The American Petroleum Institute, Edison Electric Institute and the Utilities Telecom Council said the FCC shouldn't authorize the use of the six 173 MHz telemetry channels for Vehicular Repeater Systems, in a meeting with Public Safety Bureau staff. Utilities, pipeline companies and other critical infrastructure industry companies use the frequencies “for mission critical communications to support applications such as supervisory control and data acquisition, distributed automation and early warning sirens at nuclear power plants and water dams,” the energy groups said, in an ex parte filing in docket 13-229. “Mobile voice is incompatible with telemetry equipment currently employed in the band.”

The Wireless IoT Forum launched to support and promote the deployment of the IoT worldwide and to drive the widespread adoption of wireless wide-area networking technologies in licensed and unlicensed spectrum, it said Tuesday. Founding members will be announced at the M2M World Congress in London April 28. The forum said it plans to promote and market IoT benefits for companies “building the ecosystem” including fixed and wireless network operators, infrastructure providers, app developers in utilities, government and specialist SMEs (small and medium enterprises), semiconductor vendors, radio technology providers, module developers, systems integrators and vertical end users. The wireless IoT "is bringing connectivity and control to an order of magnitude more devices,” said William Webb, CEO, Wireless IoT Forum, and president of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Webb cited the “tremendous amount of work” in the IoT world so far and said success lies in the promotion of open standards. The forum will work with key stakeholders from across the value chain on requirements that “inform and accelerate standards development and deployments,” it said.

The FCC published a more-complete agenda on a Tuesday workshop with the Food and Drug Administration on medical technology innovation and wireless test beds. Leading off the session are FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and William Maisel, deputy director, Center for Devices and Radiological Health at FDA, according to the agenda. The session starts at 9 a.m. EDT at FCC headquarters.

The global bring-your-own-device security market is expected to reach $24.6 billion by 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 36.3 percent from 2014, said a new report by Allied Market Research. Smartphones are widely used for business purposes, generating nearly 58 percent of revenue for the global market in 2013, which will continue to increase, the report said. The report also said the mobile application management segment will likely grow at a rapid rate as compared with other segments, which include mobile device management, mobile content management, and mobile identity management.

Privacy issues have become a “growing concern” for those who advertise on mobile devices, said a Monday news release from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announcing the release of IAB’s third edition of the “Marketer Perceptions of Mobile Advertising” study commissioned by IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence and conducted by Ovum. Privacy was cited as a “very important” issue by 37 percent of the study’s respondents, which included 200 top-level brand marketing executives, in the current survey, compared with 22 percent in 2013, the release said. “With mobile taking a more prominent role in consumers’ lives each year, an uptick in marketers’ potential concerns surrounding mobile privacy is no surprise,” said IAB Executive Vice President-Public Policy and General Counsel Mike Zaneis. “The IAB is in full support of the Digital Advertising Alliance’s work on this front. Its recent release of new user-friendly tools for mobile choice and transparency brings [a] new level of consumer control to the fast-growing mobile medium,” Zaneis said.

U.S. Cellular became the first wireless carrier to offer weBoost signal boosters to its customers, both companies said in a news release Monday. WeBoost is the company formerly called Wilson Electronics. U.S. Cellular plans to offer three models at its stores: Home 4G, which boosts cellular signals in one to two rooms of a household or office; Connect 4G, with enough power to boost signals throughout an entire home or larger workspace; and Connect 4G-X, which boosts signals throughout a larger indoor space.

Globalstar’s terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) won’t have detrimental effects on Bluetooth devices, Globalstar said in an ex parte notice posted at the FCC Monday in docket 13-213. Globalstar urged the commission to allow it to provide TLPS mobile broadband service in its licensed spectrum at 2483.5 to 2495 MHz and adjacent unlicensed spectrum at 2473 to 2483.5 MHz. TLPS will “be a good neighbor” (see 1503240047) to Bluetooth operations within the unlicensed ISM band at 2400 to 2483.5 MHz, it said. TLPS demos confirmed there won’t be “discernible” effects for real-world consumers and end users, Globalstar said. FCC staff tested two Ruckus wireless access points enabled for TLPS operations in Globalstar’s licensed spectrum and adjacent unlicensed spectrum on March 24 and 25, the company said in an ex parte notice posted Monday. The Office of Engineering Technology wanted Globalstar to show that TLPS is compatible with other unlicensed services, emailed Globalstar Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Barbee Ponder. “We are quite confident that we answered their questions,” he said. Commission staff conducted emissions tests of RF radiation from TLPS access points for transmit power levels and spectral emissions masks information, Globalstar said. The access points were also used in the TLPS demonstration March 6, 9 and 10, it said. AT4 wireless, Jarvinian Ventures and Roberson and Associates attended the March 24 and 25 test, Globalstar said. No further TLPS demos are planned by the FCC, Ponder said. Globalstar has “come under attack from companies such as Gerst Capital and Kerrisdale Capital through endless filings of ex parte notices,” said two Globalstar investors in ex parte comments posted March 27. They urged the commission to take action in the proceeding. These filings “lack merit” and should be disregarded, they said in separate comments. The commission should decide using facts, not “the endless filings of those who would profit from an FCC rejection of the Globalstar petition,” said Mark Walton, who has a financial investment in Globalstar. Approving TLPS could “help relieve the spectrum crunch” and create more than 90,000 jobs, according to the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research, said Jeremy Berry, a Globalstar investor. TLPS could increase U.S. Wi-Fi capacity by one third, he said.

China, the world’s largest smartphone market, saw Q4 handset shipments reach 105 million, a 16 percent “sequential” increase from Q3, Bharat Book Bureau, the India-based market research firm, said Friday in a report. Overall smartphone shipments in China declined 7.9 percent for all of 2014 to 388.8 million units, the report said. Bharat estimates 248 models of smartphones from all suppliers were launched in China Q4, it said. Apple rode the “white hot” sales of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to the top market share position in China for Q4, when it shipped a total of 17.3 million iPhones of various models, it said. Supplier Xiaomi lagged only slightly behind Apple with 17 million units shipped Q4, it said. IDC has estimated that Xiaomi is the world’s third-largest distributor of smartphones behind Samsung and Apple.

Only 16 percent of current iPhone users would "never consider” upgrading or switching to a Samsung smartphone, ecoATM said a survey it commissioned found. The survey canvassed 637 iPhone users and was conducted Feb. 22-23, ecoATM said. That’s about a week before Samsung announced its Galaxy S 6 and Galaxy S 6 Edge on March 1 for April delivery (see 1503040051). Nearly a third of iPhone users canvassed said they would switch to a Samsung “for the right price and features,” ecoATM said. “Price may be the biggest factor for iPhone owners, with 42 percent reporting they would consider upgrading” to a new Samsung phone if offered the upgrade for free or for a very low price, it said. As for the features that might inspire iPhone users to switch to a Samsung, 21 percent would consider it for longer battery life, 18 percent for a larger screen size, it said. But brand loyalty "plays an important role” in iPhone nation, it said.

Consumers Union submitted to the FCC a petition with 130,000 signatures from consumers urging the agency not to grant several petitions for clarifications and exemptions against rules prohibiting non-emergency robocalls to cellphones, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 02-278. The group said earlier last week it was making the filing (see 1503250038). Utilities are asking the FCC for leniency under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in what some called an age of cellphones (see 1503270020).