Sprint Nextel remains committed to its unlimited data plans, despite Verizon Wireless’s and AT&T’s claims that they benefitted from the rollout of their plans during Q3, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said Thursday during an investor conference call. “There are some temporary advantages that Verizon has due to its network, but we do not see making any changes to our rate plans,” Hesse said. “We're seeing absolutely nothing in any of our channels that indicates that the new rate plans that Verizon has is either helping or hurting -- to their credit, I don’t think it’s hurting them. Because of their LTE footprint advantage right now, they're … blasting right through, what we believe, are complex rate plans.” However, the carrier did announce new tiered-data plans for tablets Wednesday. The plans start at $14.99 for 300 MB and go up to $79.99 for 12GB, Sprint Nextel said. The carrier has long marketed its “Simply Unlimited” data plans, which began to see competition during the quarter from competing unlimited data plans from T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS (CD Aug 23 p5).

NAB has major concerns about proposals in an FCC notice of proposed rulemaking on an incentive auction of broadcast spectrum, which include a “forced” relocation of broadcast TV channels when stations remain on the air, NAB Executive Vice President Jane Mago said late Wednesday at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference. Mago also questioned how many broadcasters will ultimately opt to take part in the auction.

Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., reaffirmed during a speech Thursday at a Media Institute event his support to stem the tide of online piracy of intellectual property. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman told us that unfavorable results for his party in the presidential and congressional elections could imperil his efforts to update laws like the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Leahy’s speech touted the Internet as a medium that has both enhanced and transformed the First Amendment right to free speech, but said the Web must be balanced with another constitutional right, the protection of intellectual property.

The California Public Utilities Commission decided to hold off on establishing a new definition of residential basic phone service. “We're not voting on that today,” President Michael Peevey said Thursday at the CPUC meeting. CPUC members have submitted three proposals on a new basic service definition in 2012 -- one from Peevey in February, an alternative proposal from Commissioner Michel Florio in July, and a revised alternate version Oct. 9 (CD Oct 12 p6). The latest proposal was included on the Thursday meeting agenda. Industry and consumer advocates weighed in with mid-October reply comments in the week prior to the meeting with additional concerns that the Florio proposal, even with revisions, may falter in delivering the CPUC’s basic service goals.

The FTC’s proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule would make navigating the law more difficult, panelists said at a Thursday event hosted by TechFreedom and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). By including vague and broad language, panelists said, the proposed changes would make it difficult for operators of websites and apps to determine if they need to be COPPA-compliant, and, as a result, could decrease innovation in content for young Internet users.

An FCC proposal to reform its regulatory fee process highlighted a rift between the satellite industry and telecom providers, which disagree on how to count work done by full-time employees (FTE) in different bureaus. The FCC proposed in July (http://xrl.us/bnvuqh) to reform its processes for assessing the fees that cover its operational costs, changing how it allocates “direct” and “indirect” FTEs to calculate fees. Based on aggregated bureau-level FTE data, the commission would allocate all FTEs in the Wireless, Media, Wireline and International bureaus as “direct” and all FTEs in the support bureaus as “indirect.” In replies, the satellite industry criticized telco and carrier proposals to treat all work done by FTEs as the same, fearing this could lead to disproportionately high fees for earth and space station applications.

One key to expanding municipal broadband is promoting “a progressive agenda on a state-by-state basis” and telling “a national progressive narrative,” said Progressive States Network Broadband Policy Advisor Fabiola Carrion. “You must consider it a utility,” she said of community broadband, comparing it to water and electricity. She spoke Wednesday afternoon as part of a Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) panel on the role of community broadband in growing local economies. MAG-Net is an initiative of the Center for Media Justice with more than 100 members. There are 54 U.S. cities that own citywide fiber networks and 79 that own citywide cable networks, the organization said in its panel announcement.

Google spent $4.18 million in lobbying in Q3, up 6.6 percent from the previous quarter, according to recent filings with the Senate. The company has spent $13.1 million on lobbying in the first nine months of 2012 as it faces an antitrust investigation for allegedly favoring its products and platforms in search rankings. It also focused lobbying efforts on legislation related to privacy, online ads, intellectual property, cybersecurity, mobile geolocation, Internet freedom, immigration and autonomous vehicle technologies.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must “invalidate this FCC regulatory ‘gun to the head'” that is the FCC’s November 2011 USF order, a coalition of regulators, telcos and consumer advocates said. NARUC led the charge on In re: FCC 11-161 two briefs representing multiple parties, which attacked the FCC on several fronts Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnvuhd). The ongoing court case challenges the year-old order. The attack was one among many in the 10th Circuit this week. Industry forces weighed in with briefs assailing the FCC for its stances on VoIP and other elements of the order that let the fund pay for broadband and not only phone-service deployment.

Public safety officials said Wednesday they hope an upcoming test being done by the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) will give them factual, documented evidence of the current limits of technology they use to determine the location of people using mobile phones dial 911. The testbed, set to be used next month at locations around San Francisco, will examine how those technologies perform in a variety of locations in urban, suburban and rural areas, said Patrick Donovan, an attorney adviser for the policy division of the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. CSRIC will draft a report based on those tests in March, including recommendations to help improve the accuracy of indoor location tracking. CSRIC began developing the test bed after it realized data on indoor location accuracy was limited, Donovan said.