The industry road map for ensuring indoor location accuracy for wireless calls to 911 has gathered wide support and the FCC should move quickly to incorporate key provisions into its rules, CTIA said in a filing at the commission. The four major carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association proposed the plan last month. “Public safety representatives and agencies from across the country eager for dispatchable location,” technology companies, members of the accessibility community and the “national carriers and wireless associations including those that represent small carriers” all support the plan, CTIA said in reply comments filed in docket 07-114, posted by the FCC Wednesday. “The Roadmap is a concrete, carefully-negotiated and -balanced solution to help deliver new and better E911 location accuracy,” CTIA said. “To be clear, however, the Roadmap is intended to function as an alternative -- not a supplement -- to the proposed standards and timetables in the Commission’s NPRM.” TruePosition, which offers an alternative solution for indoor location accuracy, however, said it's hardly a “consensus” plan. It's “opposed by the vast majority of public safety officials who have participated in this proceeding” and “there is scant evidence that the Plan would actually work,” TruePosition said. The carriers just want to “postpone fixing” a problem they caused to begin with, the company said: “The premise of the Roadmap is that if the FCC will simply leave the carriers alone they will someday fix the problem of poor indoor location capabilities for emergency 911 calls.” Officials with Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing reported on a meeting at the FCC. The FCC should look at the road map and other solutions, advocates for the group said. “We want the same capacity we had when we had the landline phones,” the officials said. “During those days, all we had to do was to dial 9-1-1, and help would come, with much success. When we call for an emergency, the first objective is for the dispatcher to get our call, and immediately know where the call came from. Then the dispatcher can send police, fire, or paramedics to the scene of the emergency.” “The Roadmap outlines a clear path to delivering first responders the necessary ‘dispatchable location’ information in an accelerated timeframe,” PCIA said in its reply comments. The plan also “leverages technologies that have been proven successful in commercial location services,” like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, “rather than proprietary technologies without a commercial track record,” the group said. The road map was “the result of tough negotiations between APCO and NENA, on the one hand, and the Carrier Signatories, on the other,” AT&T told the FCC. APCO acknowledged the complaints of some 20 public safety commenters left out of negotiations on the road map. “Since finalizing the Roadmap, APCO has reached out extensively, and will continue to do so, to describe the Roadmap to all interested stakeholders and respond to any questions,” the group said. “Further, APCO welcomes the active assistance of these groups to implement the Roadmap’s solutions to this complex problem.”

ZTE USA announced availability of the ZTE Speed for $99 through Boost Mobile’s no-contract wireless service. The smartphone packs 4G LTE, Android 4.4, a 4.5-inch display and a 1.2-GHz quad-core processor, the company said Tuesday. It includes a 4.5-inch display, 5-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front camera, it said. Plans start at $35 per month.

Comment deadlines are now set on a Nov. 21 public notice asking for “updated information” to help the FCC assess whether the agency’s hearing aid compatibility rules for wireless handsets effectively meet the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing, said a Tuesday public notice. Comments are due Jan. 22, replies Feb. 6.

Smart watch company Burg announced an all-stainless steel smart watch that can make and receive phone calls and texts without connecting to a smartphone. The watch comes with its own SIM card or can pair with an Android phone or with non-Android phones via Bluetooth, the company said Tuesday. It includes a Media Tek chip; voice activation; fitness apps to track steps, calories, sleep and sports schedule; GPS; Wi-Fi; an MP3/MP4 player; FM radio; voice recorder; 2 megapixel camera; contact list, calendar; calculator; alarm clock; 8 GB memory (upgradable to 16 GB with microSD) card; and a charging microSD port. The BURG 27, due in March, will debut at CES where pricing will be announced. Also at CES, the company will launch a Swarovski crystal Burg smartwatch/bracelet and a Wearables Franchise Shop, it said.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere offered a bit of uncheer to his competitors Monday, on behalf of the un-carrier. A YouTube video shows Legere seated in front of a roaring fire reading a "The Night Before Christmas" parody from a big book titled Un-carrier Holidays. The poem has a special call out to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson: “While Randall is nestled all snug in his bed, I’m up responding to tweets removing pain points instead. ... While AT&T and Verizon cling to contracts and red tape, we’ll gladly take their customers who Sprint to escape.”

Comments are due Jan. 21, replies Feb. 20​, in response to a Nov. 10 rulemaking notice asking further questions about changes to rules governing the 800 MHz cellular service, the FCC said Monday. In rules adopted by the FCC at the same time, the agency changed how the cellular service was regulated, from a site-based to a geographically based regime (see 1411120015). The NPRM sought comment on adoption of a power spectral density model for the service and related technical rule changes, to facilitate the deployment of next-generation networks using advanced technologies like LTE.

The FCC ignores the overall competitiveness of the U.S. wireless industry in its latest wireless competition report, published by the agency Thursday (see 1412180058), Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said Friday in a blog post. Since 2010 and the first wireless competition report of the Obama presidency, the FCC has repeatedly declined to find that the wireless industry is effectively competitive. “Unfortunately, in the past few years, the Commission has not seemed mindful of this competitive reality, including in its most recent wireless competition report published yesterday,” Spalter said. “This is a shame, for by ignoring this reality -- and the underlying facts and data supporting it -- the Commission risks calling into question the even-handedness and validity of the its evaluative process.” Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry said the report confirms “continued consolidation in the wireless marketplace by the two dominant carriers,” AT&T and Verizon.

The AWS-3 auction hit $44.4 billion in provisionally winning bids at the end of bidding Friday, after 123 rounds. Licenses in the three largest U.S. cities -- New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- are going for an estimated price of $4.29 per MHz/POP, or 94 percent above the average price for the auction, Wells Fargo said Friday in a note to investors. “We note the bidding in these key markets has slowed in terms of activity,” Wells Fargo said. “For example, in NYC, there has been no bidding since round number 64.” The company predicted the auction will close in late January.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau said it's dropping a Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL) for Forfeiture against Sandhill Communications for allegedly violating FCC hearing aid-compatible handset rules. The bureau had proposed a $15,000 fine against the company for failing to offer the requisite number of handsets in 2009. “Based on our review of the record, including Sandhill’s NAL Response, we find that Sandhill apparently complied with the hearing aid-compatible handset deployment requirements during the 2009 reporting period,” the bureau said Thursday, following an investigation. “Thus, we find that no forfeiture penalty should be imposed.”

The FCC is seeking comment on draft recommendations approved for the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15). It also is seeking comment on the draft proposals provided to the FCC by the NTIA, and on the International Bureau’s initial conclusions regarding the WRC-15 Advisory Committee draft recommendations, the bureau said Thursday in a public notice. Comments are due Jan. 16, it said. The bureau said it concluded that it can generally support most of the draft recommendations.