Initial comments on the FCC’s 5.9 GHz record refresh public notice are expected to be due July 7 at the FCC, based on a notice slated to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register. The FCC released the notice last week (see 1606010067). Comments in docket 13-49 are due 30 days after publication, replies 15 days later. Disagreements remain about how the band can be shared between Wi-Fi and dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) systems designed to prevent motor vehicle accidents (see 1605260059).

The integration, storage, analysis and presentation of IoT data is expected to become a $30 billion market in 2021, based on a 29.4 percent compound annual growth rate, ABI Research said in a Monday report. “Descriptive analytics currently generate more than 75 percent of IoT analytics revenue,” the firm said. “But over the next five years, rapid uptake of advanced analytics will overtake descriptive analytics’ share of revenue to the extent that predictive and prescriptive analytics will account for more than 60 percent of IoT analytics revenue by 2021.” There will come the need to “harmonize IoT ecosystem components without creating or simply shifting the bottlenecks that come with the management of high-velocity variable data,” it said. That will put pressure “on connectivity providers, edge analytics platform players, and system integrators to stand up new and distributed frameworks,” it said.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sent Sprint a letter Monday asking questions about its proposed exchange of PCS and AWS-1 licenses with Verizon. “The Applicants assert that the proposed spectrum exchanges would allow for holding larger blocks of contiguous spectrum, which in turn should permit more robust operations,” the FCC Wireless Bureau said in a May notice. “In those markets where either Sprint or Verizon Wireless gains additional spectrum, the Applicants maintain that the proposed transaction would help meet the demands of their customers for broadband wireless services." "Provide a detailed description of how the Company would use the spectrum that it would acquire under the Proposed Transaction on a standalone basis and/or in conjunction with any other of the Company’s spectrum holdings, and how it would improve spectrum capacity and efficiency of operations,” said the letter to Sprint. The bureau asks for a response by June 20.

Corning's chief sees a growing market for connected cars and more smartphone uses for its flexible displays. CEO Wendell Weeks told a Sanford Bernstein conference in New York Thursday that a more commercially viable opportunity for Corning than curved displays is in “conformable” displays. He cited the Samsung Galaxy Edge smartphones with displays that wrap around the corner of the device. That's fashioned from a flexible OLED “being used as a conformable display” behind a piece of Corning Gorilla Glass, he said. “That is going to be, far and away, the majority application for this tech going forward and it actually opens up opportunities for us for more Gorilla Glass.” Any observer of the automotive industry would agree “that industry is in the midst of undergoing multiple disruptions,” Weeks said. Corning has an opportunity “to play a significant part in at least three” of those disruptions -- making cars cleaner, safer and more connected, he said. “The thrust of what people want to do is to take that car and give you that same high quality experience you have with your other connected devices,” Weeks said. “We can facilitate that with surfaces that are very durable that are 3D-shaped and optically advantaged. This will allow these to have superior multi-touch response, much better viewing and enhanced communications.”

Nokia and Sprint planned to have demo'd the power of 5G at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, during the Centennial Copa America soccer tournament Friday, Nokia said. It said Sprint was to demo 4K video streaming and virtual reality at speeds of up to 2.3 Gbps, using 73 GHz spectrum. “This demonstration of 5G capabilities is one of several steps we’re taking to bring 5G capabilities into field trials,” Sprint Chief Technology Officer John Saw said in a Nokia news release. “With our deep 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings, we have significantly more 5G capable spectrum than any other carrier,” Saw said in a blog post Friday. “And we have a long history, starting all the way back in 2006, deploying multiple high spectrum bands for backhaul, including 11 GHz, 18 GHz, 23 GHz, 28 GHz and (starting in 2009) 80 GHz.”

Atlantic Tele-Network (ATN) and SAL Spectrum defended their petition seeking a waiver so SAL can benefit from rural bidding credits in the TV incentive auction. The two fired back at N.E. Colorado Cellular and Union Telephone Co., which jointly told the FCC that the agency should reject the request. N.E. Colorado and Union, “competitors” in the auction, filed the only opposing comment, ATN and SAL said. N.E. Colorado and Union told the FCC that ATN has deep pockets and doesn't need additional support (see 1605270015). “The rural service provider bidding credit seeks to promote rural service, not to address constraints on capital,” ATN and SAL said in a filing. Comments were in docket 14-252.

Incompas CEO Chip Pickering defended T-Mobile’s zero-rated Binge On program as within the spirit of net neutrality rules, in a letter Friday to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. T-Mobile is an Incompas member, and the letter said not all the group's members backed the filing. “INCOMPAS believes that Binge On supports and promotes your overriding policy objective -- the promotion of competition -- in the mobile broadband marketplace and the video marketplace as it allows consumers to explore more over-the-top video options on the go,” Pickering wrote. “Overwhelming consumer enthusiasm for Binge On shows just how much users benefit from the program.”

Sprint has expanded its “super-fast LTE Plus Network” to 204 markets, “including newly added markets such as New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Honolulu and San Juan, Puerto Rico,” it said Thursday in a news release. Sprint’s LTE network covers 300 million people, with about 70 percent covered by the company’s 2.5 GHz spectrum, Sprint said. “As coverage has improved, so has Sprint’s network reliability. In fact, Sprint’s reliability now beats T-Mobile’s and performs within 1 percent of AT&T and Verizon.”

ABI Research sees 5G as the “unifying connectivity technology" for future cars, the firm said in a Thursday report. By 2025, there will be 67 million active automotive 5G vehicle subscriptions, 3 million of which will be low-latency connections mainly deployed in autonomous cars, it said. Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (V2X) will be a “key requirement for the connected and autonomous vehicle of the future,” ABI said. “It is closely linked to the concept of cooperative mobility, allowing vehicles to exchange both status and event information with each other via reliable, low-latency communication technologies. With it, vehicles can be proactive and capture and share critical events happening locally with each other, ultimately ensuring safer driving practices.” But for V2X to become a reality, the automotive and transportation industries “must first expand the scope and relevance of 5G cellular connectivity,” it said. ABI expects this to dramatically increase through 2025, “allowing connectivity providers to bring more value-added services to the table and better position themselves in the automotive ecosystem,” it said. “From there, new business models will emerge and ultimately more closely align the automotive and telecom industries.”

IDC sees 2016 global tablet shipments declining for the second straight year, dropping 9.6 percent from 2015, the firm said in a Thursday report. The tablet market “has seen its peak,” and will face down years in 2016 and 2017, though detachable tablet growth will trigger “a slight rebound in 2018 and beyond,” it said. Detachable tablets are only 16 percent of the market, but their share will nearly double to 31 percent in 2020, it said. Tablet makers “are slowly shifting focus toward the detachable tablet market segment,” which has quickly resulted in increased product offerings, lower average selling prices and broadened consumer awareness for the category, it said. “Many traditional PC manufacturers have assumed the detachable category to be a natural extension of the PC market and perhaps assumed it would rightfully be theirs to capture. Now they find themselves in head-to-head competition with a slew of new manufacturers that have created their market off of smartphone and slate tablet growth.”