The FCC Public Safety Bureau seeks comment on a next-generation 911 location accuracy consensus plan submitted by the four largest wireless carriers, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials and the National Emergency Number Association. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and the public safety entities filed the plan Tuesday (see 1411190064). Initial comments are due Dec. 10, and replies are due Dec. 17, the bureau said Thursday in a public notice.

Integrated Device Technology announced a new family of magnetic induction wireless power transmitters for next-generation wireless charging products to be used in wearables, furniture and smartphones. The P9235 and P9236 transmitters are compliant with the latest Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) Qi standard, and the P9234 is a Power Matters Alliance (PMA)-compliant device, it said Thursday. IDT is also introducing a proprietary-mode device that operates at up to 1 MHz of resonance frequency, allowing for a smaller coil, IDT said. The P9230A dual-mode transmitter supports WPC and PMA standards, it said. IDT customers are designing wireless power transmitters into a variety of applications, including mobile phone charging pad stations and wearable applications, said Arman Naghavi, general manager-analog and power division. The new lineup offers customers “greater programmability, ease of use and reduced overall development cost for faster product introduction,” he said. Although this round of transmitters doesn’t support Rezence, the standard from the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), an IDT spokesman told us the company is working with a limited group of qualified customers on magnetic resonance charging. IDT said in September it's working with Intel on developing wireless charging solutions based on magnetic resonance that are expected to be in the market next year. Capabilities touted by the A4WP charging technology include simultaneous charging of lower and higher power devices and the integration of charging devices into tabletops, the companies said. Meanwhile, 17.5 million cars with wireless chargers are expected to sell in 2020, IHS said Thursday. The global market for in-car wireless charging is projected to top $600 million in 2020, it said.

Starbucks launched Duracell Powermat wireless charging Wednesday in about 200 San Francisco-area stores, the coffee retailer said in an announcement. It marks the first step in the company’s "strategic plan" to offer Powermat throughout the U.S., and "to explore rollouts in Europe and Asia within the year," it said. Bay Area stores have designated areas on tables and counters where customers can place their compatible devices and charge them wirelessly, it said. Customers also can buy Powermat "rings" for $9.99 that instantly upgrade any phone to wireless charging compatibility, it said. Alternatively, the rings can be borrowed and returned on a per-visit basis, it said.

T-Mobile is offering existing customers a free Alcatel Onetouch Pop 7 tablet beginning Friday, through Dec. 1, when they sign up for a qualifying data plan in what it called an early Black Friday deal. The tablet's regular price is $7 per month over 24 months for a total of $168, it said. The offer, which doesn’t include sales tax, extends to non-customers Saturday while supplies last, the carrier said. T-Mobile’s MetroPCS brand launched a limited-time buy-one-get-one-free deal Wednesday on a range of 4G LTE phones with the caveat that a new line is activated on the free phone, it said. The offer runs through Monday.

Consumer intentions to buy smart watches soared in recent months, said a consumer research report released Wednesday by Futuresource Consulting. The firm canvassed a total of 8,000 consumers in France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. in two "waves" -- once in May and again in October -- and found interest in buying a smart watch jumped 125 percent between the two waves, it said. Consumer intentions to buy fitness trackers jumped 50 percent, it said. However, interest in smart glasses and heart rate monitors has "stalled," it said. "The overall wearables market has seen significant growth so far in 2014, with Futuresource forecasting full year sales of more than 51 million units worldwide," the company said. "However, it's only just warming up, and wearables sales are expected to accelerate from 2015 as new brands enter the space." The "most marked change" since May is the strong growth in the number of iPhone owners intending to purchase wearable devices, Futuresource said. In terms of purchase intentions on wearables, "iPhone owners now lead the way in all categories," particularly in smart watches, which 17 percent of iPhone owners expressed an intent to purchase in the next 12 months, up from only 6 percent in May 2014, it said. "This increase coincides with September's announcement of the Apple Watch. As Apple customers are typically some of the earliest adopters of new technologies, their increasing engagement with the smart watch category is a strong positive for the Apple Watch release in early 2015."

The successful outcome of the ongoing AWS-3 spectrum auction will help mitigate the effects of the spectrum crunch caused by exploding consumer demand for mobile broadband, the Telecommunications Industry Association said Tuesday in a news release. It also will provide significant funding toward the construction of FirstNet, it said. The 1755-1780 MHz and 2155-2180 MHz bands are globally harmonized, “allowing manufacturers to build wireless devices at lower cost while also potentially permitting international roaming more easily,” it said. The bids have exceeded the reserve price (see 1411180061).

Mobile roaming rules work as intended, so it's unnecessary to change them as T-Mobile seeks, Verizon executives told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. "Carriers are negotiating and entering into data roaming agreements," said Verizon in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 05-265. "In the three years since the FCC’s order, Verizon Wireless and its 59 roaming partners, including dozens of rural carriers, have executed 48 new or revised roaming agreements." There is no evidence that carriers won't keep negotiating data roaming deals with "commercially reasonable rates, terms and conditions," said Verizon. T-Mobile said last month it needed quick commission action on its request (see 1410290007). Verizon noted that the smaller carrier's request would change the rules to determine the commercial reasonableness of carrier fees by referring to what a company charges for retail roaming.

Staff of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute and CTC Technology and Energy, which did a study for OTI saying imposing net neutrality rules on wireless networks won't technically hurt carriers (see 1411130052), lobbied an aide to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai on this month's report. "The study demonstrates the fallacy of wireless industry claims that adherence to strong network neutrality protections for consumers and for edge providers is not technically feasible for mobile carrier networks," said an OTI ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-28. "Contrary to the claims of mobile carriers, the study demonstrates that LTE technology has the capability now to manage even situations of severe network congestion by treating like applications alike, without favoring carrier-sponsored or carrier-affiliated applications, content or services." An industry expert who has had concerns about Title II Communications Act reclassification of broadband service said CTC's report had technical problems. "It assumes essentially static conditions on the wireless network, and is completely devoid of a mechanism to provide feedback to the application as things change," wrote systems consultant Richard Bennett on Hightechforum.org's blog Tuesday. "Most mobile networks are moderately congested for hours at a time."

The ZigBee Alliance has unified its various wireless standards into a single spec that will be called ZigBee 3.0, the alliance said in an announcement Tuesday. ZigBee 3.0 "will provide interoperability among the widest range of smart devices," it said. It enables interoperability among devices for home automation, connected lighting, energy efficiency and other markets, "so more diverse, fully interoperable solutions can be delivered by product developers and service providers," it said. All device types, commands and functions defined in current ZigBee PRO-based standards are available to developers in the new standard, it said. ZigBee 3.0 is undergoing testing. A draft standard is available to alliance members and is expected to be ratified in Q4 2015, it said. ZigBee 3.0 demonstrations are planned for CES, it said.

The FCC should clarify that “called party” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act refers to the “intended recipient” of a call or text to a cellphone, Twitter said in a comment, supporting the Consumer Bankers Association petition for a declaratory ruling seeking clarification of the term. Twitter tries to identify reassigned cell numbers and remove them from its messaging platform, said the company’s filing in docket 02-278. The issue involves a spate of TCPA lawsuits about whether companies are liable for autodialing people who have not consented to getting the calls, but use a reassigned phone, in which the previous owner had given consent, said a CBA comment, also posted Tuesday. Twitter gathers information about reassigned numbers from wireless carriers and updates its records, but carriers provide it at varying and sporadic levels, Twitter said. It’s “not possible for businesses to learn comprehensively and in real-time whether a given cell phone number has been reassigned to another person,” Twitter said.