Siri and Google Now voice controls launched as smartphone interfaces, but the smart home is where voice control will reach its full potential, said ABI Research in a Monday news release. Smart TVs, refrigerators and plugs are among the devices that will extend the reach of the smart home and bring simplicity to managing the smart home by voice, it said. ABI forecasts more than 120 million voice-enabled devices will ship annually by 2021, and voice control -- combining speech recognition with natural language processing -- is becoming the “key user interface” in the smart home. Amazon’s Alexa, leading the pack of voice engines, is creating “new competition" and demand for wireless speaker manufacturers and other vendors to include voice capabilities in their devices, said analyst Jonathan Collins. But scaling voice control capability brings complexity, Collins said. “Vendors will need to evaluate how and when to bring voice control into smart home devices in order to best tackle adding the service into wider smart home systems,” he said.

Canadian Pacific Railway agreed to pay a $1.2 million fine for operating more than 100 wireless radio facilities in the U.S. without prior FCC approval, the bureau said Monday. The railroad, which has some operations in the U.S., also didn’t get FCC authorizations for the transfer of control of 30 wireless radio licenses, the bureau said. The violations were disclosed to the FCC by the railway after a 2015 audit, the bureau said. Canadian Pacific also agreed to implement a three-year compliance plan to prevent future violations, said an FCC news release.

The spectrum noise floor and other interference issues dominated discussions at a recent International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies (ISART) meeting, said Keith Gremban, director of the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, Monday in an NTIA blog post. “One of the biggest themes to emerge from the discussions was the inevitable rise in the ‘noise floor’ -- the measure of the unwanted signals -- with so many more wireless devices in use,” Gremban wrote. “Another theme was the need for rapid and reliable investigation into the impact of the proliferation of devices attempting to operate simultaneously in the same or adjacent bands, from both a scientific and a policy perspective. Panelists discussed not only how to predict aggregate interference from many devices and protect against it, but also who bears responsibility for it when it occurs.” Discussions at the ISART session found broad agreement on the importance of collaborative action, he said. “Transparency, trust, honest brokers, and clear rules are prerequisites to real-time interference mitigation.”

The Rural Wireless Association and NTCA asked the FCC to slow or even pause the TV incentive auction while meetings by its members are in progress next month. RWA meets at CTIA's conference Sept. 7-9 and NTCA and RWA have annual meetings Sept. 26-28, the filing said. If the FCC doesn’t pause the auction during those dates it should hold only one round per day, the groups said. “The Associations’ members have limited personnel resources to dedicate to auction participation,” the groups said in a filing in docket 14-252. “Small staffs already manage a substantial workload, and auction participation over a lengthy and unpredictable time period will stretch limited personnel resources even further. In many cases, the leaders that attend industry events to conduct their companies’ business are the same individuals named as their companies’ authorized bidders in Auction 1002.” Auction 1002 is the FCC’s formal name for the forward part of the incentive auction.

Sixty percent of smartphone users with Pokemon Go were likely to enter a business offering Pokemon-branded discounts to players, said a survey by marketing communications company MGH collected through Survey Monkey Audience. Some 38 percent were likely to buy a Pokemon-themed product, and 60 percent viewed businesses hosting Pokemon promotions favorably, it said. Restaurants and bars topped the list of business categories offering Pokemon-themed products or discounts, followed by retail stores at 44 percent. Facebook (72 percent) and store signage (52 percent) were cited highest for communicating Pokemon-themed discounts. The online survey of 1,000 U.S. smartphone users ages 18-55 was done in July with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent at the 95 percent confidence level, it said.

FirstNet plans a series of meetings in the central part of the U.S. starting in September to explain its environmental plan to the public, said a notice in Friday's Federal Register. The meetings, to present FirstNet’s draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for the Central region, are required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The meetings cover Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. The first is Sept. 7 in Des Moines. Interested parties can also file comments by Oct. 11.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion by Berkeley, California, to strike an argument CTIA made in a reply brief in the group’s challenge of the city’s cellphone warning ordinance for RF emissions. Instead, the 9th Circuit allowed the city to file a surreply brief within 14 days of Thursday's order (in Pacer). CTIA argued no FCC finding or regulatory determination has found cellphones to be dangerous, and the ordinance is an unconstitutional attempt to usurp FCC regulation of cellphones.

LG doubled-down on sound quality in its latest phone due for release Sept. 6. The LG V20, the first smartphone to hit the market with Android’s Nougat operating system out of the box, also will be first with the ESS 32-bit hi-fi Quad DAC (digital-to-analog converter), said an LG announcement Thursday. The Quad DAC up-samples music that’s saved on the phone or streamed -- along with video soundtracks -- for playback through “compatible wired headphones,” said LG.

Michael Kors Holdings wants to become the “fashion leader” in “high-growth” smartwatch and wearables, CEO John Idol said on an earnings call. Its smartwatch will run on the Android Wear platform, he said. “The touch-screen device allows you to see your social media updates, texts, emails and call alerts, use voice controls to access services via Ok Google, track your fitness and much more.” The company also will debut a line of “smart jewelry,” Idol said Wednesday.

Newer smartwatches with cellular connections that free the device from the smartphone could be a major driver for the next generation of smartwatches, said NPD analyst Eddie Hold in a blog post. “The freedom to completely untether from the smartphone could become the next logical ‘killer use’” for smartwatch owners, allowing them to go sans phone during activities, he said Wednesday. Service fees stand in the way of the rise of the cellular-equipped smartwatch, Hold said. “Success will no doubt be related to the correct balance between service fees and how important the untethering aspect of these devices proves to be.”