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.

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.”

Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., criticized Verizon’s plans to terminate wireless contracts of 919 customers in rural areas of Montana by mid-October for spending too much time roaming outside the network. Verizon should reverse its decision because maintaining wireless service in rural Montana is essential to “maintaining public safety, running a business and staying connected during emergencies,” Tester said in a letter to CEO Lowell McAdam. “I am concerned that Verizon did not provide sufficient notice to affected customers, making it likely customers would completely lose service if Verizon follows through.” Tester sought information on Verizon’s decision to pull the wireless contracts, including why the carrier didn’t provide more notice to customers and whether the company would issue customers refunds for recently purchased devices for use on the network. Tester also asked if Verizon intends to “terminate service for all of its customers that are primarily using accounts in areas supported by the LTE in Rural America program, or is it only the large data users that are receiving the termination notices?” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., also criticized the service provider in a statement, saying the move to cancel rural customers’ contracts “is yet another example of the rural-urban divide and choosing a bottom-line over a commitment to Montanans.” The affected customers “live outside of areas where Verizon operates our own network and many of these lines use a substantial amount of data while roaming on other providers’ networks,” a Verizon spokeswoman said. “The roaming costs generated by these lines exceed what these consumers pay us each month.”

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved special temporary authority for ShawnTech to provide a “secure communications/private mobile radio service to Agencies to manage and control mobile device interdiction and extract contraband communication devices,” said an OET notice. The four major carriers, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile, supported the application, ShawnTech said. The STA covers Folkston, Georgia. The D. Ray James Prison is among the correctional facilities there.

CTIA said a proposed consumption tax increase in Connecticut, which would also apply to wireless services and products, would hurt consumers. State lawmakers are to consider a budget Thursday that would close a two-year $3.5 billion budget deficit. Jamie Hastings, senior vice president-external and state affairs, said Wednesday that “wireless service is already highly taxed.” Consumers there face a $1 surcharge per subscriber per month.

The House Oversight Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to advance the Connected Government Act. HR-2331, filed in May by House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill. It would require that federal agencies design all new websites to be easily viewed on mobile devices. Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., filed companion S-1769 earlier this month. “Mobile friendly websites will ultimately help build a stronger democracy,” Pallone and Kelly said Wednesday in a Medium post before the markup. Victims of recent natural disasters like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma depend on mobile devices as “their only connection to necessities of survival,” but “many of the essential government websites on which people depend are essentially unusable on a phone,” the Democratic lawmakers said.

Charter Communications and Samsung are partnering on 5G and 4G LTE wireless network field and lab trials around the U.S., with the work having started over the summer and set to run through the rest of the year. Samsung said Tuesday the 5G trials are evaluating fixed-use cases that employ its pre-commercial 28 GHz network and equipment, and the 4G trials are being done at 3.5 GHz, using its 4G LTE small-cell technology in outdoor environments. Charter blogged it "will emphasize an 'Inside-Out' strategy" focused first on indoor wireless offerings, then outdoor. It said after it next year launches its mobile wireless service "as a Wifi first" mobile virtual network operator (see 1611030041), it will look to boost the quality, speed and capacity of its wireless service using 3.5 GHz band and millimeter wave spectrum. Charter hopes the FCC, as it looks at opening the 3.5 GHz shared band, will set licensing rules "that would ensure and encourage investment and deployment by new entrants, including Charter." Sprint and Ericsson, meanwhile, said they did the first U.S. 2.5 GHz Massive MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) field tests using Sprint spectrum and Ericsson’s 64T64R (64 transmit, 64 receive) radios, in Seattle and in Plano, Texas. “The two companies are preparing for commercial deployment next year, with Massive MIMO radios capable of increasing Sprint’s network capacity up to ten times,” Sprint said. “This technology is a tremendous competitive advantage for Sprint, enabling us to maximize our deep 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings,” said John Saw, chief technology officer. “Massive MIMO will be key to meeting our customers’ growing demand for unlimited data, as well as offering Gigabit LTE and 5G services.”

Asus launched the camera-centric ZenFone 4 series in the U.S. and Canada, calling it the first smartphone line with dual rear cameras on every model. The ZenFone 4 Max 5.5 ($199), available now, has a 13-megapixel main camera and 120-degree wide-angle camera and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 430 processor, said the company. Camera modes include auto, pro, beauty, super resolution, panorama, GIF animation and time lapse, said Asus. The 5.5 has a Qualcomm Adreno 505 graphics processor, said to enhance game play. The ZenFone Max 5.2, 4 Pro and 4 are due in Q4, it said.

Wireless carriers, except Sprint, want the next iPhone to include AWS-3 spectrum, band 66, BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk told investors. “This mid-band spectrum not only offers more capacity with existing cell site spacing, but can also deliver faster speeds through carrier aggregation technology,” he wrote Tuesday. “AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have already started deploying this spectrum, but financially strapped Sprint did not buy any of this spectrum. Samsung put Band 66 in the Galaxy S8 and Note8.” AT&T wants the spectrum it's deploying as part of FirstNet to be included, he said. Sprint is focused on inclusion of high performance user equipment (HPUE) enabling its 2.5 GHz spectrum to “match the network coverage of its 1.9GHz mid-band spectrum,” Piecyk wrote. “Investors are optimistic that HPUE will be included in this year’s iPhone, especially given the strong relationship that Sprint Chairman Masa Son has with Apple.” One big question is whether Apple will add a chip allowing the phone to use TV band spectrum purchased in the incentive auction, he said: “Inclusion is a long shot but would be a huge win” for T-Mobile. Another question is whether the 38 GHz spectrum being championed by Verizon, a building block for 5G, will “ever be in an iPhone,” he said.

Competitive Carriers Association representatives met with FCC Public Safety Bureau staff and aides to all five FCC commissioners to discuss the group’s request that the regulator extend the deadline on new requirements for wireless emergency alerts by at least a year (see 1708160063). “Technical capabilities necessary to implement embedded references could result in increased network congestion and undermine network performance during times of emergency,” said Thursday's filing in docket 15-91. “This will overtax vital control channels normally used to place and receive voice calls and text messages when an alert is deployed.”