The FCC must not draw the wrong lessons from the AWS-3 auction, but instead should see the recently concluded sale as pointing to the need for competitive safeguards in the TV incentive auction (see 1501300051), members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition told the agency Tuesday. “The two dominant wireless carriers with the deepest pockets -- AT&T and Verizon -- walked away with 20 megahertz of the paired AWS-3 spectrum in most major markets and left the rest of the industry with only a smattering of paired blocks and 15 megahertz of low-value, unpaired, uplink spectrum,” the coalition said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. It asked the FCC to set aside at least 40 MHz in every market for competitors to AT&T and Verizon in the incentive auction. Otherwise, the two big players could buy enough spectrum to keep others from getting much of anything in the auction, the group said. AT&T and Verizon own 75 percent of the “uniquely valuable” low-band spectrum, they said. The incentive auction “provides what may be the FCC’s final opportunity to prevent the two dominant carriers from monopolizing the low-band spectrum needed to compete in a broadband data world,” the coalition said. “It is difficult to see how the non-dominant carriers can effectively compete in a 4G marketplace without sufficient access to low-band spectrum that enables in-building penetration and economic wide-area coverage.” The coalition also said the AWS-3 auction points to the need for the FCC to make more spectrum available for licensed and unlicensed use and to base auction rules on consumer benefits, not revenue for the government. The $41.3 billion that carriers and others will have to pay to get the AWS-3 spectrum on which they bid will harm consumers twice over, the coalition said. “Revenues from the AWS-3 auction ultimately get passed along as higher prices to wireless broadband consumers,” the group said. “It also sucks investment capital out of the highly productive telecom sector.” The Benton Foundation, the Center for Media Justice, Common Cause, Engine, the Institute for Local Self Reliance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Open Technology Institute at New America, Public Knowledge and Writers Guild of America, West signed the letter. A wireless industry official noted in response that T-Mobile was outbid in markets it was pursuing far more often by Dish Network than by AT&T and Verizon. Dish beat T-Mobile 132 times, AT&T 26 times and Verizon 16 times, the official said. "As we have seen in countless spectrum auctions in the U.S. and around the world, it is virtually impossible to predict auction outcomes or to try to engineer them," Mobile Future said in a written statement. "The commission must resist any efforts to expand restrictions on auction participation that would negatively impact continuing mobile innovation and the hundreds of millions of U.S. wireless consumers using exponentially more mobile bandwidth each year."

The 2015 NASCAR season got underway Sunday with the Daytona 500, and Sprint used the event to take on AT&T and Verizon. Sprint, which said in December that it would end its NASCAR sponsorship after the 2016 season, aired the same offer repeatedly during Sunday’s broadcast: “Bring us your Verizon or AT&T bill and we’ll cut your rate plan in half.”

“Tremendous innovation and growth” pervaded the “nascent” smart watch market last year, with global device shipments more than doubling to 5 million units, said market research firm Tractica Monday in a report. Though several “prominent industry players” launched smart watch products in 2014, Apple’s September Apple Watch announcement was the year’s “defining moment” for smart watch, even though the Apple Watch isn’t scheduled to begin shipping until April, Tractica said. “Since Apple’s announcement, there has been a flurry of activity among competitors trying to position and reposition themselves, and we expect a high degree of experimentation in terms of form factor, functionality, and operating system, offering consumers a wide range of options.” Tractica sees Apple Watch as Apple’s “biggest new product introduction since the iPad,” because it’s expected “to stimulate a surge in consumer awareness and adoption of smart watches,” the researchers said. They predict global shipments will grow nearly fivefold to 24.4 million, of which more than two-thirds -- 16.7 million units -- will be Apple Watches. It’s forecasting that the smart watch sector will continue to experience strong growth for the next five years. It sees 94.9 million smart watches shipping annually by 2020, based on a compound annual growth rate of 71 percent.

The FCC and the Food and Drug Administration plan a March 31 workshop on wireless medical test beds, said a Friday commission notice. A test bed allows testing of devices across a range of interference scenarios, the FCC said. “As the rapid pace of innovation blurs traditional boundaries between consumer health technology, medical devices, and communications, the agencies seek to better understand how wireless test beds can be used and configured to meet the challenges and to take advantage of the opportunities this convergence presents.” The workshop starts at 9 a.m. at FCC headquarters.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau rejected a petition for reconsideration by Conley Group, which earlier asked to license the five VHF interoperability channels in Iowa for public safety communications was denied. Conley, which said it provides “emergency rescue services,” argued “it is necessary to use these channels on a statewide basis so that it can establish communication with all affected law enforcement agencies during times of imminent threat to safety-of-life or property in connection with mutual activities,” the bureau said. It would set a bad precedent to approve the application, said the bureau. “If we license private security and property management firms on the interoperability channels based on a claim of providing ‘emergency rescue’ services, then the interoperability channels could become overrun with multiple private security and property management companies also claiming to be ‘rescue squads.’”

The newly formed LoRa Alliance is accepting membership applications and will formally debut during Mobile World Congress next month, it said. The group's mission is to standardize the low-power wide area networks (LPWANs) being deployed around the world to enable Internet of Things, M2M (machine-to-machine), smart-city and industrial applications, it said in a news release. The LoRaWAN protocol is said to offer bi-directionality, security, mobility for asset tracking, and accurate localization. The LoRaWAN protocol enables new business models and makes the IoT more attractive to both developers and end users, the group said, and satisfies the requirements of many applications that need to go beyond the reach of cellphone towers and Wi-Fi networks. Potential use cases include vending machines that alert distributors when a product is sold out or when the machine requires maintenance; cities that offer smart meters and apps to help drivers find open parking spaces; pet tracking/migration patterns for animal lovers; and cargo tracking for logistics providers. Semtech developed the LoRa platform.

