The departments of Defense and Transportation “were not sufficiently included” in the FCC’s development of LightSquared’s initial work plan and milestones, the agencies said in a letter to the FCC. Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari and Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn piled on criticism of the commission’s handling of LightSquared’s plans for wireless service, in a March 25 letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. It hasn’t been made public yet. LightSquared and the U.S. GPS Industry Council are leading a working group review of GPS interference issues, as required by the FCC. DOD and DOT said they had several concerns with the International Bureau’s response to questions on the set-up of the working group (CD Feb 17 p8).

DUBAI -- Given the high priority of spectrum issues, it’s extraordinary that spectrum management is still such a relatively obscure and isolated field, ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said at Tuesday’s PolicyTracker Middle East spectrum conference. Those who become managers are often engineers with little knowledge of the legal, economic and negotiation skills needed for managing spectrum, he said. As wireless services come to dominate the spectrum landscape, there’s growing public recognition of spectrum management, he said. The ITU is looking at ways to help governments, particularly in developing countries, deal with spectrum issues in the real world, he said. The ITU, and events like the one in Dubai, are “shaping the future itself,” but that won’t happen without the tireless efforts of spectrum managers, said Toure.

Sprint Nextel announced its formal opposition to AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile in a statement released Monday. The development was not a surprise given negative comments on the deal by Sprint CEO Dan Hesse at the CTIA conference in Orlando, Fla., last week (CD March 23 p1). But Hesse stopped short then of asking federal regulators to block the deal. On Monday, his lobbyists did.

A new working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) wants to develop a global standard to determine what white spaces spectrum is available to non-licensed users. For providers and vendors, a global standard would make it possible to use spectrum that has been freed in many countries, they said.

The U.S. shouldn’t recommend that the C-band be examined for other possible uses by an upcoming international conference on spectrum, said broadcasters, cable programmers and operators, and satellite companies. They said in filings that the FCC shouldn’t adopt an advisory committee’s recommendation for the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) that a swath of spectrum including that satellite band be looked at for mobile broadband wireless access (BWA). Instead, many of the filings said another proposal, which excludes the spectrum between 3700 MHz and 4200 MHz that’s used for the C-band, should be adopted.

Many cable companies backed a “telecom rate” for pole attachments last week, as the FCC got set to vote April 7 on an order that could lower rates some attachers pay to utilities (CD March 9 p5). Bright House Networks, Charter Communications and Comcast were among those that held lobbying meetings with agency officials, filings in docket 07-245 show. Comcast said it backs the rate formula in a rulemaking notice, and its conclusion that the telecom rate is consistent with Section 224 of the Communications Act. The company said it’s concerned about proposals to change unauthorized attachment and safety violation standards. Currently, telco pole attachment rates are often higher than cable rates.

Feature Group IP West lacks standing to challenge the FCC’s requirement that the VoIP carrier be subject to intercarrier compensation rules on access charges, the FCC said in a reply brief to Feature’s appeal. In 2009, the FCC denied Feature Group’s petition for forbearance. Feature has now appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, claiming that the commission’s denial was unreasonable.

AT&T executives may have to accept concessions on two key issues of continuing interest to the FCC to win approval for its proposed buy of T-Mobile: Data roaming and wireless net neutrality. AT&T last week started a series of meetings at the agency to discuss likely concessions, and it placed both issues on the table. AT&T is also expected to have to sell off a big chunk of T-Mobile’s subscriber rolls (CD March 25 p1). Data roaming rules, poised for a vote at the April 7 FCC meeting, are already raising concerns with some House Republicans.

Dawson “Tack” Nail, 82, who spent more than 50 years as one of the most prominent reporters covering broadcasting and telecommunications in Washington, died Friday from complications from injuries he sustained in a fall at his Virginia home. He was the longtime executive editor of Warren Communications News’s Television Digest and Communications Daily.

Broadcasters are getting some breathing room on spectrum reallocation, because of AT&T’s agreement last week to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion, said station-group executives and their lawyers. They said the surprise takeover by AT&T has already meant that attention on Capitol Hill has been shifted to T-Mobile, and away somewhat from efforts to give the FCC authority to auction TV spectrum and for the government to split the proceeds with stations. The shift in attention means broadcasters will get time to keep honing their message on spectrum, which they don’t want taken away from them involuntarily, and to potentially reach a compromise with the regulator for legislation that could be more favorable for the industry, the officials said.