Facing heated competition in the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung said Monday it’s building a new 8.5 million-square-foot semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. Construction will begin in first half 2015, at a projected cost of roughly $14.6 billion, Samsung said, with operations to begin during second half 2017. The plant will help meet “growing demand for advanced semiconductor products,” it said.

Marriott International and its subsidiary, Marriott Hotel Services, will pay $600,000 to resolve an FCC investigation into whether Marriott intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks at a Tennessee convention center, the agency said Friday (http://fcc.us/1rRzKH2). Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, the agency said. At the same time, Marriott charged consumers, small businesses and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network, the agency said. The actions violated Section 333 of the Communications Act, said the commission. “It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel’s own Wi-Fi network,” said Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc in a news release. “This practice puts consumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether.” Marriott also agreed under a consent decree (http://bit.ly/1BDuFDj) to cease the unlawful use of Wi-Fi blocking technology and take steps to improve how it monitors and uses its Wi-Fi technology at Gaylord Opryland, the release said. Marriott must put in place a compliance plan and file compliance and usage reports with the bureau every three months for three years, including documentation of any use of access point containment features at any U.S. property that Marriott manages or owns, the release said. Marriott didn’t immediately comment.

Accessories supplier DVIGear introduced a line of copper cables designed to transport DisplayPort signals with bit rates up to 21.6 Gbps over cable lengths of up to 15 meters and support uncompressed DisplayPort resolutions up to 4096 x 2160 at 60 Hz, the company said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1rFpN0s). Long-distance transport of High Resolution DisplayPort signals over copper cables “must overcome several challenges, such as insertion loss, differential skew and jitter,” the company said. Conventional cables that support lower resolutions at short distances are often unable to support the data rates required by higher resolutions at longer distances, it said. “The resulting video can be disrupted by visual artifacts or may not be visible at all.” To overcome these challenges, DVIGear built its DisplayPort cables with heavy-gauge copper wire, “which allows high speed signals to pass with minimal jitter” and devoid of other artifacts, the company said.

NAB and Sinclair filed a proposed joint briefing schedule for their court challenges of the FCC incentive auction order that would have final briefs in the case being filed in January, in a filing in U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday. Since all parties agree the case should continue to be heard on an expedited basis, oral argument in the matter would likely take place soon after the final brief is filed, an attorney experienced in such cases told us. The schedule would allow for the cases to be argued “ahead of the incentive auction, which the FCC hopes to complete by mid-2015,” the joint filing said. Under the briefing schedule, NAB and Sinclair would brief their cases separately, with NAB raising issues about the commission’s protections of broadcasters and OET-69, while Sinclair will argue that the commission violated the law through its incentive auction rules and by requiring displaced licensees to cease operating on their old channels within 39 months of the auction even if their replacement facilities aren’t usable, the filing said. It said the FCC doesn’t object to the proposed schedule.

Epson has been quietly test-marketing a home or small office printer in Russia for the past four years that reverses the razor/razor blade marketing model that has driven some printer manufacturers out of the market. Instead of charging next to nothing for the printer and trying to make money from very expensive ink cartridges, Epson’s new EcoTank printers come with a large ink tank on the side. The tank gives “virtually limitless printing for up to two years,” Epson said. When the ink finally runs dry, the user pays a nominal price for each of four 70 ml bottles of black, cyan, magenta and yellow ink, and squirts them into the tank. Why test-market in Russia? Said Neil Wilson, Epson U.K. business manager: “The market there is special. Most homes are spending their money on essentials like food, and printers are used mainly by small businesses, which is at odds with the situation in Western Europe and the USA. Recently we also did some trials in Western Europe … and found that the market is changing there too. We saw Lexmark withdraw from the printer market because whereas cellphone handsets are subsidized by a contract to buy data, there is no contract to buy ink. So we thought it was time for a new choice.” Epson’s “new choice” EcoTank printers also will spare millions of ink cartridges from being dumped in landfills, the company said. The printers are now rolling out throughout Europe, with an initial exclusive deal with Dixons Carphone stores until January. Sales in the U.S. will begin in about a year, Wilson said.

At the end of two hours of discussion at Thursday’s FCC workshop on the economics of the net neutrality debate, Chairman Tom Wheeler asked what economic model would assure the continued innovation by Internet startups that he said is key to the U.S. economy. In the back and forth that followed, Wheeler noted the role regulation played in supporting the Industrial Revolution. Responding to Wheeler’s question, Nicholas Economides, an economics professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, said banning paid prioritization is key to supporting Internet startups. Others disagreed. The best way to sustain the innovation is “the regime that brought it, and that regime is one that’s worked very well,” said Thomas Hazlett, a Clemson University economics professor. What has never happened is the “radical principal of zero price” for access to infrastructure as edge providers want in opposing paid prioritization, said Economics Inc. Principal Hal Singer. That’s not necessarily true, said Christiaan Hogendorn, a Wesleyan University economics associate professor, citing the role unfettered access to U.S. highway and electricity systems played in the growth of businesses. And that, Wheeler said, “came only after regulations were imposed.”

Bose sent subscribers an email Wednesday saying SoundLink III speakers are now available with colors and logos for seven NFL football teams. NFL branding adds $50 to the cost of the Bluetooth SoundLink III, bringing it to $349. Supported teams are the Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets and Seattle Seahawks. Shipping is free at Bose.com.

Pioneer said its lineup of 2014 CarPlay-compatible in-dash multimedia receivers will have access to Apple’s CarPlay platform via a free firmware update. Consumers with the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5 can use the Siri “personal assistant” to make and receive calls, compose and respond to text messages, use Apple Maps for navigation, and listen to their music libraries and iTunes Radio, Pioneer said Thursday. Ted Cardenas, vice president-marketing for Pioneer’s car electronics division, said CarPlay improves the iPhone experience while driving by “by providing a safer way to access the iPhone features.” In another announcement, Pioneer said its gen-four AppRadio touchscreen receiver is shipping to Pioneer dealers including Best Buy, Car Toys and Crutchfield. The CarPlay-compatible AppRadio 4 SPH-DA120 ($600) lets consumers use cloud and device-sourced content from the iPhone 5 and later Apple smartphones, Android smartphones and MirrorLink-enabled smartphones, Pioneer said. AppRadio 4 adds “feature-enhanced” smartphone control, voice control for Siri Eyes Free and Google Voice Recognition, Bluetooth hands-free calling and audio streaming, and a new graphical user interface, Pioneer said. AppRadio 4’s design uses minimal physical buttons on the left side of the screen for quick access by drivers, Pioneer said. Most functions -- including the app interface, music control/playback, AM/FM radio and Bluetooth connection -- are operated through the 6.2-inch WVGA capacitive touch screen, the company said.

The FCC created a new inbox for comments on Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable and the associated transfers of systems to Charter Communications, the commission said in a public notice Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1vBdly2). The inbox address is ComcastTWCMerger@fcc.gov, the PN said. Documents submitted to the inbox become part of the official record of the proceeding -- docketed as 14-57 -- and will be posted in the commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System, the PN said. The commission will also host a “Comma Separated Values (CSV) file for bulk upload of comments,” the PN said. There was a delay recently in posting comments to the docket on a document confidentiality issue related to the deals.