Bluetooth’s recent move toward IP connectivity via IPv6 -- coupled with the implementation of mesh functionality -- could make it a serious threat to ZigBee and Thread in the connected home, said ABI Research. The recently announced Bluetooth 4.2 specification offers improvements in speed, connectivity and security over the previous version, said ABI. Its report said that makes Bluetooth "more viable than ever” in connecting low-power devices such as smart light bulbs and thermostats, wearables and sensors that will be part of the smart home of the future. The most significant Internet of Things-related update from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group is the ability for Bluetooth Smart devices to connect directly to the Internet via IPv6/6LoWPAN (over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks) using the new Internet Protocol Support Profile (IPSP), said ABI. A barrier to the adoption of home automation systems has been the cost and complexity of gateways required to connect each device to the Internet, it said, citing the Philips Hue smart LED bulbs. Bluetooth 4.2 offers up to 2.5 times faster data throughput along with packet sizes up to 10 times larger than earlier versions. By shortening the time needed to transfer data, a device can return to the idle state more quickly, said the report, resulting in lower energy usage and longer battery life. Higher data rates result in fewer transmission errors, too, which also contributes to lower energy consumption, making Bluetooth well suited to low-power applications, said ABI. A critical omission from the latest Bluetooth spec is mesh networking capability, which ABI called critical to extending the home network's range, ensuring reliability, boosting performance and raising the network's “overall intelligence.” Competing technologies including ZigBee and Thread offer mesh networking over 802.15.4 chipsets, and while the Bluetooth SIG is working on mesh networking capabilities, a release date hasn’t been set. “In a short-range connectivity solution such as Bluetooth Smart, mesh topologies are necessary to ensure reliable whole-house coverage,” said the industry research firm. With Thread and now Bluetooth offering IPv6 connectivity, “significant momentum” appears to be gathering around IP connectivity for low-power devices in the smart home, along with an expectation for devices to consolidate around 6LoWPAN/IPv6-based solutions for vertical markets in the future, said ABI. The move toward IP-based standards will help ensure interoperability across connectivity technology and device types that make up the IoT, it said.

Seventy-seven percent of U.S. smartphone users moderated their online activity over the previous year due to privacy concerns, said a November-December survey of 1,000 adults by Ipsos for TRUSTe. Of those who moderated their activity, 74 percent reported not clicking on an online ad due to privacy concerns, said TRUSTe, which provides technology for users to opt out of targeted ads via the Digital Advertising Alliance’s AdChoices icon. By clicking on the icon, users can opt out of personal targeting on desktop or mobile devices within a specific ad, on a website or by using the TRUSTe mobile app, it said. Citing the research, TRUSTe CEO Chris Babel said that Americans are uneasy about having their online activity tracked for use in targeted ads because “they feel like they have limited control." As more consumers understand how their information is being tracked and the choices they have to opt out, the more they'll "embrace the concept of Online Behavioral Advertising and realize the benefits, such as receiving great deals from their favorite online retailers,” he said.

The FCC should adopt a six-channel plan for nationwide allocation of 700 MHz deployable trunked radio networks, recommended the National Public Safety Telecommunication Council and National Regional Planning Council. NPSTC and NRPC told FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson in a letter posted Thursday that a six-channel plan is operationally simple and has enough capacity to handle the “vast majority” of incidents requiring a deployable trunk system. The channels also would be usable in all areas of the U.S. except some areas bordering Canada, where only four of the channels would be usable, NPSTC and NRPC said. The FCC’s Oct. 17 order on the designation of former 700 MHz reserve channels for deployable systems use had sought NPSTC/NRPC recommendations for up to eight channels for deployable use. A joint NPSTC/NRPC working group selected the six channels -- 37-38, 61-62, 117-118, 141-142, 883-884 and 939-940 -- based on public safety and industry feedback. The Telecommunications Industry Association said the NPSTC/NRPC channels are workable but also provided an eight-channel alternate plan. The alternate plan “suffered from additional operational complexity that was not worth the increase in capacity of the deployable trunked system,” NPSTC and NRPC said. Public safety agencies can work with their regional planning committees if more than six channels are needed, which would “accommodate the needs of large agencies while not removing additional channels from the available pool nationwide,” NPSTC and NRPC said. The groups said they're still working on other issues involving deployable trunked radio systems.

AT&T could serve Government Emergency Telecommunications Services customers on an interim basis with Wireless Priority Services in the areas where the company is conducting its IP trials, company officials told officials from the FCC’s Wireline and Public Safety and Homeland Security bureaus on Feb. 12, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 12-353. GETS calls currently compete across the consumer VoIP platform, but call prioritization will occur only in the TDM or AT&T business portion of the call. The company plans to stop offering TDM services to new customers in the trial areas, West Delray Beach, Florida, and Carbon Hill, Alabama, in the second half of this year (see 1405290053). The interim solution would continue while the industry discusses the engineering of GETS prioritization on consumer VoIP platforms with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Emergency Communications, AT&T said. Among those representing the carrier were Frank Simone, assistant vice president-federal regulatory; Christopher Heimann, general attorney; and Stacy Schwartz, vice president-public safety for AT&T Government Solutions.