T-Mobile/Sprint and Dish Network letters at the FCC argue over which economic models better capture the effect of the proposed deal between the carriers. At issue is which numbers are better -- Cornerstone’s Nielsen Mobile Performance (NMP) data set favored by T-Mobile/Sprint or Brattle Group filed on behalf of Dish. “Brattle’s income estimates are more realistic than those used by Cornerstone, which simply assumes that all consumers in the same zip code have the same income,” Dish said in a redacted filing in docket 18-197. “Brattle’s method for estimating income (based on the income brackets reported by the majority of consumers in Cornerstone’s NMP data set, as well as other data set characteristics) was accurately and explicitly disclosed.” T-Mobile/Sprint fired back, posted Friday. “DISH now admits that the Brattle Economists ‘used an unconditional expectation of income … for both respondents and non-respondents,’” the carriers said. “In other words, DISH concedes it manufactured ‘an estimated unconditional expectation of income’ and used that ‘data’ in the place of the NMP survey.”

Softness in demand for DRAM and NAND components, partly from the slowdown in global smartphone shipments, prompted Micron Technology’s decision to scale back production to reduce “elevated” inventories, said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on a Q2 call Wednesday. The excess inventory is “at good cost,” meaning there’s “no obsolescence issue,” he said. Next-generation “premium” smartphones introduced at Mobile World Congress “typically feature” 8 to 12 gigabytes of DRAM and 256 to 512 gigabytes of NAND, double the DRAM and quadruple the NAND of “current-generation” premium smartphones, he said. “These trends will likely cascade to lower-tier phones,” helping “re-ignite” smartphone unit sales beginning in 2020, he said. The smartphone market is spiraling toward its third straight year of declining shipments, reported IDC this month. Micron expects 5G to create a market opportunity “beyond mobile,” said Mehrotra. “We expect 5G adoption to create increased demand for memory and storage in IoT devices, wireless infrastructure and data centers.”

T-Mobile, eager to land regulatory approval of its Sprint buy, said Thursday it’s launching a pilot to help close the digital divide: a Home Internet program available to up to 50,000 existing customers, by invitation and by year-end. It expects speeds of “around” 50 Mbps with fixed unlimited wireless service over LTE, with no data caps. The $50 monthly service will be launched in rural and underserved areas, T-Mobile said. “LTE network and spectrum capacity constraints” limit the program's size, the carrier said: “But if T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint is approved, with the added scale and capacity of the New T-Mobile, the Un-carrier plans to cover more than half of U.S. households with 5G broadband service -- in excess of 100 Mbps -- by 2024.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Thursday if the Sprint buy doesn’t go through, T-Mobile may have to increase prices. “If the Sprint acquisition is approved, we would expect them to deploy Sprint’s spectrum and use the increased capacity to take share,” Chaplin wrote. “If the acquisition is blocked, they will have a choice between increasing capacity by some other means or increasing price to slow subscriber and usage growth. Increasing capacity would be their first choice, but this may not be possible, at least not initially, making higher prices necessary.”

AT&T representatives urged an incentive auction for the 2.5 GHz band, in meeting FCC Wireless Bureau staff. ”AT&T recognizes the complexity of the band but believes the best way to resolve the challenges is to hold both an incentive auction for existing licensees and a traditional auction for the whitespaces making this spectrum available for rapid 5G deployments,” AT&T said Monday in docket 18-120. The FCC sought comment last year on possible changes to rules for the band but found little consensus. The carrier said then an auction appeared inevitable (see 1809100045).

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance warned that an FCC NPRM on the 6 GHz band doesn’t pay enough attention to what will happen if interference occurs. “The NPRM devotes only a single paragraph -- five sentences -- to this critical discussion,” said a Wednesday news release. “But EWA has asked ‘who is responsible for shutting down secondary consumer devices and for the resulting liability?’ There are out-of-pocket costs incurred in identifying and resolving interference problems for which someone must be accountable.” The group also filed replies (see 1903180047).

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr confirmed he's focusing on federal rules that affect wireless infrastructure deployment, in remarks Wednesday at WISPAmerica in Cincinnati. It's expected to be a big FCC infrastructure focus (see 1902200048). “We will look to fully and faithfully implement the decisions Congress has made to streamline the deployment of next-generation technologies,” Carr said. “We will push the government to be more pro-infrastructure by eliminating needless restrictions on siting wireless facilities.” He highlighted at the Wireless ISP Association conference the work the FCC has done, including two orders and the trips he made to see deployment across the U.S. While working on the September order, “I was struck by the difference between the attitudes of civic leaders in some of our biggest coastal cities and those leaders elsewhere in the country,” Carr said. “A few of the big city mayors recognize that they have leverage over the buildout of broadband. If you’re in New York City or San Jose in Silicon Valley, you might get robust broadband service almost regardless of what the politicians do.” Carr said he's also focused on USF support for broadband and getting more spectrum in play, especially the C-band. The Carr road trip continues. Carr tweeted Wednesday about a visit to Tuf-Tug, an Ohio plant that makes safety bolts used in towers. With 5G rolling out, the company says orders are up 25 percent over the past two years, he said.

T-Mobile and Sprint said economists Mark Israel, Michael Katz and Bryan Keating presented updated economic data to the FCC transaction team reviewing their deal. The economists offered numbers for 2019 and 2020, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-197. “Consumers benefit from the merger in each and every year from 2019 through the foreseeable future, with a net present value for consumers of $359 billion, which corresponds to gains of $1,036 per subscriber.” Staffers for both companies and lawyers working on the deal attended. Meanwhile, Sprint CEO Michel Combes and other staff met all five commissioners. “Sprint’s representatives discussed the financial, network, and scale challenges Sprint faces, how the proposed merger would address those challenges as well as spur competition, and the deployment of 5G in the United States,” Sprint said. T-Mobile John Legere blogged Wednesday on how the deal will be good for competition. It "will make wireless and in-home broadband MUCH more competitive because we will finally have the scale and capacity to challenge the entrenched Big Guys like never before and break into new opportunities to benefit consumers," Legere wrote. "We’ve already been kicking their butts in what has been a pretty unfair fight to date… imagine what we will do when the playing field is better balanced.”

A new generation of smart cities will require 5G, said Verizon Tuesday, with one autonomous auto's daily data output equal to that of 3,000 people. "The future of connectivity isn’t just a handful of intelligent sensors chirping information back and forth at an intersection. It’s billions of devices performing highly complex, mission-critical functions, in near-real time.”

The FCC posted last week’s presentation by Ted Rappaport, founding director of NYU Wireless at New York University School of Engineering, on the importance of spectrum above 95 GHz. Rappaport presented his vision of the 6G future to commissioners before a vote on the spectrum horizons order (see 1903150054).

Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, urged relatively light-touch rules in the 6 GHz band, meeting Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Feb. 19. Public interest groups hope the FCC will authorize use of the band indoors without automated frequency control across the U-NII-5 and U-NII-7 band segments, Calabrese said, he filed in docket 18-122, posted Friday. “Failure to set a power level at which Wi-Fi can operate indoors across the entire 6 GHz band, using off-the-shelf routers and low-cost devices, would sacrifice what is likely to be the greatest benefit of this rulemaking,” Calabrese said: “Without affordable, do-it-yourself access to the 850 megahertz in U-NII-5 and U-NII-7, a majority of homes and small businesses in particular will likely be limited to a single 160 megahertz channel between 6.875 and 7.125 GHz.” Replies were due Monday on a 6 GHz NPRM (see 1903180047).