Wireless carriers will deploy more than 4 million public Wi-Fi hot spots and 20 million home spots in 2015, consultant Mobile Experts said in a report. "Even if we exclude homespot deployments, the number of Wi-Fi access points will reach the level of millions for cable operators and public venues during 2015, outstripping the capacity of new LTE base stations,” said Joe Madden, principal analyst, in a news release. “Several large mobile operators have made a gigantic blunder, by ignoring the opportunity to deploy Wi-Fi or utilize Hotspot 2.0 -- so cable operators and other service providers are jumping on the opportunity.”

The FCC is dropping a requirement that applicants for certification of Unlicensed Personal Communications Service devices must be members of UTAM, said a Federal Registernotice Friday. UTAM was established to clear the 1910-1930 MHz band of incumbent microwave licensees and the membership requirement was established to guarantee it had money to do its job, the FCC said. But UTAM has told the FCC it has accomplished this objective and the group is being dissolved, the agency said.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Friday sought comment on a Bijora petition asking for clarification that FCC rules do not prohibit text message advertisements sent with the prior express consent or permission of the recipient. Alternately, the company sought a retroactive waiver for such ads already sent out. Comments are due Nov. 21, replies Nov. 28, the bureau said. In its petition, Bijora describes itself as a “small business owner currently facing a class action lawsuit seeking multi-billions of dollars in damages because it sent text messages to customers who had expressly consented to receive them.” The lawsuit claims the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits sending an unsolicited advertisement, Bijora said. The plaintiff “relies on a regulation, Section 64.1200(a)(4)(iv), issued by the Commission in an order implementing amendments to the TCPA,” the company said. “That regulation requires that certain opt-out language appear on faxes, but its scope is unclear.” Bijora asked the FCC to clarify that the prohibition “should be limited to unsolicited faxes and texts, as that reading best accords with the TCPA's language and legislative history.”

Sprint will take an additional charge of about $105 million for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 for severance and “related costs” tied to a workforce reduction plan, said the company in an SEC filing. The carrier said it had already reported a $160 million charge for the quarter because of workforce reduction costs. Analysts said last week that Sprint faces a long period of rebuilding under new CEO Marcelo Claure (see 1411040039).

AT&T agreed to buy Mexican wireless company Iusacell for $2.5 billion, inclusive of debt, AT&T said Friday. The deal gives AT&T all the Mexican carrier’s spectrum licenses, network assets, retail stores and approximately 8.6 million subscribers, AT&T said. Grupo Salinas, current owner of 50 percent of Iusacell, must first close its announced purchase of the other 50 percent it doesn’t own, AT&T said. “Mexico is still in the early stages of mobile Internet capabilities and adoption, but customer demand for it is growing rapidly,” said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. “This is an opportunity for us to provide Iusacell the financial resources, scale and expertise to accelerate the roll-out of world-class mobile Internet speeds and quality in Mexico, like we have in the United States.” The company also offers service under the Unefón brand.

Mobile really is different and shouldn't be subject to the same net neutrality rules as fixed networks, said 4G Americas President Chris Pearson in a Friday letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “Mobile operators face continuously changing environments in their cell sectors, with constant challenges to maximize the experience for the majority of users in a given sector,” Pearson said. “All the spectrum below 100 GHz does not amount to the capacity of a single Terabit fiber optic cable.” The success of wireless is tied to “effective and dynamic bandwidth management,” Pearson said. “If policymakers want wireless to be a competitor to wireline broadband, they need to allow wireless operators the flexibility required to manage their networks.” The FCC’s proposed rules are much more complex and demanding than the 2010 rules, he said. Carriers could meet the transparency requirements of that order with a single disclosure, he said. The proposed rules would require “tailored disclosures (i) for end-users to make informed choices; (ii) for edge providers (including content and device providers) to develop, market and maintain Internet offerings; and (iii) for the Commission and the public to understand compliance with the no-blocking and no-commercially unreasonable practices rule,” Pearson said. The requirement is “subjective” and would be difficult to implement, he said.

Qualcomm shares closed down 8.6 percent Thursday at $70.58 on the company’s disclosure in its 10-K SEC filing the previous evening that it’s the subject of two new regulatory investigations into its competitive practices. The FTC notified the company Sept. 17 that it has launched a probe into Qualcomm's licensing business, including a possible "breach" of its commitment to license its technology on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, the 10-K said. Then on Oct. 15, the European Commission notified Qualcomm it was investigating the company’s sales and marketing of its baseband chipsets and possible irregularities in its use of rebates and other "financial incentives," the filing said. "We are fully cooperating with these agencies and believe our practices comply with the laws of our countries, but given that these matters are in their early stages, it is difficult to predict what, if anything, will come of them," CEO Steve Mollenkopf said on an earnings call Wednesday. The two new probes are in addition to a year-old investigation by China’s National Development and Reform Commission that Qualcomm may have violated Chinese anti-monopoly laws, the 10-K said. As key mobile technologies are increasingly becoming adopted into new categories, Qualcomm is "well-positioned" to exploit "these evolving opportunities," Mollenkopf said. Citing Gartner estimates that more than 8 billion smartphones will be sold globally through 2018, Qualcomm sees the smartphone as "representing the largest technology platform on which to innovate and drive upgrade opportunities," he said. "We believe the smartphone will be central to the growing number of connected things around us, and our focus is on aligning our resources to continue to capture these opportunities." Qualcomm is "very pleased with our design activity in the premium tier" of smartphone components, including "flagship devices" like the Snapdragon 805, Qualcomm’s first processor to offer "system-level Ultra HD support and 4K video capture and playback," he said.

The FCC denied Indigo Wireless’ challenge to the Enforcement Bureau’s assessment of a $39,000 forfeiture against the carrier for alleged failure to meet hearing-aid compatible handset requirements for 2009. “Upon review of the Application for Review and the entire record, and finding no basis ... to modify the Bureau’s decisions, we conclude that Indigo Wireless has failed to demonstrate that the Bureau erred,” the FCC said in an order released Thursday.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau sought comment an October petition from the American Bankers Association asking the agency to exempt certain time-sensitive informational calls, which are placed with no charge to the called parties, from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s restrictions on automated calls to mobile devices (see 1410140162). Comments are due Dec. 8, replies Dec. 22, the bureau said Thursday: “We seek comment on the issues raised in the Petition, including whether the exemptions requested in the Petition allow the financial services industry to reduce privacy and security risks proactively so that fraud, data security breaches, and identity theft are less likely to occur in the first place.”

CTIA urged the FCC to put Chairman Tom Wheeler’s theories on competition to the test and decide the agency need not impose tough new net neutrality rules on wireless. “Since early in his tenure, Chairman Wheeler has touted ‘competition, competition, competition’ and espoused a ‘see-saw’ theory of regulation, whereby the need for FCC intervention decreases if facts and data show that a market is competitive,” CTIA said in a Thursday letter to the agency. Wireless really is more competitive, CTIA said: “Any new open Internet rules should recognize the undeniable differences in the competitive landscape between fixed and mobile broadband.”