With the outlook increasingly bleak for a minimum required bid to win the 700 MHz D-block license, Commissioner Michael Copps said Tuesday that, no matter what happens, the FCC will have to make certain that public safety has a national, interoperable broadband network. At our deadline, the only bid for the 10 MHz national license was the $472,000 bid made on day one, which is well short of the minimum $1.33 billion. No company has come forward to replace Frontline Wireless, which announced before the auction began that it would not make the down payment required to participate in the auction.

The FCC may release three universal service items for public comment as soon as today (Friday), indicating it may be ready to start moving on long-awaited Universal Service Fund reform. Commissioners already have voted on the three items, which will have the same comment dates so parties can file one set of comments covering all three if they wish, a source said.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission staff called for a 25 percent increase in the state universal service fee to meet the fund’s obligations this year. The staff said the current 2.7 percent phone bill surcharge should be increased to 3.4 percent on Oct. 1 to keep the fund solvent going forward. The proposed increase would add about 21 cents to the average residential phone bill, the PUC staff said. The state fund last year disbursed $72 million to telecom providers. The recommendation for an increase came after the staff conducted its annual review and forecast of universal service funding.

California should take extraordinary efforts to assure broadband service for all residents, a year-long California Broadband Task Force study concluded. State policies should encourage innovative educational, business and social uses for broadband, it said.

California should take extraordinary efforts to assure broadband service for all residents, a year-long California Broadband Task Force study concluded. State policies should encourage innovative educational, business and social uses for broadband, it said.

Capping subsidies only to selected wireless companies, such as AT&T Mobility and Alltel, won’t stop the Universal Service Fund from growing, AT&T said in an ex parte meeting Tuesday with FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. The reference was to USF caps imposed on companies after acquisitions, such as in the AT&T-Dobson merger and Alltel’s purchase by TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital. McDowell last month questioned the a need for a cap on rural wireless competitors, since caps were required in the acquisitions (CD Dec 21 p2). “Capping only AT&T Mobility and Alltel leaves 51 percent of wireless CETC [competitive eligible telecom carrier] funding uncapped,” AT&T said in a paper presented at the meeting.

Representatives of telecom companies of all sizes met Tuesday with FCC commissioners to push an interim cap on Universal Service Fund subsidies to competitive telecom companies. Representatives of Embarq, Verizon, Windstream, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and USTelecom told commissioners in separate meetings that the interim cap would be a first step toward stabilizing the fund while the commission devises a longer-term way to slow its growth. One representative said the companies making that case vary on how to reform the fund but agree that the cap is the way to start.

Deaf Internet users can make digital versions of audio conversations using a new feature in AOL Instant Messenger 6.8 beta, AOL said Tuesday. In contrast to typical IM chats, where a recipient only sees a sender’s message once completed, AOL is offering a “real-time” feature that sends each letter as it’s typed. The technology was developed with Gallaudet University, a federally-funded private institution for the hearing impaired, and Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Norman Williams, senior research engineer for Gallaudet’s Technology Access Program, created the underlying protocol and pitched it to AOL. He wanted to “combine the familiarity of messaging on a TTY” with a popular IM service, he said. The option is available for all AIM users with the latest version of AIM. AOL created a link between AIM and telecom relay services for deaf users in 2004.

Sequans is leading a European project to develop WiMAX2, it said Tuesday. The European Commission-funded WiMAGIC project aims to create a prototype air interface for the WiMAX sequel, Sequans said Tuesday. The project will make “key contributions” to the IEEE 802.16m task group, which is writing technical specifications for next-generation WiMAX systems, it said. Sequans is working with six technology firms and six universities from France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Belgium, Greece and Turkey, it said. WiMAX2 will be backwards compatible with current mobile WiMAX systems based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard, but will deliver “much higher performance,” Sequans said. WiMAGIC participants will address physical layer functions such as MIMO, high performance synchronization and channel estimation techniques for high vehicular mobility, and media access control layer functions such as adaptive radio resource management and cross-layer optimization, it said. The basic algorithms developed by the project will be validated using a system-level simulator and will then be prototyped, it said. “The WiMAGIC project will yield significant technological advancements in terms of network capacity, throughput, and mobility,” said Sequans chief scientist Hikmet Sari: “We expect WiMAX2 will be established as the leading 4G technology.” In the U.S., Sequans is working with Zyxel to build a WiMAX modem for Sprint Nextel’s Xohm service (CD Jan 9 p7).

Sequans is leading a European project to develop WiMAX2, it said Tuesday. The European Commission-funded WiMAGIC project aims to create a prototype air interface for the WiMAX sequel, Sequans said Tuesday. The project will make “key contributions” to the IEEE 802.16m task group, which is writing technical specifications for next-generation WiMAX systems, it said. Sequans is working with six technology firms and six universities from France, the U.K., Germany, Italy, Belgium, Greece and Turkey, it said. WiMAX2 will be backwards compatible with current mobile WiMAX systems based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard, but will deliver “much higher performance,” Sequans said. WiMAGIC participants will address physical layer functions such as MIMO, high performance synchronization and channel estimation techniques for high vehicular mobility, and media access control layer functions such as adaptive radio resource management and cross-layer optimization, it said. The basic algorithms developed by the project will be validated using a system-level simulator and will then be prototyped, it said. “The WiMAGIC project will yield significant technological advancements in terms of network capacity, throughput, and mobility,” said Sequans chief scientist Hikmet Sari: “We expect WiMAX2 will be established as the leading 4G technology.” In the U.S., Sequans is working with Zyxel to build a WiMAX modem for Sprint Nextel’s Xohm service (WID Jan 9 p3).