Wilson Electronics, which manufactures cell signal boosters, released the newly redesigned Pro Signal Meter for the custom installer market, the company said Wednesday. The “professional grade” tool detects available cellular signals at a given location, identifies frequencies, measures signal strength and bandwidth, and displays the information on an integrated LED screen, Wilson said in a news release. “The Pro Signal Meter can be used indoors or out, and detects 2G, 3G and 4G frequency bands used by all North American cellular service providers.” The company also calls itself weBoost.

Gogo urged the FCC to allow for at least three licensees in the proposed air-ground mobile broadband service (AGMBS) band, said an ex parte filing on various meetings at the agency in docket 13-114. Dividing the 500 MHz band three or more ways would still give each licensee sufficient capacity to offer “robust service,” Gogo said. It urged the agency to adopt a five-year substantial service requirement “or, in the alternative, a seven-year requirement with an interim construction benchmark” as part of the rules. Gogo said it would comply with all applicable rules and directives from law enforcement on air safety. “Technical complexity, physical constraints and cost” mean most aircraft would be able to offer service from only one provider, Gogo conceded. “Nonetheless, AGMBS providers likely would compete on a periodic basis for contracts to provide service to those aircraft, and offering at least three 14 GHz licenses for auction -- with an aggregation limit of 250 MHz -- would help ensure a competitive inflight communications market.”

Even when an individual isn't using an app on a smartphone, many apps still know the user's location, said an FTC blog post by Amanda Koulousias, an attorney in the Privacy and Identity Protection Division. Map apps that can give a consumer directions quickly, or a shopping app that notifies consumers about a sale nearby, may be considered helpful, Koulousias said. “But this kind of tracking also increases the amount of information apps collect -- and potentially share -- about you.” Consumers can often disable an app’s ability to track their location by changing the app’s settings, she said. “Depending on your device’s operating system, there might be system settings that can help, too.”

“You’re toast” has taken on a new meaning with a new gadget from Hammacher Schlemmer that bills itself as “the appliance that indelibly brands its owner’s image onto a slice of bread.” The $69 “Selfie Toaster” uses custom heating inserts, sporting “full facial details,” that are created from a headshot submitted to the manufacturer by the toaster owner after purchase. The inserts are said to brand light or dark likenesses of the subject onto a slice of toast. Instructions for uploading a high-res digital image are included with the toaster, and customers receive their two selfie inserts within two weeks of uploading the image, the catalog company said.

Mothers’ ownership of smartphones in the U.S. passed that of laptop and desktop computers for the first time, said a fall study on the “lives of moms" by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. IAB's report, released Tuesday, compares technology habits and media behaviors of online moms aged 18-32 in the U.S., Brazil, Canada, China and the U.K. U.S. moms also are spending 35 percent more time online via their smartphones than via computers, it said. Elsewhere, 76 percent of millennial moms in Brazil own smartphones, up from 25 percent in 2012, and 93 percent of U.K. moms own smartphones, up from 73 percent two years ago. China leads the five countries in smartphone penetration among moms at 95 percent (up from 62 percent in 2012), followed closely by Canada at 94 percent, up from 59 percent two years ago, IAB said. Tablet ownership is on the rise, too, with China making the biggest gains, from 15 percent penetration in 2012 to 50 percent, while the U.K. penetration jumped from 18 percent to 66 percent. U.S. millennial moms spend more time with media overall at 8.9 hours daily, up from 8.3 hours in 2012, far more than the 2.8 hours they spend watching TV, IAB said, and more than the 1.7 hours spent on PCs. “With millennials making up the majority of new moms, brands and agencies need to think of this valuable demographic as tech-savvy and mobile-first, if they want to earn their interest and loyalty,” said Anna Bager, IAB senior vice president-mobile and video. The report is based on multiple sources, including an in-depth survey conducted by BabyCenter with 10,533 moms Nov. 3-Dec. 21, with U.S. qualitative research gathered via in-person friendship groups, and a longitudinal six-month online discussion group, IAB said. The U.S. portion of the survey included 2,742 participants, of whom 1,672 were millennial moms.

