Replies on the spectrum frontier proceeding, which were due at the FCC Feb. 23, are now due Feb. 26, the Office of Engineering and Technology and Wireless Bureau said Wednesday in a public notice. Several parties, including the Satellite Industry Association and the Telecommunications Industry Association, asked for a delay, the PN noted. “Petitioners assert that additional time is needed to respond to detailed licensing proposals and technical information addressing a number of different frequency bands raised by commenters in the record,” it said. “Petitioners also cite inclement weather, which caused Federal Government offices to be closed for several days, resulting in an extension of the comment deadline.”

Sprint has different messages for regulators and for Wall Street on special access regulation, the Internet Innovation Alliance said in a report posted Wednesday. “Sprint tells Washington regulators it needs regulated access to business data lines,” the group said, citing various FCC filings. “Yet, Sprint simultaneously boasts to Wall Street of cost savings achieved by NOT relying on FCC-mandated business data circuits.” As one example, IIA cited a recent Sprint SEC filing. “As expected, our network modernization program has allowed us to realize financial benefit to the Company through reduced network maintenance and operating costs, capital efficiencies, reduced energy costs, lower roaming expenses and backhaul savings,” the filing said. Sprint has been a leading party seeking FCC action in curbing special access rates (see 1601270072). "There is nothing inconsistent in saying that Sprint is taking all actions possible to reduce its spend on backhaul circuits and stating that incumbents are charging too much for the services they provide," a Sprint spokesman said. "In fact, Sprint is taking the actions it is on backhaul precisely because of the high costs imposed by the incumbents."

LG announced the Stylus 2, the follow-up to the Stylus G4 smartphone, before its debut at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona. The 5.7-inch Stylus 2, with an HD in-cell touch screen, comes with a thinner "nanocoated" pen tip with the feel of a standard pen to provide more accuracy for note-taking and drawing, said the company.

The FCC postponed a session scheduled for Tuesday bringing together prospective Spectrum Access System administrators and environmental sensing capability operators who are using the 3.5 GHz band. The postponement was necessary because of the weather-related delayed opening of the federal government Tuesday, an FCC official said. FCC staff promised in an earlier notice to “address questions related to the SAS or ESC requirements or the process for reviewing proposals.”

Last month’s CES was a good opportunity to see the future of public safety communications, said a Tuesday FirstNet blog post. FirstNet staff used CES as a “a sneak peek to what may be possible with the nationwide public safety broadband network,” especially since devices usually start in the consumer space, wrote Barry Leitch of the FirstNet Chief Technology Officer Devices Group. Smartphones offering “voice, messaging and data access to public safety personnel,” laptops and tablets that can be used as mobile data terminals and vehicle-mounted wireless routers were the types of devices scoped by FirstNet staff, Leitch wrote. “At CES, we also looked to when new technology solutions for public safety may spur innovation in the commercial sector,” he said. “Keynote presentations during the show covered topics including the Internet of Things, commercial video streaming service, and cognitive learning systems working with IOT and cloud services.”

Marcus Spectrum Solutions filed in support of a 2013 IEEE-USA petition seeking a declaratory ruling by the FCC that technology above 95 GHz is presumptively “new technology” in the context of Section 7 of the Communications Act. Marcus offered a list of U.S. companies active in technologies above 95 GHz, which can't sell products for licensed or unlicensed use due to the lack of radio service rules above that frequency. “These US firms compete with overseas firms … that exist in very different regulatory environments,” Marcus said. “While clearly addressing these legal ambiguities about the legality of the products of the above US firms is not a high priority for the FCC staff, future capital formation for such firms as well as possible mergers might be delayed or threatened by routine ‘due diligence’ that discovers these ambiguities.” Other nations take the spectrum seriously, Marcus said. It pointed to a Japanese 120 GHz system used at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and a Singapore government-funded program at 135 GHz. “The US government does not target communications technologies for government-supported R&D even though our national competitors do,” the firm said. “Our free enterprise system is generally more effective. But it is not effective if firms seeking to develop new technologies subject to nonroutine approvals, e.g. technology above 95 GHz, cannot show investors a transparent regulatory system that will consider requests for spectrum access on their merits and in a timely way.” The filing was posted Tuesday in docket 13-259.

Giesecke & Devrient expects about 75 percent of all cars shipped globally in 2020 to have embedded connectivity, the German security firm said in a Monday report. Of the 70 million passenger cars registered worldwide in 2014, only 10 percent had embedded connectivity, it said. The forecast is consistent with SiriusXM's forecast that most vehicles built at the end of the decade will include embedded LTE modems (see 1602020055). “As societies are becoming increasingly urbanized and hyperconnected, mobile connectivity is emerging as a core topic for the automotive industry,” Giesecke & Devrient said. “Vehicles of the future will be fully networked, independent, mobile ecosystems with specific services.”

The type of investment in mobile infrastructure enhancements seen during Super Bowl 50 in the communities around Levi's Stadium -- located in Silicon Valley and home to the NFL's San Francisco 49ers -- will be required to bring 5G networks "everywhere," said David Young, Verizon vice president-Internet and technology policy, in a company blog post Monday. The "explosion" of data traffic during Super Bowl weekend was made possible because of additional small cells that were "widely deployed" and connected through fiber networks, said Young. Deploying the large number of new small cells required "working closely" with property owners and local governments, and is the same type of cooperative approach that will be needed to bring infrastructure improvements in "thousands of communities" throughout the country, he said. Young also said much of the discussion about the creation of 5G networks has revolved around the need for additional high-frequency spectrum, but what's less understood is that 5G networks will need new infrastructure -- mainly fiber-connected small cells. "The [IoT] and the flood of network traffic that will come with it will be here soon," said Young, and all levels of government need to "modernize practices and fees in a way that will encourage and facilitate the infrastructure deployments that are needed to support the 5G future that is just around the corner so everyone can reap the benefits." Comcast has said that 10-plus terabytes were uploaded or downloaded at the game (see 1602090063).

AT&T said it's offering up to $650 in credits to encourage people to switch to AT&T. Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon already have made similar offers. Customers who choose the offer can combine it with AT&T's buy-one, get-one free promotion that covers a number of popular smartphones, AT&T said in a news release Monday.

Qualcomm announced new Snapdragon processors for wearables and smartphones, it said. LG and Qualcomm, which have collaborated on smartwatches based on Android Wear, will continue their relationship via the Wear 2100 processor, said LG Vice President-Wearables David Yoon. New LG smartwatches and “other wearable devices” will launch later this year, he said. The Snapdragon Wear platform comprises silicon, software, support tools and reference designs available in tethered (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) and connected (4G/LTE and 3G) versions, said Qualcomm. It also announced Thursday three upcoming Snapdragon processors for mid- and high-end smartphones, supporting LTE with carrier aggregation and HEVC video compression.