Sprint plans to “densify and increase” the number of cell sites on the 2.5 GHz, 1.9 GHz and 800 MHz spectrum it owns, Chief Technology Officer John Saw said in a blog post. “This will include adding thousands of new macro sites to expand coverage, and it will include a continued expansion of our 2.5 GHz LTE footprint,” Saw wrote. “As we continue to improve on our LTE coverage with techniques like carrier aggregation and beamforming, our customers in metro markets will soon see significantly improved data speeds and performance.” Sprint also plans to deploy “tens of thousands” of small cells, Saw said Tuesday. “Small cells offer a number of advantages, including increased capacity and more efficient throughput which enables customers to send and receive data at faster rates,” he said. “And they will allow us to add capacity in targeted high-traffic areas, as well as extend better service in hard to reach locations and indoor sites.” Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said Wednesday in a research note that the blog post is important to understanding Sprint’s strategy. “While this rollout will be more than the 3-5 markets that used to be spoken about -- we do believe S's strategy will be to go narrow and very deep in the metro US markets that show the highest data usage,” she wrote. “The focus will be more on fattening the capacity pipe in markets where this demand is being seen. Sprint's deep spectrum position puts it in a position to do this.”

Neil Cox, a technology executive from Illinois, and Edward Horowitz, a venture capitalist from New York, were named to the FirstNet board Wednesday by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. They replace Tim Bryan, CEO of the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, and Frank Plastina, a telecom executive from North Carolina, who didn't seek another term. Houston Mayor Annise Parker (D) and Kevin McGinnis, CEO of North East Mobile Health Services in Maine, got new three-year terms. Plastina served only a year on the board. Parker was named to the board a year ago. “I am confident that the FirstNet Board has the right mix of individuals with varied experiences in public safety, telecommunications, finance and state and local government to effectively oversee the FirstNet organization as it plans for the deployment of this historic network,” said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling. Monday, FirstNet said its board approved the hire of its first CEO, while moving the acting executive director to the new post of president (see 1508170033).

A Q4 price reduction, software improvements and the launch of native Apple Watch apps will help Apple capture 68 percent of the smartwatch market worldwide by year-end, said a report from market research firm Tractica. Despite competition from Android Wear and Samsung’s Tizen, Apple Watch has been the “galvanizing force” in the early days of the smartwatch, and Tractica predicts 16.7 million Apple Watch shipments out of a total market of 24.4 million shipments in 2015. For Apple Watch early adopters, watch notifications are likely to become more useful and contextual, said Aditya Kaul, research director, and Apple Pay will continue to gain momentum as it evolves into an “indispensable app for many users.” Kaul cited Apple’s efforts in the China market where it has been “devoting a significant amount of energy” in marketing and retail. A second-generation Apple Watch will likely debut in early 2016, he said.

Verizon emerged as the wireless carrier with the top network across the U.S., RootMetrics said in a report Tuesday on tests it did in the first half of 2015. AT&T finished second. Verizon finished first for overall performance, network reliability, network speed, data performance and call performance -- AT&T for text performance. “Don't overlook AT&T,” RootMetrics said. “Although Verizon led the way in the majority of categories at the national level, AT&T wasn’t far behind.” Sprint finished third in overall performance. “In most categories, Sprint’s scores showed progress in terms of closing the gap with the leaders from prior testing,” RootMetrics said. T-Mobile was fourth overall. “But the network finished a strong third for network speed and data performance,” RootMetrics said. “We’ve noted before that T-Mobile typically performs much better in metro areas than it does at state or national levels, and this was indeed the case in the first half of 2015.”

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on two requests for waivers of FCC rules to permit certification and use of high-frequency radio buoys. The buoys have a transmitter and are used to gather navigational or scientific data, mark the location of equipment or for various other purposes, the bureau said Tuesday. Coastal Obs Tech Services sought a waiver on behalf of Datawell for the Waverider ocean buoy, the bureau said. The device relies on 29 MHz frequencies in the Part 90 Industrial/Business Pool, not normally allocated for such telemetry, it said. The second device is the Marine M2P radio buoy, used by high seas fishing operations “to facilitate safe and efficient gear recovery, and reduce navigational risk and ghost fishing,” the bureau said. It uses the 26 MHz band, otherwise set aside for ship-to-ship and ship-to-coast business and operational communications. The bureau said in a public notice it's seeking comment on both waiver requests. Comments are due Sept. 17, replies Oct. 2.

