The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment Thursday on a proposal by Adaptrum for a test of fixed TV white space devices with antennas higher than current limits in FCC rules. Adaptrum proposed the test in a rural area in northeast Maine near the Canadian border, OET said. OET said it's reviewing the request but would welcome public comment. The Silicon Valley startup has already released two generations of white spaces devices (http://bit.ly/1wrZTfi). Comments are due Nov. 24; replies Dec. 9.

Successful data transmissions can be as important as voice communications, said 70 percent of respondents to a Motorola Solutions poll earlier this year, the company said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1xe4y4G). Researchers collected responses from more than 1,300 public safety professionals at various levels, Motorola said. While many of the agencies continue to invest in traditional voice networks, ”they have also begun planning for LTE,” the company said. “More than half of the agencies surveyed either have already migrated from an analog to a digital P25 system or are planning to within the next five years.” Motorola found that 34 percent of respondents are already making use of the cloud “to support data applications, computing and storage, or considering using one in the next three years," Motorola said.

The TV incentive auction “can’t happen soon enough,” T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham said Thursday in a blog post (http://t-mo.co/1zm6j5b). Ham emphasized the importance to competition of a favorable decision on its August petition asking the FCC to change its spectrum aggregation rules to give competitors to AT&T and Verizon a better shot at buying spectrum in the auction (see 1409260032). “As our competitors well know, arming T-Mobile with low-band spectrum is a competitive game-changer, enabling our service to penetrate building walls better and travel longer distances than we can with the spectrum we have today,” Ham said.

The market for sensors used in smartphones and tablets is forecast to triple for the 2012-2018 period, driven by competition between Apple and Samsung for sensor dominance, said a report from IHS Technology (http://bit.ly/10qLhmA). Worldwide market revenue for sensors used in smartphones and tablets will rise to $6.5 billion in 2018, from $2.3 billion in 2012, with the fastest growth coming from emerging devices whose revenue will reach $2.3 billion in 2018, IHS said. “The mobile market is moving beyond simply integrating established devices like motion sensors and now is including next-generation features like fingerprint and environment/health sensors,” said Marwan Boustany, IHS senior analyst for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and sensors. Established sensors in mobile devices include motion sensors, light sensors and MEMS microphones, while emerging sensors include fingerprint, optical pulse, humidity, gas, ultraviolet (UV) and thermal imaging. Apple initiated the market for fingerprint sensors in mobile devices with the release of the iPhone 5s in 2013, and IHS predicts shipments of fingerprint-enabled devices will reach 1.4 billion units in 2020. The fingerprint sensor market “has all its requirements for success converging at the right time,” Boustany said, citing Apple Pay and the growing number of banks supporting mobile payments and biometric authentication. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and Huawei’s Ascend Mate 7 also sport fingerprint sensors, IHS said. Meanwhile, Samsung pioneered the use of humidity sensors in the Galaxy S4, a pulse sensor in the S5 and a UV sensor in the Note 4, and IHS expects Chinese smartphone OEMs to be the next driver for the new generation of sensors. Humidity sensors have been used in Chinese handsets since 2011, and air-quality sensors are expected to find growing usage in the China market, IHS said, citing specific demand for sensors that can detect particle pollution in large Chinese cities. Thermal imagers using microbolometer sensors emerged from the technology of forward-looking infrared (FLIR) systems in 2014 as accessories for the iPhone 5s, but it will take several years before they’ll be incorporated into phones due to cost, IHS said. Samsung is expected to adopt gas/chemical sensors in the Note 6 for introduction in 2016 when the technology is more mature and use cases have been clearly defined, IHS said.

T-Mobile representatives stressed the importance of quick action on its May petition seeking clarity on data roaming rules, in a meeting with FCC staff. T-Mobile asked for a declaratory ruling containing guidance and “predictable” enforcement criteria for determining whether terms of data roaming agreements meet the “commercially reasonable” standard adopted in a 2011 data roaming order (see 1408220055). “Action is needed now, as new data roaming agreements -- many of which are replacing legacy agreements negotiated prior to release of the Data Roaming Order -- are being negotiated across the industry,” T-Mobile said. An ex parte filing by the carrier was posted Thursday in docket 05-265 (http://bit.ly/1FKb8WG). Many of the agreements "include 4G/LTE data roaming for the first time, and additional guidance is essential for carriers to expedite the negotiation of commercially reasonable agreements,” T-Mobile said.

