The International Trade Commission is ending an investigation into patent infringement by imported wireless electronic devices, with a finding of no violation, said the ITC in the Federal Register Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1ljM0gH). Technology Products Ltd. and Phoenix Digital Solutions had in 2012 requested the ITC ban allegedly infringing imports of tablets, mobile phones and similar devices from a litany of companies including Barnes & Noble, Garmin, HTC, Huawei, LG, Nintendo, Novatel, Samsung and ZTE. An administrative law judge in September found no violation of Section 337 of the Tariff Act because the products at issue didn’t actually infringe the patents. The ITC is now affirming the ALJ’s determination and ending the proceeding.

T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” strategy made 2013 “a great year for us,” CEO John Legere said Tuesday during a conference call with investors. T-Mobile added a net 1.6 million subscribers in Q4, including a net 869,000 branded postpaid subscribers and a net 112,000 branded prepaid subscribers. The No. 4 U.S. carrier added more than 4.4 million net subscribers during 2013. Legere said that growth is proof of the “tremendous market response” consumers have given to T-Mobile’s Uncarrier strategy, in which the carrier has used new policies -- including no longer using service contracts, improving its device upgrade plan and allowing free international data roaming -- to lure customers away from its larger competitors. T-Mobile said it expects to add another 2-3 million postpaid subscribers during 2014. T-Mobile ended Q4 with a $20 million net loss primarily due to costs associated with the Uncarrier strategy, though the carrier ended the year with a $35 million net profit, according to an SEC filing. Legere declined to comment about continued speculation about the viability of a potential Sprint/T-Mobile merger, but said the carrier continues to believe the U.S. wireless industry is “ripe for further consolidation."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler knows the TV incentive auction won’t be easy, but the FCC is determined to get the rules of the road right, he told the GSMA Mobile World Congress. “Let there be no mistake about the degree of difficulty of this undertaking,” Wheeler said, according to prepared remarks released Monday (http://fcc.us/1hlG1nS). “We are attempting something never done before. But as with our original spectrum auctions twenty years ago, the risks are well worth taking. The Incentive Auction presents a two-part challenge of making the right fact-based policy decisions in an open and transparent manner and building user-friendly back-end systems and ensuring that they are exhaustively tested and ready to work from the start. We know the world is watching, and we will get this right.” Spectrum remains a priority for the commission, Wheeler said. “We are committed to bringing more spectrum capacity to market and fast.”

Auctions work best and raise the most when restrictions aren’t placed on who can bid, said the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy in a white paper released Tuesday. “Even when all firms enjoy foreclosure value, and even in settings where some firms serve far more retail customers than other firms, unfettered auctions can maximize economic welfare,” the paper said (http://bit.ly/1cMbPB6). “When competitors perceive the same marginal value of spectrum, unfettered auctions can be relied upon to (i.e., they always) generate the welfare-maximizing allocation of inputs.” Spectrum auctions work because “in contrast to bureaucratic allocation methods, well-designed auctions typically ensure that the input is allocated to the users who value that input most highly,” the center said. The center is supported in part by AT&T and the Verizon Foundation. The two major carriers strongly oppose spectrum aggregation limits in the upcoming TV incentive and AWS-3 auctions.

Signs are that FirstNet could be stalled two years after the law approving the national first responder network was enacted, former Seattle Chief Technology Officer Bill Schrier warned in a blog post. Schrier, who is FirstNet’s designated point of contact in Washington State, said the network has made a only few dozen hires to date. “Two years into a $7 billion project and only 25 full-time staff have been hired!?” he asked (http://bit.ly/OzFEwv). The public reaction to FirstNet also seems to be changing, he said. “I've been speaking to groups of public officials and police chiefs and emergency managers and firefighters and other responders in Washington State about FirstNet since May, 2013,” Schrier said. “Lately, the mood of the audiences is starting to change. ‘Yeah, yeah, we've heard you say that before, Bill, but what’s happening now? Where’s the beef?’ I'm starting to feel a bit like a computer software salesman pushing vaporware. ‘Oh yes, that feature will be in our next release slated to come out in 2017.'” In a separate blog posted by Urgent Communications, FirstNet General Manager Bill D'Agostino said real progress is being made. “Our work so far has been focused on putting the foundational building blocks in place for getting this network up and running,” he said (http://bit.ly/MrWSK7). “We want to get the job done as expeditiously as possible, but we have one opportunity to get it right and we understand this tremendous responsibility.”

