The FCC Enforcement Bureau entered into a consent decree with Taylor Oilfield Manufacturing in which the company acknowledged operating an illegal cell jammer for less than two weeks. Taylor agreed to pay a $28,000 fine and comply with rules in the future, the bureau said. Taylor “cooperated with Commission agents, surrendered the jamming devices, and is a small company that had not previously violated any communications laws,” the bureau said in a notice in Monday's Daily Digest. Taylor operated the jamming device on its property in Broussard, Louisiana, in 2012, the bureau said.

Allowing longer wireless emergency alert (WEA) messages could be technically tricky, representatives from the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee told FCC Public Safety Bureau staff, ATIS said in a filing posted Monday in docket 15-91. Industry attendees came from AT&T, Comtech and Qualcomm: "As each 90 character message is independent, the messages may not be received in the order they were intended, and would rely upon the user to try to put the messages together in the correct order." On including URLs in WEAs, ATIS said "this may result in a large number of users simultaneously accessing a URL, which could result in network congestion," among other issues. ATIS offered “additional information about issues raised in its comments” on proposed changes to alerts, the group said. Its January comments expressed support for the expansion of the maximum permissible length of WEA messages from 90 to 360 characters and numbers, but said industry may need longer than the year proposed by the FCC to comply. ATIS warned that adding URLs or phone numbers to messages “could result in issues within the service provider infrastructure network and may increase the likelihood of severe network congestion resulting in the inability of subscribers to make calls.” ATIS supported Spanish alerts but opposed any requirement for other languages because of “technical challenges.”

If the FCC changes its current rule mandating that old wireless phones be able to call 911 it should give the wireless industry time to adjust, Verizon officials told an aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a meeting. The FCC sought comment a year ago on whether it should eliminate the 20-year-old requirement that “nonservice-initialized” (NSI) handsets -- cellphones no longer connected to a carrier network -- still must be able to connect to 911 (see 1504020047). Public safety groups supported dropping the requirement, but wireless carriers raised concerns (see 1506080043). The docket, 08-51, has been mostly quiet in recent months. Verizon said in a filing posted Monday representatives explained the technical steps Verizon has made to comply with the commission’s existing rule. “These include long-standing network routing and translation configurations that bypass established call authentication processes for 911 calls made over Verizon’s CDMA network,” Verizon said. “Verizon explained that removing this bypass to comply with the proposed rule change could lead to certain situations in which 911 calls from service-initialized handsets are snared in the call authentication process.” If the FCC changes the rule, “We emphasized the importance of allowing carriers sufficient time to comply with any rule change, and the key role that customer education by public safety stakeholders would play in making such a threshold change to this longstanding 911 policy,” Verizon said. Public safety requested the rule change, citing prank calls to call centers made on NSI phones.

Apple and the federal government are headed for a closely watched showdown in U.S. District Court in Riverside, California, Tuesday over an order to compel the company to help FBI investigators get access to an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 San Bernardino mass shooting (see 1602170068). Federal Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym will hear the case -- scheduled for 1 p.m. PDT -- that may have wider international implications. Apple wants Pym to dismiss the case, saying the government is misapplying the All Writs Act to force Apple to create new software that would help investigators break into the device (see 1603160060) and would set a precedent to permit the government to create back doors for all devices. DOJ and the FBI have argued the act has been "regularly invoked" and have mostly said it wouldn't set a precedent (see 1603110010). But FBI Director James Comey acknowledged earlier this month at a congressional hearing that any decision could be "potentially precedential," though not binding (see 1603010013). Some who expect the case would head to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and possibly up to the Supreme Court (see 1602220026) have said the case could have reverberations across the world and affect millions of people (see 1603040023). “The outcome of this case could not be more important for the future of privacy and security in the digital age," American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Alex Abdo said Monday in a statement. "If the FBI wins, it will have gained the power to force the tech companies to hack their customers. This is a reckless pursuit that threatens to undermine the security of all our devices, not just the one phone at issue in the case.” But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote in a Time opinion piece Thursday that "Apple is not fighting for privacy; it's fighting for profit." The FBI's request isn't different from other Fourth Amendment approved searches and wouldn't affect Americans' privacy, he said.

The move of major U.S. wireless carriers to installment sales for handsets “has been a big driver of improved industry profitability given the accounting treatment,” UBS said Friday in a note to investors. But the plans also have a second effect, lengthening upgrade cycles for postpaid phones, UBS said. Postpaid subscribers now keep handsets for 3.3 years on average, up from 2.8 years in 2011, the firm said. “This is putting pressure on upgrade rates, which is in turn driving lower churn and fewer gross adds. We believe this will be a key theme for 1Q earnings, driving another quarter of strong sector profitability, especially at AT&T and Verizon.” At Sprint, UBS predicted low upgrade rates and churn in Q1 “will drive slower, albeit positive, sub growth.” T-Mobile will benefit with continuing strong growth, the analysts said. UBS also said it's paring back estimated handset losses for AT&T and continues to expect slight handset growth at Verizon. “In aggregate, we estimate the upgrade rate will reach a record low for the group [UBS estimates 6.2 percent], while postpaid churn continues to improve,” UBS said. “These metrics have been closely correlated for the past 2 years, and apart for record activity in 4Q14 with the iPhone 6, both have consistently fallen.”

