Package bidding in the upcoming AWS-3 and incentive auctions is critical to carriers like Verizon Wireless as they work to build out their networks, Verizon representatives said in meetings with FCC staff, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1jDOvrf). “Package bidding enables carriers not only to acquire the spectrum they need to serve intended geographic areas but to express the value of that package in a bid price at auction rather than through subsequent spectrum purchases in the secondary market,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/1jDOvrf). “Package bidding can promote geographic consistency and also help promote efficient network build out costs to consumers’ benefit. Carriers may achieve substantial economies of scale that will ultimately benefit consumers by developing devices that can be used across a larger geographic footprint."

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai told first responders at an APCO conference Thursday that since FirstNet funding is tied to broadcasters’ willingness to sell their licenses in the TV incentive auction, getting the rules right for the auction should also be critical to them. “In order to have a successful incentive auction that raises the funds FirstNet needs, both broadcasters and wireless carriers must participate,” Pai said in prepared remarks (http://fcc.us/1lnTUpg). “It may take only two to tango, but this is more like Cirque du Soleil. To get broadcasters to the table, we need to turn the abstract concept of an incentive into the concrete reality of cash. That means letting broadcasters in the United States know -- sooner rather than later -- just how much they could receive for participating in the incentive auction. That also means letting the auction process, not government fiat, determine the prices paid to broadcasters for their spectrum.” The IP transition also has big implications for public safety and the development of a next-generation 911 network, Pai said. “Few people realize just how tied the legacy 911 system is to copper wires, landline phones and 1970s technology,” he said. “In short, the legacy architecture of the system means that all too many 911 calls are delayed, dropped, or lost altogether. I am hopeful that NG911’s IP-based architecture will change all that.” Pai spoke at APCO’s Emerging Technology Forum in Orlando.

The FCC released a speed test for iPhones available in the iTunes App Store, said an agency news release (http://bit.ly/1fIf5yL). The commission released an app for Android phones in November. “Unlike the Android app, the iOS app cannot run periodically in the background,” the FCC said. “However, volunteers can test their cellular and Wi-Fi network performance manually to receive an on-demand view of upload and download speed, latency, and packet loss. No personal or uniquely identifiable information is collected. The data collected by the app is useful in informing users regarding their own performance and also supports the Commission’s open broadband data program, contributing to the information made freely available to the public on the nation’s mobile broadband performance in reports, maps, datasets and other forms.”

Android will remain the top smartphone operating system and iOS second through 2018, IDC projected Wednesday. About 950.5 million Android smartphones will ship globally this year, for a 78.9 percent market share, the research company predicted. Android’s smartphone shipments will grow to 1.3 billion in 2018, but its share will dip to 76 percent, IDC projected. Shipments for iOS will increase from 179.9 million to 249.6 million during the same time frame, but the iOS share will dip from 14.9 percent to 14.4 percent, IDC estimated. Global smartphone shipments across all platforms will slow to 8.3 percent annual growth in 2017 and 6.2 percent in 2018, IDC predicted. Annual smartphone shipment volume in 2013 passed 1 billion units for the first time, a 39.2 percent growth over 2012, it said. But in the coming year, IDC expects mature markets including North America and Europe will drop to single-digit growth and Japan might “contract slightly,” it said. Despite the high growth expected in many emerging markets, 2014 will be the year smartphone growth falls more significantly than ever before, it said. Shipment volume is expected to increase to 1.2 billion this year, growth of 19.3 percent from 2013, it said. More than 200 million smartphones are in active use in North America, said Ryan Reith, IDC program director-Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, in a news release. But this year will be an “enormous transition year” for the smartphone market, he said. “New markets for growth bring different rules to play by and ‘premium’ will not be a major factor in the regions driving overall market growth,” he said. As mature markets become “saturated and worldwide growth slows, service providers and device manufacturers are seeking opportunities to move hardware wherever they can,” said IDC. The result will be “rapidly declining price points, creating challenging environments in which to turn a profit,” it said. The global smartphone average selling price (ASP) was $335 in 2013, and that’s expected to drop to $260 by 2018, it said. To reach the “untapped demand within emerging markets, carriers and OEMs will need to work together to bring prices down,” said Ramon Llamas, IDC research manager-mobile phone. Last year, 322.5 million smartphone units shipped at under $150 and that number will continue to grow, he said. Several smartphone announcements already have targeted that price level this year, with some as low as $25, he said. IOS will have the highest ASPs among the leading platforms through 2018, IDC predicted. Apple has “maintained a tight focus on the high end of the market with its most current devices,” a trend IDC expects will continue but “could keep iOS from realizing greater volumes within emerging markets,” said the research company. But sales in mature markets will “offset much of the difference,” it said. Windows Phone is expected to grow the fastest among the leading smartphone operating systems through 2018, helped by nine new Windows Phone partners, said IDC. Most of the new vendors come from emerging markets, it said. Windows Phone’s shipments will grow from 47 million to 121.8 million and its share will grow from 3.9 percent to 7 percent between this year and 2018, predicted IDC. BlackBerry’s higher-than-average prices “could inhibit its growth potential,” said IDC, predicting shipments will tumble from 11.9 million to 5.3 million with that operating system’s share slipping from 1 percent to 0.3 percent.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler “hit the nail on the head” in comments on the importance of infrastructure deployment at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, said PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein Wednesday. “PCIA has long promoted just the policies the Chairman suggested, to enable wireless networks to be built quickly, efficiently and cost effectively,” Adelstein said in a news release. “He has teed these issues up, and his statement indicates he is prepared to take decisive action. As Chairman Wheeler put so succinctly, ‘We can’t have high-speed broadband without high-speed deployment.’ PCIA couldn’t agree more, and we look forward to working with him and the entire Commission to ensure U.S. wireless networks can continue to support … all of the growing needs of consumers, businesses, public safety, schools, hospitals and others who rely on wireless broadband.” Adelstein is a former FCC commissioner.