U.S. Cellular supports smartphone theft deterrence “via a diverse set of initiatives,” it said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in docket 14-143. “U.S. Cellular encourages all of our [operating system] or device partners to develop anti-theft capabilities, and in no way prohibits or restricts development of these capabilities through our requirements,” the carrier said. “Today, over 96 percent of our smartphone customer base is covered by solutions provided at no cost by our device or OS partners. We would welcome any efforts by our device or OS partners to have such functionality operational by default.”

Wireless carriers are likely to move away from aggressive pricing aimed at adding subscribers, especially in light of the high prices seen in the AWS-3 auction, said Mark Lowenstein, managing director of Mobile Ecosystem, Friday in a Fierce Wireless blog post. “AT&T and Verizon are going to have to figure out how to somehow fund the twin ambitions of additional spectrum to meet the data needs of customers, while finding additional market opportunities now that organic revenue growth in wireless is maturing.” Sprint and T-Mobile are also becoming more conservative, he said. “With all their financial obligations, I believe the wireless operators are going to be far less reckless, pricing-wise, than they have been over the past 18 months.” This has been a "pretty unique period" for wireless, with 10-20 percent reductions in price, more generous data allocations and aggressive iPhone and device buyout deals aimed at winning customers, he said.

Mobile video -- followed by music streaming and apps -- will be the key driver of global mobile data traffic in 2015, said a Gartner analysis released Thursday. Citing data from mobile providers, Gartner Research Director Jessica Ekholm said mobile video is generating half of all mobile data and will grow to more than 60 percent of mobile data consumption by 2018. Two variables in projected data usage are video-calling services and music streaming, Ekholm said. Five minutes of FaceTime video chat on a 3G network uses just 15 MB of data but as the number of video callers grows, “the collective total amount can be large,” she said. If users shift to higher bit rate music services, that could also affect data usage significantly, she said. “Mobile music streaming can easily generate hundreds of megabytes of data,” depending on the service; a user listening to Spotify can consume more than twice as much data as a Pandora user, she said. Overall, mobile data traffic is forecast to grow 59 percent this year to 52 terabytes, up from 33 terabytes last year due to newer, faster networks and growing numbers of consumers using more affordable 3G and 4G handsets. Mobile data growth is expected to continue into 2016 at a 53 percent clip to 80 million terabytes, she said. By 2018, half of North American mobile connections will use 4G networks, Ekholm said, and 4G users will generate 46 percent of all mobile data traffic, consuming nearly 5.5 GB of data monthly -- three times that of a 3G smartphone. Cisco this week projected a surge of mobile data usage in the coming years (see 1502030041).

Global shipments of Android smartphones fell quarter-on-quarter for the first time in Q4, ABI Research said Friday in a report. Worldwide shipments of smartphones of all types jumped 7 percent to 378 million in Q4 from 354 million in Q3, ABI said. Android smartphones didn’t share in that success, as they fell 5 percent to 206 million, ABI said. Apple had a banner quarter, as iPhones climbed 90 percent to 74.5 million smartphones, it said. Shipments of Windows Phones fared well, rising 19 percent to 11 million, the industry researcher said. Apple’s success with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus “has taken the high end of the market away from certified Android’s premium tier vendors,” ABI said. It was a “seismic quarter” in the smartphone industry, and “many premium tier Android vendors may once again review their operating system and therefore content and service strategies” in light of Apple’s success, it said. These are “worrying times for Google’s mobile services and Android, but it presents opportunity for other service providers and even operating systems,” ABI said. Google representatives didn’t comment.

ZTE announced the global launch of the Blade S6, a $249 4G LTE smartphone powered by Qualcomm’s 615 octa-core chipset and running Android 5.0. The Blade S6 has a 5-inch display and ZTE’s Smart Sense gesture motion controls that let users shine the built-in flashlight, activate a mirror app or play music using a flick of the wrist motion. The phone has a Sony camera and an Adreno 405 image processor capable of Full-HD H.265 decoding, ZTE said Wednesday.