable of delivering a latency of a millisecond or less with speeds that can peak at 10 gigabits per second.”

Analysis of the latest global smartphone sales trends spurred GfK to upgrade its forecast for the year, the research firm said in a Friday report. GfK now thinks 2016 smartphone sales will approach $426 billion in value, which would be a 5 percent increase from 2015, the company said. GfK’s previous forecast was for 2016 sales to approach $401 billion. The company cited strong Q2 sales of mid-range to high-end smartphones and a reversal of the “previous trend” in which low-end handsets priced on average below $100 had been gaining significant global share. But the North American smartphone market keeps trending downward, GfK said. It estimates Q2 smartphone demand there totaled 42 million units, down 5 percent sequentially from Q1 and 6 percent lower than shipments in Q2 of 2015. “Previous drivers of demand” in North America, such as the migration from 3G to 4G, “are having less of an impact now that the high growth phase is over, the company said. North America “will need to wait” until Q4 for “the next incremental driver of growth” to take hold, it said. “It is in the last quarter of the year that major product launches are expected to have a higher impact, compared to 2015. Consumers that have been waiting for big launches will be ready to invest in upgrades.”

Google fashioned a way of remote-controlling devices through gestures using radar and sensors instead of video cameras with no need for line of sight between users and sensors, Patent and Trademark Office records show. Details are in applications (US 20160098089, US 20160055201, US 20160054792, US 20160041618, US 20160041617 and US 20150346820) the company filed two years ago at the PTO, now being published for open access. The gigahertz frequencies used for the radar fields, and the power at which they operate, are chosen to suit the devices and location, the patents said. The radar field may be generated by in-building fixed transmitters, by a smartphone or smartwatch, they said. If someone enters “Best Italian restaurant?” as a search term on a mobile device, the device will return much more useful results if the user can assist by sweeping the device over the immediate surroundings, the patents said: Gesture commands aren't blocked by objects. By combining biometric sensing with gesture recognition, multiple appliances also can be controlled by multiple people, from almost anywhere in the vicinity, they said. Google didn’t comment Friday.

The FCC Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology adopted final methodology for determining “Grandfathered Wireless Protection Zones” for existing licensees in the 3650-3700 MHz band, as part of the rules for the broader 3.5 GHz shared band. “We will utilize a two-prong approach to determine Grandfathered Wireless Protection Zones that is generally consistent with the approach that we sought comment on in the 3650-3700 MHz Protection Contours [Public Notice],” said an FCC public notice Friday. “This approach will establish a baseline contour that will be used to protect the area -- by sectors -- in which unregistered consumer premises equipment (CPEs) are located, and allow licensees to protect the specific area -- by sectors -- where registered CPEs are located.” Among changes from the earlier proposal, the FCC said it would eliminate the requirement that licensees identify the specific frequencies that are in operation on each sector, basing protection instead on protected range of frequencies on what licensees have already registered in the commission database. The agency said it also will require Citizens Broadband Service device operators to meet the interference protection level at all locations within the grandfathered protection zone, not just at the edge.

The FCC should distinguish between the character length requirements for LTE and non-LTE networks as it develops new rules for wireless emergency alerts (WEAs), a C Spire executive told Public Safety Bureau staff. “An increased number of characters (e.g., 360) can be accommodated more readily, given a reasonable phase-in period of several years, by LTE network operators,” the carrier said. C Spire also said if the FCC requires carriers to embed URLs in WEA messages, it could have a detrimental effect on their networks. The FCC should first launch a voluntary pilot program to test the network and user impact of embedded URLs in WEA messages, C Spire said. The agency proposed at its November open meeting to allow longer WEA messages, inclusion of hyperlinks and narrower distribution of alerts (see 1511190053). The filing was posted Friday in docket 15-91.

If the FCC approves stand-alone privacy rules for ISPs, it would undermine the administration’s broader privacy agenda, CTIA told the agency, reporting on meetings with aides to all regular commissioners. “The Obama Administration carefully highlighted the need for consistency in its 2012 Privacy Blueprint and Consumer Bill of Rights,” CTIA said. “The U.S. government reinforced this stance in its EU Privacy Shield negotiations, maintaining that the FTC standard, in combination with law focusing on sensitive data where appropriate and robust enforcement, provides strong protection for consumers.” CTIA said the FCC should follow various state laws on breach notification rules. State laws allow a minimum of 30 days, the group said. “The breach notification rule should provide a reasonable time to send notices to allow for investigation of the breach and a determination of which customers were affected.” If notifications are sent too quickly, “consumers may get incomplete or inaccurate information, and companies may not have enough time to fix the breach or help law enforcement find the perpetrators,” said the filing posted Friday in docket 16-106.

Global sales of smartphones to end users jumped 4.3 percent in Q2 to 344.4 million units, from 330.3 million in Q2 a year earlier, Gartner said in a Thursday report. Demand for premium smartphones slowed in Q2 “as consumers wait for new hardware launches in the second half of the year," said the research firm. All “mature markets” except Japan had declining demand for smartphones, but all “emerging regions” except Latin America had growth, the company said. Q2 was an especially poor quarter for Apple, whose iPhone sales declined 7.7 percent globally, including a 26 percent decrease in China and mature Asia Pacific regions, it said. Market leader Samsung increased its Q2 share to 22.3 percent from 21.8 percent in Q2 a year earlier, while Apple’s share fell to 12.9 percent from 14.6 percent, Gartner said. For operating systems, Android increased its share to 86.2 percent from 82.2 percent, and the share of iOS devices fell to 12.9 percent from 14.6 percent, it said. Windows devices were the big Q2 losers, as their share plummeted to 0.6 percent from 2.5 percent, it said.