T-Mobile unveiled a new offer Thursday -- two lines with 6 GB of LTE data each for $80 a month. “Unlike the carriers who advertise large data buckets while they hide costly monthly data access fees in their fine print, we won’t charge you extra to use the data you’ve already paid for,” T-Mobile said in a news release. “Families who want fewer lines deserve a better option and we’re giving them one,” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said.

Facebook introduced a new functionality -- automatic alternative (or alt) text -- that aims to describe photos on the website to blind or visually impaired users. "With more than 39 million people who are blind, and over 246 million who have a severe visual impairment, many people may feel excluded from the conversation around photos on Facebook," wrote software engineers Shaomei Wu and Hermes Pique and the Head-Accessibility Jeffrey Wieland in a Monday blog post. With this advancement, as a Facebook user encounters a photo using a screen reader on iOS devices, the user will hear a number of items that a photo may contain. "Someone could now hear, 'Image may contain three people, smiling, outdoors,'" the three wrote. Previously, screen readers only identified the name of the person sharing the photo and the term "photo" when they came across one, they said. Automatic alt text produces the description using object recognition technology, which is "based on a neural network that has billions of parameters and is trained with millions of examples," the three wrote. They said the company is launching the "nascent" technology first on iOS screen readers set to English but plan to expand it soon to other languages and platforms.

BlackBerry is “encouraged” with the progress it’s making toward the goal of fashioning a profitable smartphone device business during the fiscal year ending in February, CEO John Chen said on a Friday earnings call. However, BlackBerry’s smartphone sales volume in Q4 ended Feb. 29 “was below our expectations,” Chen said. BlackBerry shares closed 7.5 percent lower Friday at $7.48. Chief Financial Officer James Yersh disclosed that BlackBerry sold 600,000 handsets in Q4, or 100,000 fewer than it sold in Q3. Analysts said the Q4 volume finished well below Wall Street's expectations of 850,000. “The softness in the high end of the smartphone market is certainly a headwind,” Chen said. “But the main issue that we face, that we need to address, is the distribution.” BlackBerry’s Priv, the company’s first Android smartphone, “is now available in 34 countries, up from four last quarter,” Chen said. “Unfortunately, contract negotiations took longer than planned with certain major carriers, including Verizon.” The delay pushed the sales volume BlackBerry had hoped to report from Verizon for Q4 into Q1, Chen said. “However, Priv continues to receive very positive reviews and net promoter scores.” Priv’s “value proposition” of offering “the most secure Android smartphone for the enterprise is actually quite strong,” he said. “We believe this market opportunity, whilst maybe small today, will continue to develop and open up, and we are leveraging this through increased channel coverages.” Having launched Priv in March through “1,700-plus” Verizon retail stores in the U.S., “we are working on six more countries and 14 more additional carriers,” Chen said. “In the last week, we formally launched in Japan, and next week we are planning to launch in Mexico.”

With the new 4-inch iPhone SE due in stores Thursday, Samsung is making sure the Galaxy S7 doesn’t get overlooked through carrier deals. AT&T Wireless and Samsung announced Thursday a multibrand offer combining smartphones, satellite TV and a free TV. AT&T Wireless and DirecTV customers can score a free Samsung 48-inch TV when they buy a Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 edge by activating the offer on plenti.com along with a new line of AT&T Next wireless service, AT&T said. Customers also get 1,000 Plenti points. DirecTV customers can view content on the devices “nearly anytime and anywhere,” AT&T said. The offer, which runs through the end of April, is good only for AT&T Wireless and DirecTV customers who add a new service. Verizon’s Galaxy S7 deal, which was to end Thursday at midnight, is a buy-one-get-one for the S7 edge. Under the deal, customers who upgrade their service or activate a phone on the XL plan or larger get 2 GB extra data free each month for life. Sprint’s buy-one-get-a-free-Samsung-phone deal is for the Galaxy S7, and it has a buy-one-half-off deal on the S7 edge. The fine print says the deal runs through April 7 and is based on a 24-month installment plan.

The FCC should refrain from adopting volume control regulations for wireless handsets, as it tackles revised hearing aid compatibility (HAC) rules, CTIA said in reply comments filed in docket 07-250. Volume controls regulations are “unnecessary in light of modern wireless handset capabilities and regulatory requirements,” the group said. “Volume control regulations would duplicate existing wireless handset capabilities and requirements.” CTIA also said it supports an FCC proposal to adopt a “streamlined process” enabling the industry to “utilize the latest ANSI [American National Standards Institute] standards for wireless handsets.” The commission should not adopt “additional consumer consultation requirements in the process to approve the use of specific standards,” CTIA said. “The Commission should also permit the wireless industry to use updated HAC standards adopted by ANSI-approved bodies prior to the Commission’s formal approval of those standards.” The Telecommunications Industry Association told the FCC it should drop a proposal to require standards development organizations to consult with consumers. “In the NPRM, the Commission acknowledged that the ANSI process meets its specified criteria of openness to all stakeholders and opportunity for comment and appeal before final standards are approved,” TIA said in reply comments. “This point is further supported by the majority of commenters that highlight ANSI processes and discuss the ways consumers have participated in HAC standards development, to date.” TIA also opposed the volume control proposal. The mandate would be “duplicative of existing features without providing enhanced consumer experience,” TIA said.

