SEATTLE -- The fragmentation of the mobile device industry, patent litigation and even the traditional U.S. subsidy model are challenges for the mobile industry, executives told the GeekWire Summit Wednesday. They agreed Microsoft’s Windows 8 and its new phone software were much better efforts than prior versions but said the software giant’s marketing and reliance on Nokia wouldn’t do it any favors in competition with Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and a likely phone from Amazon.

The FCC granted three unopposed petitions for waiver of its study area boundary freeze, said a public notice released Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmwmcp). The Wireline Bureau found that each of the three batches of petitioners -- Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative; Pine Drive Telephone Co. and Qwest; and Upper Peninsula Telephone Co. and Michigan Central Broadband Co. -- satisfied the three-pronged waiver standard in effect when the petitions were filed. To satisfy the test, petitioners demonstrated that the change in study area boundaries would not adversely affect the Universal Service Fund; the relevant state commission did not object to proposed transfers of various local exchanges; and the transfers were in the public interest.

A Georgia bill would rapidly eliminate the state’s $16 million Universal Access Fund (UAF), which funds rural phone companies and is financed by larger telecom companies like AT&T. HB-855 (http://xrl.us/bmwmgc) is being considered in the House. It would ignore the 20-year phase out of the UAF passed in 2010 and instead eliminate it by 2015. If the bill were passed, the UAF would be reduced to $6 million in 2013, to $3 million in 2014 and be eliminated in 2015.

Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein defended the pace of broadband stimulus projects and the failure of Open Range Communications, at a budget hearing Thursday of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. The White House’s FY 2013 budget proposal provides “adequate” broadband funding for rural areas, Adelstein said. RUS is studying the impact of the recent Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation overhaul, he said.

Retransmission consent fees aren’t being used by TV stations to fund local content, according to research by academics, including some funded by foes of the current retrans system, several professors said Monday. The 1992 Cable Act authorizing retrans payments to broadcasters by multichannel video programming distributors was meant to preserve and promote local programming, said Prof. Philip Napoli of Fordham University. There’s a “body of literature” showing that’s not now happening, he said at an event on Capitol Hill organized by the American TV Coalition, a group of MVPDs and nonprofits seeking to change FCC retrans rules. The NAB responded that TV stations are producing more and not less news.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell still hopes to see commission action early this year on Universal Service Fund contribution reform. The FCC approved an order in October addressing the distribution side of USF and an order on the USF’s Lifeline program in January. Followup work on both is expected to consume much of the Wireline Bureau’s attention this year.

U.S. Internet players will abide by the spirit of net neutrality for the foreseeable future, regardless of the outcome of appeals against the FCC’s 2010 rules, the agency’s recently departed chief of staff predicted. Net neutrality has become the “norm” in the U.S., Eddie Lazarus told an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation event Thursday. The type of heated rhetoric that occurred over net neutrality and this year over legislation that’s now being debated on intellectual property rights could be the harbinger of future debates, Lazarus said. He voiced hope there will be more wireless competitors, and that LightSquared’s spectrum will eventually be put to more use, and has no regrets about how the commission handled the company’s waiver.

U.S. Internet players will abide by the spirit of net neutrality for the foreseeable future, regardless of the outcome of appeals against the FCC’s 2010 rules, the agency’s recently departed chief of staff predicted. Net neutrality has become the “norm” in the U.S., Eddie Lazarus told an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation event Thursday. The type of heated rhetoric that occurred over net neutrality and this year over legislation that’s now being debated on intellectual property rights could be the harbinger of future debates, Lazarus said. He voiced hope there will be more wireless competitors, and that LightSquared’s spectrum will eventually be put to more use, and has no regrets about how the commission handled the company’s waiver.

The Rural Cellular Association and the Rural Telecommunications Group both warned the FCC the Mobility Fund created by the Connect America Fund order is too small to meet the needs of rural America. Replies were due last week on the dedicated wireless fund created by the FCC’s October Universal Service Fund reform order (CD Oct 28 p1).

CenturyLink Q4 profit declined 16 percent to $867 million from a year ago, the company said. With the implementation of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation order, the company’s access revenue will decline over the next few years, Chief Financial Officer Stewart Ewing said during a conference call. But the company’s hopeful of some broadband-related USF revenues, he said. Broadband subscriptions are a bright spot: Subscribers rose 4.5 percent to 5.55 million. The company is on track with its integration of Qwest and Savvis this year, Ewing said. Helped by growth in wireless backhaul and wholesale Ethernet, the wholesale unit reported $564 million in strategic revenue, up 5.4 percent. The company expects operating revenue between $18.2 billion and $18.4 billion for 2012.