Public Knowledge released a video designed to explain to the public the importance of unlicensed spectrum in daily life, from garage door openers to baby monitors to Wi-Fi. But the group warned that unlicensed spectrum is threatened by the TV incentive auction. “The FCC has historically reserved a small amount of shared unlicensed spectrum, while auctioning off the rest for privately licensed use,” PK said. “Now we're faced with an upcoming auction in early 2015 and the FCC hopes to reclaim the TV white spaces and sell them to private telecom companies. Tell the FCC to protect our airwaves during the upcoming spectrum auction and save some spectrum for the public good."

While there are competing analyses from Globalstar and NCTA, “there is no serious dispute that harmful interference to Globalstar will occur at high usage levels” of outdoor unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) devices, Globalstar said in an ex parte filing in docket 13-49 (http://bit.ly/1ewRfBr). At such high usage levels, “outdoor U-NII-1 operations will cause harmful interference by reducing capacity on Globalstar’s network,” it said. The FCC can’t rush ahead with its proposed rule changes without additional steps determining thresholds for and risks of harmful interference with more certainty, it said. The filing recounts details of a meeting with staff from the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology and Jonathan Sallet, acting FCC general counsel. Globalstar also filed a white paper explaining its position that the commission can’t legally permit the unlimited deployment of outdoor unlicensed devices in the U-NII-1 band, it said. The mobile satellite services company said it showed that unrestricted outdoor operations in the U-NII-1 band “would threaten substantial harmful interference to Globalstar’s feeder uplink operations at 5.096-5.25 GHz,” the white paper said (http://bit.ly/1bMuPBo). Although the FCC originally adopted the restriction on outdoor use at a time when unlicensed use was in its infancy, “today it is beyond reasonable dispute that removing that restriction will lead to massive, imminent outdoor use of the U-NII-1 band,” it said. A spectrum licensee has vested property and reliance interests that further ensure protection from harmful interference, it said. “Both the commission and the courts have also recognized that these reliance interests must be given careful consideration before changing rules."

Nearly one in three American broadband users watches video on a mobile phone at least once a month, with the average user watching 1.7 hours of video on a mobile phone weekly, a Parks Associates survey found. It estimated smartphone ownership in North America will top 300 million units by the end of 2016. U.S. tablet owners are 1.3 times more likely than smartphone owners to buy a product using a shopping app, the company said.

More affordable data plans drove a 46 percent jump in embedded cellular connections in tablets last year, but data consumption on tablets via embedded cellular connections lags smartphone data usage by half, said NPD’s retail tracking service. Consumers have been buying tablets with 3G and 4G connectivity “and just not activating them,” said Brad Akyuz, director-connected intelligence, but more attractive data plans have led to an uptick in connections. While there has been an increase in tablet connections, tablet users average 1 GB of data usage per month compared with 2 GB by smartphone users, NPD said. Tablets sold with data contracts grew from 7.1 million in 2012 to 10.4 million last year, despite an overall decline in sales of cellular-capable tablets from 16 percent of total tablet sales to 12 percent in 2013, NPD said. The top four carriers added roughly 1.5 million new tablet subscribers in Q4, with AT&T and Verizon accounting for nearly 90 percent of the connections, said NPD. It also reported a “healthy increase” in the number of connections through mobile and smartphone hotspots among consumers, with some 7.8 million consumers connecting tablets to the Internet via cellular hotspot, 6 million via smartphone hotspots and 1.8 million via an external mobile hotspot device.

Consumers “will be wary” of the new biometric mobile payment feature in Samsung’s coming Galaxy S5 smartphone, predicted Eden Zoller, Ovum principal analyst-consumer. The feature will enable users of the S5 to use fingerprint authentication for mobile payments with PayPal merchants. But Ovum thinks consumers will “need some convincing due to security concerns,” said Zoller. Forty-nine percent of respondents in Ovum’s 2013 Consumer Insights Survey ranked lack of security as their main concern with mobile payments, she said. “Consumers already worried about the security of established m-payment mechanisms are likely to view a new technology and process with suspicion,” she predicted. But Samsung is a “hugely popular smartphone brand with global reach, while PayPal is a trusted payments service provider,” so the partnership on the S5 represents a “powerful combination,” she said. PayPal also stressed that fingerprint authentication is a secure feature based on a Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance-ready software implementation with all credentials stored remotely in the cloud, she said. PayPal was the first member of the FIDO Alliance to produce such a mobile payment solution. Other FIDO members include BlackBerry, Google, Lenovo and Microsoft. The PayPal fingerprint authentication feature will go live when the S5 ships in 26 markets in April, including the U.S. and U.K., PayPal said in a news release. The only information the device will share with PayPal is a “unique encrypted key that allows PayPal to verify the identity of the customer without having to store any biometric information” on PayPal’s servers, it said. Other S5 features include Download Booster, a Wi-Fi technology for boosting data speed by bonding Wi-Fi and LTE simultaneously, Samsung said in a news release. The version of the S5 offered by Sprint in the U.S. will support Pinsight Touch, a nationwide, open platform for near field communication-enabling mobile applications and services, the carrier said.