The American Cable Association (ACA) and ITTA proposed again to shift a disproportionate share of regulatory fees onto wireless regulatees and away from wireline interests (see 1512090061), CTIA said in an ex parte letter in docket 15-121. Just because wireless providers also offer voice services, doesn't mean they need to be included in the wireline Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers regulatory fee, the filing said. Despite ACA and ITTA's claims, FCC regulatees don't pay regulatory fees to different bureaus for the same service, CTIA said. The wireless group asked the FCC to reject ITTA and ACA's attempt to change the current regulatory fee methodology for assessing fees on Wireless Telecommunication Bureau and Wireline Competition Bureau regulatees "because it's fair, administrable and consistent with Section 9.”

The ZigBee Alliance passed the 1,500-product milestone and added two vice chairmen, an indication that growth “is happening and going to continue to grow at a faster pace,” CEO Tobin Richardson emailed us Friday. Musa Unmehopa, Philips Lighting director-intellectual property standards, moved from secretary-treasurer to vice chairman, and board member Jean-Pierre Desbenoit, Schneider Electric ICT standardization and industry relations director-global strategy, was elected vice chairman. Michael Koster, SmartThings principal research engineer, succeeds Unmehopa as board secretary and Dee Denteneer, Philips Lighting director-standards, was elected treasurer. The board shift means there’s "more interest in leadership of the ZigBee Alliance across industry segments,” said Richardson. The alliance passed 1,500 certified products, from more than 200 manufacturers, last month, spanning applications in smart home, smart building and smart city that are in use “across continents, in space and under the oceans,” it said. At The ZigBee Alliance Winter Summit last month, participants shared developments on ZigBee 3.0 and the alliance’s Common Applications Library that consolidates previous market-specific ZigBee profiles into a single offering, it said.

An FCC workshop Thursday on the spectrum frontiers NPRM will kick off with remarks by Chairman Tom Wheeler and then Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, according to an agenda released Friday. Ted Rappaport, professor of electrical engineering at New York University, is to deliver a keynote address. The workshop's four panels include "Creating a Regulatory Scheme for Flexible Use in the mmW Bands” and “Fireside Chat -- Furthering Spectrum Policy and Promoting Wireless Technology." The session starts at 9 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room at the FCC.

FirstNet provided additional information on its January request for proposal. Friday's Q&A document provides the third set of vendor clarification questions, covering questions 86 through 394 posed to the authority, FirstNet said. “However, this set does not contain all questions and answers (86 through 394) as there are gaps,” the authority said. “Responses to questions will be provided on a rolling basis as expeditiously as possible.” FirstNet released its first set of answers to questions on the RFP two weeks ago (see 1602190058).

Verizon hosted FCC officials, including Wireless Bureau Chief Jon Wilkins, at 5G demonstrations at the carrier’s Basking Ridge, New Jersey, headquarters. “Verizon provided an overview of Verizon’s plans for 5G and the current status of several field trials that its 5G Technology Forum partners are conducting in various locations,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 14-177. “Verizon also showed the FCC officials a live demonstration of a Samsung base station with both fixed and mobile equipment.” Verizon officials discussed the NPRM on high-frequency spectrum, the filing said. Rules should provide for “wide channels (at least 200 MHz wide) because 5G technologies will require substantial amounts of spectrum for low-latency and high-speed applications,” Verizon said. The carrier recently also gave a 5G demo in Basking Ridge to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1602180058).

The U.S. wireless tower industry is "facing some growing pains right now" and was downgraded from "outperform" to "market weight" by Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche Friday. Her investor note cited carrier resistance to current tower pricing, as well as a difficulty achieving "new incremental growth" due to the lead up to the FCC broadcast incentive auction, the creation of the FirstNet system and the development of 5G standards. "Additionally, our sense is AT&T... has still not yet turned on the wireless spending faucet" and instead is focusing capital on fiber deployment, said Fritzsche. "Carriers are indeed saying 'enough,'" Fritzsche said, saying carriers are "definitely pushing back on the structure of amendments and pricing for the tower companies." The current lull in spending is consistent with historical spending plateaus before FCC spectrum auctions and the transition to a new wireless technology, such as 5G, she said. Fritzsche said "little or any of current tower business is at risk." Fritzsche also said the increase in size of cell sites and tower equipment "helps [the] longer term amendment revenue outlook."

U.S. Cellular representatives backed a possible Mobility Fund II program, “including a proposal to distribute funds using a federal-state broadband grant program,” in a meeting with FCC officials. “We discussed how such a program would work and provided a draft rule for consideration,” the carrier said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 10-208. U.S. Cellular said it participates in the Lifeline program in 14 states.

TracFone is committed to Lifeline modernization, representatives said in a meeting with FCC staff, including new Wireless Bureau Chief Jon Wilkins. TracFone said it presented a proposal under which Lifeline subscribers would get a free smartphone capable of accessing the Internet, with a choice of 400 voice minutes plus unlimited text, or 300 MB of data per month. The subscribers could then buy additional data at a price of $10 per GB, the carrier said. “We also described several of the broadband services TracFone is now testing with school systems and with health care providers and how those offerings could someday be used with Lifeline service.” A filing on the meeting was posted Thursday in docket 11-42.

IDC sees 2015 as likely the last year of double-digit percentage smartphone global sales growth, the research firm said in a Thursday report. The 2015 calendar year finished with 1.44 billion smartphones shipped worldwide, up 10.4 percent over 2014, IDC said. It sees 2016 shipments rising 5.7 percent to 1.5 billion. “Mature markets” like the U.S., China and Western Europe all had single-digit growth in 2015, while “high-growth markets” such as India, Indonesia, the Middle East and Africa “all remained healthy,” it said. "The mature market slowdown has some grave consequences for Apple, as well as the high-end Android space, as these were the markets that absorbed the majority of the premium handsets that shipped over the past five years."

Ubiquiti Networks hailed the FCC order Wednesday relaxing out-of-band emission limits for operation of U-NII-3 devices in the 5.725-5.85 GHz band (see 1603020064). “Ubiquiti’s networking equipment provides Internet access to historically unconnected and underconnected markets via its cutting edge technology, which enables some of the longest link distances in the unlicensed 5GHz spectrum,” the company said. “In 2014, the FCC jeopardized the feasibility of 5GHz products by drastically reducing the out of band emissions (OOBE) that are allowed in the U-NII-3 portion of this spectrum.” Ubiquiti noted that the proposal adopted by the FCC closely tracked its proposal on OOBE limits, which was acknowledged in the order.