Representatives of the ATIS Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee (WTSC) spoke on the phone with staff from the FCC Public Safety and Enforcement bureaus on the group’s work to advance wireless emergency alerting. “Completion of WEA specifications in support of the Commission’s existing rules is the main focus of WTSC efforts,” said a filing in docket 15-91. “WTSC has also started work on device-based geo-targeting to examine how such geo-targeting may be performed by a well-managed WEA application. ATIS noted that it is engaging with other stakeholders, including [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], which have significant roles in device-based geo-targeting.”

The FCC posted its new mobile wireless competition report Wednesday, which said the U.S. wireless industry is effectively competitive. Commissioners approved the report 3-2 Tuesday over dissents by Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel (see 1709260045). The final report appears to change little from the draft circulated by Chairman Ajit Pai three weeks earlier (see 1709070056). “Competition continues to play an essential role in the mobile wireless marketplace -- leading to lower prices, more innovation, and higher quality service for American consumers,” the report concluded. Also Wednesday, the agency released an NPRM, approved at the meeting, seeking comment on a proposal to reduce the “regulatory burden” on smaller carriers of complying with hearing-aid compatibility rules (see 1709260045). “While in many cases these reports have helped the Commission compile information for the public and monitor compliance with wireless hearing aid compatibility deployment benchmarks, we believe that, in light of various changes in the marketplace since these reporting requirements were adopted, the benefits of annual reporting by small, rural, and regional service providers may be outweighed by the burdens of this information collection on these entities,” the NPRM in docket 17-228 said.

Adoption rates of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus -- the number of users who received the phones and have started using apps -- were 0.3 percent of the device market share for the 8 and 0.4 percent for the larger model in the first weekend of sales, said a Monday Localytics report. During the comparable weekend in 2016, the iPhone 7 had a 1 percent adoption rate, which compared with a 2 percent adoption rate for the iPhone 6 a year earlier. The iPhone 8 Plus, though, had a “slightly stronger” adoption rate in the first weekend vs. previous Plus models: 0.2 percent for the 7 Plus last year and 0.3 percent for the 6 Plus in 2015, said the app analytics company. “Apple is betting big on the iPhone X, and so far it looks like consumers may be doing the same,” said Localytics, noting the Nov. 3 on-sale date for the flagship model. The company examined more than 70 million iOS devices globally, looking at the relative percentage of iPhones in service after each device's release Sept. 22-24.

Before the Friday on-sale date for new iPhones, Apple loyalists were divided over which iPhone model to upgrade to, and that’s a “mixed blessing” for Apple, said NPD's Eddie Hold in a blog post. Data from a CivicScience Sept. 12-19 survey showing a relatively balanced split of iPhone purchase intentions -- 25 percent for the iPhone X, 25 percent for the 8, 29 percent for the 7 and 21 percent for earlier models -- shows brand loyalty, said Hold. But older models are going to “struggle, over time, to keep up with the demands of the latest apps and features,” resulting in a user experience that’s not as “slick and smooth” as with more recent models, he said. Hold called that an opportunity for carriers to lure customers with 36-month installment plans. “Not only does this make the purchase more palatable to the consumer, but it also helps the carrier to retain the consumer for a longer period of time,” said the analyst. It’s harder for a customer to switch carriers “when your device isn’t paid off."

The 911 Location Technologies Test Bed, an independent entity established by CTIA, is inviting vendors of location-accuracy technologies to participate in Stage Z. The test bed was established to independently evaluate the ability of carriers to meet FCC indoor 911 location accuracy requirements through different technologies. The FCC approved an order in January 2015 requiring carriers to improve their performance in identifying the location of wireless calls to 911 (see 1501290066). “Stage Z testing focuses on emerging indoor technologies that determine the altitude, or z-axis, of the 9-1-1 caller,” said a Friday news release.

The Asus ZenFone 4 Pro, with gigabit LTE and 802.11ad multi-gigabit Wi-Fi, offers a peek into the 5G mobile experience, said Qualcomm Thursday, announcing that the phone is powered by its Snapdragon mobile platforms. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 modem is said to boost download speeds over 4G LTE and its TruSignal dual-antenna technology is said to extend coverage beyond current technologies. The 802.11ad Wi-Fi allows users to share 4K videos “in seconds,” and the ZenFone 4 Pro’s Wi-Fi hotspot provides end-to-end gigabit wireless connectivity with 802.11ad access and gigabit LTE backhaul on compatible networks even in crowded locations, Qualcomm said. The chipmaker's Spectra 180 image signal processor has dual 14-bit image signal processing, which along with its Adreno 540 graphics processing unit, enable 360-degree visual capture, it said.

T-Mobile raised its “prioritization point” Wednesday to 50 GB of data per month, from 32 GB. When customers hit that point, they have to get behind other users in the line and could see slower connection speeds in congested areas, Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray blogged. He stressed it isn't a cap and customers don't face throttling: “50GB of data usage means a T-Mobile customer is basically the top 1 percent of data users, and to put it in context, you could stream a full 2 hours of Netflix every single day … and never even reach that point!” T-Mobile customers are streaming more than 1 million hours of Netflix per day, Ray said.

Free Press accused FCC Chairman Ajit Pai of tying wireless competition in a misleading way to the push to reclassify broadband. The group filed a letter in docket 17-69 on the pending mobile wireless competition report. “You are once again misleading the public in furtherance of your irrational vendetta against the congressionally mandated classification of transmission services as telecom services,” Free Press said. “Wireless industry investments peaked in 2013, as carriers completed the bulk of 4G LTE deployments. Both that peak, and the ongoing decline from it, predate the entire proceeding that led to the 2015 reclassification of broadband as a lightly regulated Title II service.” Pai is seeking a vote on the controversial report at Tuesday’s commissioner meeting (see 1709070056). The FCC declined to comment.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau tweaked a waiver on wireless emergency alert rules it approved for competitive carriers just before the Labor Day weekend (see 1709050053). The earlier waiver, responding to a petition by the Competitive Carriers Association, provided “temporary and conditional relief” for CCA, waiving a requirement that carriers decide by Sept. 1 whether to elect to withdraw from the voluntary wireless emergency alert program. A Friday-evening notice was “temporarily waiving the 60-day notice requirement” until 30 days after the FCC acts on the merits of an earlier CCA petition seeking (see 1708160063) a delay of new alerting requirements by at least a year. The bureau cites problems posed by hurricanes Irma and Harvey. “This situation is being exacerbated by the fact that many carriers’ limited resources are being further constrained at this time by the response to multiple severe weather events,” the order said. “This temporary waiver will permit these carriers both to focus their limited resources on responding to recent storms and figure out whether they will be able to comply with requirements that are scheduled to take effect at the beginning of November.”

Apple's iPhone 8 launch may not lead carriers down the same troubled path as in 2016, when the 7 launched a price war, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors Monday. Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure offered Friday to match other offers. “Sprint’s pricing announcements might be taken as the opening salvo in yet another brutal round of discounting,” Moffett wrote. “On closer analysis, that may not be the right reading. Far from being an irrational opening salvo, Claure’s pre-emptive tweet about ‘matching any offer’ may actually have been a well-considered message to his competitors to remember what went wrong in 2016.” Helping carriers is that prices of phones like the iPhone 7 or earlier models remain high, and since the offers require the trade-in of old handsets, the offers could prove nearly "costless" for carriers, the analyst said.