The FCC released the broadband infrastructure order approved by the agency last week (see 1410170048). The FCC said the order (http://bit.ly/1rqlBvN) takes into account a “technological revolution” that has changed the wireless landscape. “The Commission’s current rules for deploying infrastructure were drafted at a time when antennas were huge and bolted to the top of enormous towers,” it said. “While that kind of macrocell deployment still exists and will continue to exist, there are now a variety of complementary and alternative technologies that are far less obtrusive.” Distributed antenna system and other small-cell deployments “use components that are a fraction of the size of macrocell deployments, and can be installed -- with little or no impact -- on utility poles, buildings, and other existing structures,” the order said.

Carrier aggregation (CA), in which carriers combine spectrum to create larger “virtual” bandwidths for LTE, will grow in importance, 4G Americas said in a white paper the group released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1raszpz). CA, a key feature of LTE-Advanced, allows bandwidths of up to 100 MHz, the group said. “Basically all of an operator’s frequency allocations can be used to provide LTE services.” CA offers spectrum efficiency and peak rates “nearly on par with single wideband allocation,” the group said. The paper cited CA deployments in Australia, South Korea, the U.K. and elsewhere. In the U.S., AT&T plans the use of CA capability in Chicago and other markets to aggregate 2.1 GHz and 700 MHz spectrum, 4G Americas said. “Sprint plans to use CA as part of the Sprint Spark service to combine LTE spectrum across the 800 MHz, 1900 MHz and 2.5 GHz spectrum. T-Mobile & Verizon plan to use carrier aggregation to further enhance their AWS spectrum holdings.”

The FCC should approve AT&T’s buy of spectrum licenses from Plateau only if AT&T agrees to keep in place a roaming deal with T-Mobile, T-Mobile said in a petition to the FCC. “If AT&T acquires Plateau, AT&T will become the only option for GSM roaming in the former Plateau markets and T-Mobile will be required to adhere to the terms of AT&T’s expansive and inflexible roaming agreements which generally do not permit roaming over limited geographic areas,” T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/ZF7Dzx). Plateau serves New Mexico and west Texas. The FCC posted the filing in docket 14-144 Tuesday.

Verizon reported earnings of 89 cents per share in Q3 on $31.6 billion in revenue. The carrier also added 1.5 million retail wireless connections and finished the quarter with 6.5 million FiOS connections, an 8.8 percent increase year-over-year (http://vz.to/1Fy0O40). A big part of the wireless growth was tied to tablets, Verizon said, with the company adding 457,000 postpaid phones and 1.1 million postpaid tablets in Q3. “We see continued, healthy customer demand for wireless and broadband services, and we are encouraged by the growth we are starting to see in the areas of video delivery and machine-to-machine,” said CEO Lowell McAdam. Verizon officials declined to answer any questions from analyst about the upcoming AWS-3 or TV incentive auction during the quarterly financial call. Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo was asked directly about Verizon's plans for the incentive auction. Shammo said the company wouldn’t have anything to say, since it's in the quiet period leading up to next month’s AWS-3 auction.

The Tizen Association said it has added 16 partner companies, bringing membership to more than 100 companies since its launch in November. The association is holding its second Tizen Developer Summit in Shanghai Monday and Tuesday. Tizen encompasses a “wide range of connected devices, generating opportunities for a broad range of partners including application developers, wireless operators and device manufacturers," said Ryoichi Sugimura, a Tizen Association board member from NTT Docomo, Monday. New association members are CloudTrains Systems, Digital Horizons, Dotscreen, Fractal Media, Fresvii, Integral and Open Systems, Jongla, Kitsilano Software, Max Secure Software, Mobile Inform Group, Ngine Networks, Phaymobile, ReyLabs, Salt and Pepper, SaturnMob and Vserv.