More than half of millennials aged 18-34 use their phones for video calling, up 10 percentage points year over year, said an NPD survey done last fall. “Video calling, posting and watching video are more common among Millennial smartphone users than among any other age group,” said analyst John Buffone, citing larger phone screens as a driver. As a result, millennials are leading the migration to larger data plans, said Buffone. Millennials’ computer use, though, is declining, said Buffone, negatively affecting the time they spend on Web browsing, email, shopping, Facebook, music, posting pictures or videos, navigation and Twitter.

PoLTE Corp. is planning retail and carrier trials this year of its positioning over LTE (PoLTE) location services technology, it said Monday. PoLTE is positioning the technology to chipmakers, wireless carriers and handset manufacturers, which can use existing infrastructure to deliver location services to retail, enterprise, IoT and enterprise markets. PoLTE’s network-based services are said to be able to seamlessly transition from outdoor to indoor locations and track 4G or LTE phones independent of handset manufacturer or operating system. The PoLTE technology platform “enables location functionality, without modifying the handset in any way and protects the user’s privacy,” said the company. The technology goes beyond Wi-Fi and Bluetooth offerings “by providing a cost effective, scalable location services solution that is easy to deploy, use and maintain,” said CEO Russ Markhovsky.

The move of major U.S. wireless carriers to installment sales for handsets “has been a big driver of improved industry profitability given the accounting treatment,” UBS said Friday in a note to investors. But the plans also have a second effect, lengthening upgrade cycles for postpaid phones, UBS said. Postpaid subscribers now keep handsets for 3.3 years on average, up from 2.8 years in 2011, the firm said. “This is putting pressure on upgrade rates, which is in turn driving lower churn and fewer gross adds. We believe this will be a key theme for 1Q earnings, driving another quarter of strong sector profitability, especially at AT&T and Verizon.” At Sprint, UBS predicted low upgrade rates and churn in Q1 “will drive slower, albeit positive, sub growth.” T-Mobile will benefit with continuing strong growth, the analysts said. UBS also said it's paring back estimated handset losses for AT&T and continues to expect slight handset growth at Verizon. “In aggregate, we estimate the upgrade rate will reach a record low for the group [UBS estimates 6.2 percent], while postpaid churn continues to improve,” UBS said. “These metrics have been closely correlated for the past 2 years, and apart for record activity in 4Q14 with the iPhone 6, both have consistently fallen.”

Fewer than half of information technology departments at the 50 top U.S. county governments provide software that monitors, manages and secures their employees' mobile devices, the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers said in a survey released Tuesday. IAITAM said only a quarter of the counties require that such mobile device management software (MDM) be installed across all their government departments. The survey found 43 out of the 50 counties supply mobile devices to employees, but only 20 have MDM software and the remainder either lack such software or didn't respond. Of the 20 that do have MDM software, only nine require it be installed across all departments, two don't and nine didn't answer. In a separate IAITAM survey of 177 companies, trade groups and government agencies, 92 percent of respondents said they supply mobile devices to employees, 72 percent said they have MDM software in place and 70 percent require such software be implemented across all their departments. "Most government agencies and corporations fall down on the job when it comes to Information Technology Asset Management ... in general. But mobile device management, including best-practice policies and application of MDM software, is a real blind spot," said IAITAM CEO Barbara Rembiesa in a statement. The association said last week that San Bernardino County, California, had paid for MDM software, but it was never installed on the device supplied to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of two gunmen identified by the FBI in the Dec. 2 mass shooting. IAITAM said if the MDM software had been installed on Farook's phone, "investigators could have remotely and legally unlocked the phone and thereby circumvented the legal dispute now underway" (see 1603010013).

The NextRadio FM-reception app is available on most models of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones just now hitting the street, NextRadio said in a Monday announcement. NextRadio expects a “large increase” in FM-chip-enabled smartphones this year, it said. The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge sold by AT&T support the NextRadio app download from the Google Play store, it said. Sprint will have the NextRadio app as a preload and the app is coming soon on T-Mobile phones as a download in a “future update release,” it said. NextRadio estimates 10 to 15 million new smartphone customers will be able to use the app this year, it said.