Consumers “will be wary” of the new biometric mobile payment feature in Samsung’s coming Galaxy S5 smartphone, predicted Eden Zoller, Ovum principal analyst-consumer. The feature will enable users of the S5 to use fingerprint authentication for mobile payments with PayPal merchants. But Ovum thinks consumers will “need some convincing due to security concerns,” said Zoller. Forty-nine percent of respondents in Ovum’s 2013 Consumer Insights Survey ranked lack of security as their main concern with mobile payments, she said. “Consumers already worried about the security of established m-payment mechanisms are likely to view a new technology and process with suspicion,” she predicted. But Samsung is a “hugely popular smartphone brand with global reach, while PayPal is a trusted payments service provider,” so the partnership on the S5 represents a “powerful combination,” she said. PayPal also stressed that fingerprint authentication is a secure feature based on a Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance-ready software implementation with all credentials stored remotely in the cloud, she said. PayPal was the first member of the FIDO Alliance to produce such a mobile payment solution. Other FIDO members include BlackBerry, Google, Lenovo and Microsoft. The PayPal fingerprint authentication feature will go live when the S5 ships in 26 markets in April, including the U.S. and U.K., PayPal said in a news release. The only information the device will share with PayPal is a “unique encrypted key that allows PayPal to verify the identity of the customer without having to store any biometric information” on PayPal’s servers, it said. Other S5 features include Download Booster, a Wi-Fi technology for boosting data speed by bonding Wi-Fi and LTE simultaneously, Samsung said in a news release. The version of the S5 offered by Sprint in the U.S. will support Pinsight Touch, a nationwide, open platform for near field communication-enabling mobile applications and services, the carrier said.

More affordable data plans drove a 46 percent jump in embedded cellular connections in tablets last year, but data consumption on tablets via embedded cellular connections lags smartphone data usage by half, said NPD’s retail tracking service. Consumers have been buying tablets with 3G and 4G connectivity “and just not activating them,” said Brad Akyuz, director-connected intelligence, but more attractive data plans have led to an uptick in connections. While there has been an increase in tablet connections, tablet users average 1 GB of data usage per month compared with 2 GB by smartphone users, NPD said. Tablets sold with data contracts grew from 7.1 million in 2012 to 10.4 million last year, despite an overall decline in sales of cellular-capable tablets from 16 percent of total tablet sales to 12 percent in 2013, NPD said. The top four carriers added roughly 1.5 million new tablet subscribers in Q4, with AT&T and Verizon accounting for nearly 90 percent of the connections, said NPD. It also reported a “healthy increase” in the number of connections through mobile and smartphone hotspots among consumers, with some 7.8 million consumers connecting tablets to the Internet via cellular hotspot, 6 million via smartphone hotspots and 1.8 million via an external mobile hotspot device.

Nearly one in three American broadband users watches video on a mobile phone at least once a month, with the average user watching 1.7 hours of video on a mobile phone weekly, a Parks Associates survey found. It estimated smartphone ownership in North America will top 300 million units by the end of 2016. U.S. tablet owners are 1.3 times more likely than smartphone owners to buy a product using a shopping app, the company said.

U.S. Cellular and partner carrier King Street Wireless expanded their 4G LTE network into new markets in Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin, Ericsson said Tuesday. The manufacturer said it worked on the 4G LTE network expansion, including providing base stations and network implementation services. The expansion helped U.S. Cellular “support the launch of Apple devices,” said U.S. Cellular Chief Technology Officer Michael Irizarry in an Ericsson news release. Cities covered by the latest network expansion include Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Madison, Wis., and Portland, Maine.

The Competitive Carriers Association said rules designed for the Canadian 700 MHz auction (CD Feb 24 p5) show that the U.S. can safely impose spectrum aggregation limits in the TV incentive auction. “The record-breaking results from the Canadian … auction are proof-positive that spectrum aggregation limits will encourage participation and will raise substantial revenues at auction,” said CCA President Steve Berry in a news release. “The similarities between the lead-up to Canada’s 700 MHz auction and the current arguments here in the U.S. over spectrum aggregation limits are remarkable, and I strongly encourage the FCC to look to the success of the Canadian auction and, like Industry Canada, adopt up-front spectrum aggregation limits.” CCA planned to file its arguments at the FCC Monday.