The FCC established a pleading cycle on US Cellular’s proposed buy of a single lower 700 MHz B-block license from Hershey Cooperative Telephone. The block covers a single cellular market area in Nebraska. “The Applicants assert that, as a result of this proposed transaction, USCC would hold sufficient Lower 700 MHz spectrum in this CMA to allow for a 10 X10 megahertz LTE deployment,” a public notice said. The buy would give a US Cellular subsidiary 61 MHz of below 1-GHz spectrum in four counties around Keith, Nebraska, the PN said. The FCC also sent both companies a series of questions on the deal.

Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System don't believe the use of automated or mechanical parsing to compose 90-character messages is appropriate, they said about proposed FCC rule changes for wireless emergency alerts to mobile phones, during a meeting with officials from the FCC Public Safety Bureau, recounted a filing. “In no case should the IPAWS system be responsible for this function,” they said. “FEMA believes that parsing a 90 character message from a 360 character message should be done by the alert originator.” The IPAWS officials also said devices should continue the practice of identifying the message “by whatever means dictated by the carrier” to eliminate duplicate messages. Carriers' approach on 90-character versus 360-character messages depends on future rules, IPAWS said. “Carriers will most likely push 90 character messages to legacy networks and 360 character messages to 4G LTE networks.” The FCC proposed at its November meeting to allow longer WEA messages, inclusion of hyperlinks and narrower distribution of alerts (see 1511190053). FEMA's filing was posted Friday in docket 15-94.

AT&T emphasized the importance of 700 MHz spectrum to its deployment of LTE, in a letter to the FCC answering questions on its proposed buy of two lower 700 MHz B-block licenses in South Carolina from West Carolina (see 1603020060). “AT&T’s LTE deployment strategy centers around the Lower 700 MHz band, and AT&T has made deployment of LTE in 700 MHz spectrum a key priority,” the carrier said. “Where AT&T holds Lower 700 MHz B or C Block spectrum, AT&T will launch LTE service initially using that spectrum.” The company typically launches LTE in a 5x5 MHz configuration where a single 12 MHz block of lower 700 MHz B or C block spectrum is available and in a 10x10 MHz configuration in areas where both the lower 700 MHz B and C blocks are available, the carrier said. AT&T said it now has a 5x5 MHz network in the two cellular market areas covered, Anderson and Laurens, and is deploying a 10x10 network using leased spectrum. “Acquisition of these licenses from West Carolina will enable AT&T to maintain this 10 x 10 MHz LTE deployment in the Lower 700 MHz spectrum in these CMAs on a permanent basis,” AT&T said. It redacted key information on the markets.

The FCC should allocate at least part of the high-frequency spectrum to a sharing system modeled on the 3.5 GHz band, representatives of New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge told officials of the International, Public Safety and Wireless bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology. The FCC is expected to take up final rules for some high-frequency bands this summer (see 1603090057). “OTI and PK strongly concur with commenters suggesting that the Commission should extend its Part 96 framework for intensive, three-tiered sharing to at least the 37 GHz band,” the officials said. “Extending the three-tier 3.5 GHz sharing framework and the Spectrum Access System governance model to the mmW [millimeter wave] bands creates a flexible sharing framework that protects band incumbents, facilitates efficient spectrum re-use, and promotes lower barriers to entry and innovation.” Use of a dynamic sharing model in at least part of the spectrum “will ensure that limited spectrum resources do not go underutilized and that there is a truly flexible and hybrid spectrum access option to accommodate both current and future technologies and use cases," said a filing posted Friday in docket 14-177.

Global shipments of wearable devices are expected to grow 38.2 percent this year to 110 million units, IDC said in a Thursday report. The research firm sees an expanding lineup of vendors combining with “fast-growing consumer awareness and demand” to push double-digit growth through 2020, when annual shipments will reach 237.1 million units, it said. “Although smartwatches like the Apple Watch or Android Wear devices capture the spotlight, they will only account for a quarter of all wearables in 2016 and will grow to about a third by 2020," IDC said. "It's time to start thinking about smarter watches -- traditional watches with some sort of fitness or sleep tracking but are unable to run apps -- built by classic watch makers. These devices have the potential of making the technology invisible while still integrating themselves within day-to-day activities.”