Tower companies are reporting a general slowdown in carrier investment, Wells Fargo’s Jennifer Fritzsche told investors Thursday. Fritzsche cited discussion at a recent dinner she hosted for tower and wireless executives. AT&T is investing but not at the same level as the end of 2018, she said: T-Mobile is still building out its 600 MHz licenses, but there's “somewhat of a pause of lighting up new capacity sites until it sees how the [Sprint] merger plays out” (see 1904110026). Verizon is “taking a breath” on macro towers, she said. It seems "Q1 is not as robust as we hoped earlier the year in terms of carrier activity,” Fritzsche said. “All executives were positive as to the long term outlook on the business but our sense is muted expectations should be in place for the March quarter.”

The International Electrotechnical Commission published a technical report on evaluating human exposure to RF fields in the vicinity of base stations, including for the first time 5G base stations and small cells. “It illustrates test methods and worked examples on 5G trial sites,” IEC said Wednesday.

The Association of Global Automakers supports a rulemaking on the future of the 5.9 GHz band, but the FCC should also make clear the entire band will be retained for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, the group told an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. An NPRM should ensure “any band plan that accommodates multiple technologies avoids harmful interference between V2X services or by unlicensed services sharing the band” and allow for “evolution and backwards compatibility” in the band, the group said, posted Wednesday in docket 13-49. “V2X services will bring tremendous safety and other benefits.”

T-Mobile and Amazon are bringing Prime Video to TVision Home, the carrier’s rebranded version of Layer3 TV. T-Mobile sees the service as an alternative to cable and promoted its TV offering as part of its arguments for regulators to approve the company buy of Sprint. TVision customers with a Prime membership will have access to the programming. “5G will transform entertainment, and the New T-Mobile will transform 5G if our merger with Sprint is approved,” said T-Mobile President Mike Sievert. Wells Fargo’s Jennifer Fritzsche told investors Wednesday TVision is more than a “Hail Mary” pass to win approval for the Sprint deal. This plan will move forward with or without” Sprint, she thinks. The service will be available starting Sunday in T-Mobile stores and online in Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and Longmont, Colorado, at $90 monthly for +150 channels, she said. T-Mobile’s TV offering isn’t very disruptive, wrote BTIG’s Walter Piecyk. “T-Mobile is offering a service that is nearly identical to those from existing providers, even down to the remote control, which actually has legacy cable buttons of red, green, yellow and blue,” he said. “The price point is not compelling at $100 per month.”

EnGenius Technologies launched the ESR530 smart dual-band router said to provide stable Wi-Fi connections in high-demand home network environments. It creates a mesh network and can auto-connect to home wireless networks.

Qualcomm said it expanded capabilities in the Snapdragon 730, 730G and 665 mobile platforms to "exceed customer expectations" for experiences in artificial intelligence, gaming and cameras in high- and mid-tier mobile devices. It also announced Tuesday the Cloud AI 100 chip for AI inference processing. The AI 100 is said to facilitate distributed intelligence from the cloud to the client edge “and all points in between.” With the chip, Qualcomm can support “complete cloud-to-edge AI solutions all connected with high-speed and low-latency 5G connectivity,” said Keith Kressin, senior vice president-product management.

Verizon and San Diego signed a multimillion-dollar agreement to speed 5G wireless small-cells infrastructure deployment, Verizon said Monday. A streamlined permitting process will quickly enhance wireless service and expand smart-city capabilities, said Verizon, which agreed to invest more than $100 million on infrastructure and equipment. The company plans to give 500 smartphones to the San Diego Police Department and 50 tablets to the Fire-Rescue Department, and install advanced traffic data gathering and sensing equipment at five intersections with frequent accidents. Verizon will do an inventory of about 60,000 city-owned light poles, updating and digitizing city information on poles while attaching fiber and small cells, it said. Mayor Kevin Faulconer (R) said the agreement will “provide resources that will further enhance cellular service for residents, keep communities safer and lower costs for taxpayers.”

AT&T said its mobile 5G service is now live in parts of Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose. “There are now 19 cities across the nation where AT&T is the only carrier to offer mobile 5G service to businesses and consumers, well ahead of our competition,” AT&T said Tuesday. It said it plans to offer at least three 5G handsets this year, with the next being the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G smartphone, to be available this spring.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology OK'd special temporary authority for T-Mobile to test experimental equipment in the 2.5 GHz band. “T-Mobile wishes to conduct tests … to understand better the propagation characteristics and to gain a better understanding of new innovative services this band can offer,” the carrier said. The tests will be in the Seattle and Salt Lake City areas through Nov. 1.

FCC-certified frequency advisory committees (FACs) failed to reach agreement on 800 MHz application processing protocols after a year of trying, the Land Mobile Communications Council said Tuesday. The delay will slow licensing of 800 MHz expansion/guard band spectrum, LMMC said. The FCC recently reminded the FACs “they must adopt processes that eliminate entirely the prospect of multiple FACs submitting applications to the FCC that are mutually exclusive,” the council said. Two proposals have failed, the LMMC said: “Failure to reach agreement on an alternative approach may result in the FCC adopting processes that the FACs will be obligated to implement.”