The full FCC let stand an order from the Wireless Bureau denying a license renewal hearing sought by Lawrence Behr about a 220 MHz license for Denver he won in an FCC lottery in 1993. Behr had filed an application for review in June 2009. The commission order examines the lengthy history of the case. “In sum, because Behr did not meet the respective deadlines for filing a petition for reconsideration or an application for review of the Waiver Denial Letter (both December 12, 2003) -- and because this case presents no circumstances, extraordinary or otherwise, that call into question the propriety of giving force to these deadlines -- we deny Behr’s request in the present Application ... and, accordingly, we let that letter order stand,” the FCC said.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council asked the FCC to make some changes to its Part 22 rules, in a filing responding to an October public notice from the Wireless Bureau. NPSTC, which represents public safety groups, said many have deployed Part 22 channels as a supplement to land mobile radio spectrum in areas where insufficient Part 90 channels are available. “NPSTC recommends the Commission open a rulemaking to address several key areas that would help enable such secondary market access and use of Part 22 channels for public safety and business critical operations,” the group said. Among the changes NPSTC sought is a broader emission bandwidth to be allowed under Part 22. NPSTC also urged the FCC to find that mobile, portable and fixed infrastructure transmitters certified under Part 90 of the rules can be used on Part 22 channels “on a routine basis.” Comments were due on the notice Wednesday in docket 14-180.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler doesn’t appear to understand how wireless carriers have long been regulated, said Fred Campbell, director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology, Tuesday in a blog post. Campbell, Wireless Bureau chief under Republican Chairman Kevin Martin, cited remarks by Wheeler at last week’s FCC meeting. Wheeler said reclassifying broadband under Communications Act Title II would subject major carriers to the same rules they have lived under for 20 years, Campbell said. “Hint: It looks a lot more like case-by-case review under section 706 than ‘strong’ net neutrality rules under Title II,” he said. “Though mobile voice services are subject to the Title II ‘reasonableness’ obligations" in sections 201 and 202 of the Communications Act, "the FCC has not established per se rules to ensure that wireless carriers meet those obligations,” Campbell said. “The FCC generally relies on market forces to protect wireless consumers from unreasonable rates and unreasonable discrimination subject to a case-by-case complaint process to address potential market failures.”

Sprint will launch the Lumia 635 smartphone through its no-contract Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile prepaid services Dec. 23, marking the first time Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones will be available from the Sprint carrier family. The phone will be available Jan. 16 to Sprint postpaid customers with pricing to be announced later, Sprint said. Boost Mobile plans start at $35 a month for unlimited voice and text and 1 GB of data, the company said. Virgin Mobile plans start at $20 month for 300 voice minutes, unlimited text and Wi-Fi-only data access, Sprint said.

Bidding in the FCC’s AWS-3 auction was at $44.14 billion after 103 bidding rounds Tuesday. With bidding slowing, the FCC moved to Stage Three of the auction after bidding round 97. That means a bidder must be active on at least 98 percent of its current bidding eligibility in each round, the FCC explained. “If a bidder's provisionally winning bids do not satisfy the required activity level and the bidder does not place any additional bids, the FCC Auction System will automatically apply an activity rule waiver on the bidder's behalf.” The change could limit or eliminate a bidder’s ability to place additional bids in the auction. The last major FCC auction, the 700 MHz auction in 2008, lasted 38 bidding days and 261 rounds.

Samsung’s share of the worldwide smartphone market fell to 24 percent in Q3, from 32 percent in the year-ago quarter, according to Gartner Group. Samsung’s deepest decline was in feature phones, shipment of which decreased by 10.8 percent year over year. Demand for Samsung’s smartphones weakened mostly in Western Europe and Asia, Gartner said, with smartphone sales tumbling 29 percent in China, its biggest market. Emerging markets continued to drive smartphone sales in Q3, with Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa showing growth of 50 percent year over year, Gartner said. The U.S. led mature markets with 20 percent growth in the quarter, fueled by Apple’s debut of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, said the report. Smartphone sales in Western Europe dropped 5 percent, the third consecutive quarterly decline of the year, it said. Following 26 percent year-over-year growth for Apple worldwide in Q3, Gartner expects record sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the holiday quarter, “but we should not underestimate the Chinese vendors and local brands,” said Annette Zimmermann, Gartner research director. Chinese smartphone companies will continue efforts to penetrate overseas emerging markets, while prepaid markets in Europe and low-cost LTE phones will also offer “key opportunities” for Chinese brands, she said. Huawei moved into the No. 3 position worldwide among smartphone vendors, although fewer than 1 million units separate the number three, four and five players, all Chinese brands, Gartner said. Xiaomi cracked the top five for the first time on a 336 percent sales increase, driven by a “strong performance in China” where it became the leading brand, Gartner said. Lenovo filled out the top five for the quarter with market share of 5 percent. Gartner expects 2014 sales of smartphones to reach 1.2 billion units worldwide.

Coral Wireless asked the FCC to overturn a decision by the Internal Audit Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company to recover universal service support from Coral based on a finding that a certain number of the reported lines were not revenue producing. The carrier reported on a series of meetings at the FCC in filings in docket 05-337, posted by the FCC Monday. The Wireline Bureau rejected Coral’s arguments. Coral could not have been providing telecom services with the lines at issue “because Coral's terms and conditions permitted, but did not require,” Coral to reroute nonemergency calls to Coral's customer care center during the 60-day period preceding disconnection for non-payment, the filing said. The ruling could create “unintended harm,” Coral said. “Unless the Order is reversed, any service provider will be able to evade regulation as a common carrier merely by including in its terms and conditions a provision that gives the provider the right, but not the obligation, to route calls to locations other than the dialed telephone number.”

The automotive industry doesn’t need to “reinvent security credentialing” or create an “isolated” automotive network as it moves forward on a vehicle-to-vehicle security credential management system (SCMS), CTIA said in comments filed Monday in response to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request for information. Many of the issues faced in that industry are similar to those raised by a “growing M2M [machine-to-machine] communications ecosystem that supports the Internet of Things,” CTIA said. “M2M communications systems are faced with the same challenges to establish secure lines of communications and authenticate devices. Creating a separate, isolated network dedicated to automotive vehicles and associated infrastructure would likely result in dis-economies of scale in connection with production costs, deployment, and interoperability.”

The decisions the FCC makes in the net neutrality proceeding have implications for spectrum, as the FCC also looks at the future use of bands above 24 GHz, said a filing by Nokia posted by the FCC in docket 14-28. Ulrich Rehfuess, Nokia spectrum policy leader, was at the FCC to brief staff on European spectrum policy, but he ended up fielding questions on “applicability of European initiatives to analogous US proceedings,” Nokia said. “Nokia specifically noted that the ability to prioritize traffic based on the application or service, or the ability to create specialized classes of services is critical to the development of technologies requiring very low latency, large throughput, and minimal packet loss including autonomous driving and streaming of live broadcast events,” the company said. “Nokia reiterated its views that the Commission should not reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act and must allow for flexibility to offer specialized services that provide prioritization for traffic associated with particularly sensitive applications and services.” Among those at the meeting for the FCC were Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, and John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the Wireless Bureau, Nokia said.

Shipments of smartphones with near-field communications capability built in will jump at a 55.8 percent compound annual growth rate through 2019, said a report available for sale from the research firm TechNavio. NFC technology "has revolutionized the ways in which people access and use data and information," the report said. "NFC-enabled devices can be used for applications such as mobile payment, loyalty programs, interactive advertising, ID authentication, and transit fare collection."