FirstNet, the first-responder network, should make improvements to its workforce and recruiting, participation at discretionary outreach events and in internal control, an audit from the Department of Commerce found. FirstNet faces hiring challenges and places significant responsibility on a few key individuals, which requires those staff members to perform the duties of two and sometimes three people, the audit said. FirstNet also needs to improve planning for discretionary outreach event participation, the audit found. From October 2013 to December 2014, FirstNet participated in 160 of these events. However, Commerce found that FirstNet could improve its approach to managing which events to attend to get the most efficient use of its limited resources. Lastly, the organization isn't consistently executing its established controls, the audit found. The department expressed concern in the audit that FirstNet is not consistently following procedures it established to provide and document adequate review.

“Sparks” flew during a Monday Technology Policy Institute conference session on emerging issues in unlicensed spectrum, said Richard Bennett, network engineer and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a blog post the next day. The breakout session on unlicensed spectrum was one of the few panels in Aspen, Colorado, that was off the record to media in attendance. Bennett abided by the Chatham House rules restrictions and didn’t name who on the panel said what. Panelists included Comcast Vice President David Don; David Goldman, Democratic chief counsel for the House Commerce Committee; T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham; Google government relations counsel Staci Pies; Intel Associate General Counsel Peter Pitsch; and Gregory Rosston, deputy director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. “It turns out the session was 95% about the potential conflict between Wi-Fi and LTE-U,” Bennett said. “The rhetoric on this issue has been ratcheted up so high that the session got off to a very slow start as we heard an awful lot of charges and rebuttals about the risk that some folks feel LTE-U poses to legacy Wi-Fi systems. … My number one takeaway is that the people who fear LTE-U aren’t very well-informed about how it works, and this is at least partially the fault of the vagueness of the LTE-U Forum’s specifications.” Bennett saw promising signs by the end of the panel: “At the end of the session, key players on both sides of the divide were talking to each other in a positive and constructive way, so we may just find some progress in the offing. Stay tuned.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of Department of Homeland Security policy since Bay Area Rapid Transit officials shut down cellphone service during a peaceful protest in 2011 in San Francisco, EPIC said. A U.S. District Court judge in Washington initially ruled in EPIC’s favor, but DHS appealed the decision, saying releasing an unredacted version of the cellphone shutdown policy could “endanger many individuals’ lives or physical safety.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed and ruled in favor of the DHS, and EPIC appealed Aug. 11.

Nearly six in 10 smartphones sold to consumers in Q2 were 4G-enabled, GfK said Monday in a report. GfK said it forecasts 4G smartphone penetration to continue to grow at the expense of 3G, which is currently at 38 percent of smartphone units and forecast to decline by another percentage point by Q4. It cited “significant regional differences” in global 4G smartphone adoption, including “price polarization” in North America and saturation in Western European markets. “The underlying trend of consumers optimizing their digital consumption by screen size, within affordability constraints, continues in all regions,” it said. In North America, smartphone unit sales climbed 10 percent from the same quarter a year earlier in Q2, to 44.4 million, GfK said. Q2 sales of high-end smartphones in North America priced $500 and up and low-end devices priced under $250 grew at the expense of mid-ranged devices, it said. Smartphones in the high end captured 43 percent of smartphone unit share in Q2, up from 38 percent share in Q2 a year earlier. North America and China “were the only regions to see an increase in high-end smartphone unit share on a year-on-year basis,” it said. Globally, smartphone unit volume grew 5 percent in Q2 to 302.1 million from 288.3 million a year earlier, it said.

The FCC should require wireless carriers to report on network congestion problems as part of the agency’s revised Part 4 rules, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said, reporting on a recent meeting at the agency. Wireless carriers oppose that requirement (see 1507170065). “It is important to recognize that although inability to access wireless networks is most notable in time of emergency, as observed by the NPRM, we have no way of knowing or confirming if these are the only times when significant numbers of wireless access calls are not completed, and whether these failures (if they exist) are isolated to specific wireless networks or are shared by all wireless networks,” Feld said. The filing was posted Monday in docket 15-80.