AT&T is looking for small spectrum acquisitions, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said during an earnings call Tuesday. Partly helped by growth in wireless and U-verse, the company’s Q1 income rose to $3.58 billion from $3.4 billion a year earlier.
Smaller public interest groups face new challenges in legal representation before the FCC and in court on communications issues because of the closing of the largest law practice devoted to representing nonprofits (CD April 4 p2). Industry lawyers and nonprofit officials said the immediate future of Washington representation for public interest groups without in-house lawyers isn’t bright on issues that will arise where counsel isn’t in place. Our review of the work done by other lawyers for public interest groups found nothing is making up for all of the loss of legal advice provided by the Media Access Project, closing its office May 1.
LOS ANGELES -- The soaring popularity of gaming on smartphones and tablets, as well as the rapidly increasing processing power of those devices, were cited by game company executives attending the L.A. Games Conference on Tuesday as the current key industry trends. Smartphones and tablets are “really the future” of the industry, said Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft.
The European Parliament should reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, said the author of the response to the controversial treaty from the Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee Tuesday. ACTA takes a one-size-fits-all approach to counterfeiting, copyright and trademark infringements that fails to meet the unique needs of each sector; doesn’t define key terms; and creates a legal fog for companies, technology users, and Internet platform and service providers, Amelia Andersdotter of Sweden and the Greens/European Free Alliance said in a draft report. Separately, the pact’s Internet provisions came under fire Tuesday from the European privacy watchdog, which said they don’t adequately balance intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement with privacy and data protection.
Interoperability has to be the No. 1 priority as the U.S. starts a national wireless broadband network for first responders, or there’s little chance interoperability will be achieved at all, FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett told the Technical Advisory Board for First Responder Interoperability. The board was created by the recently enacted Spectrum Act to develop interoperability rules for the new FirstNet. On Monday, the board held a morning-long workshop as it heard from panels representing various interests, from public safety to industry.
The FCC should deny all requests from other jurisdictions for waivers so they can launch early public safety networks in the 700 MHz band, while converting waiver authorizations already approved into special temporary authorizations (STAs), the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials said in comments filed at the FCC. The 21 current waiver recipients asked for two-year STAs so that their systems could serve as a kind of “testbed” for a national network. The FCC Public Safety Bureau is asking a battery of questions about 700 MHz transition issues in light of the recently enacted Spectrum Act (CD April 9 p9). For 20 of the 21, the waivers are set to expire Sept. 1.
T-Mobile has recommitted itself to its “challenger strategy,” a few months after AT&T’s attempt to purchase the carrier failed, said Sharis Pozen, the Justice Department’s departing acting assistant U.S. attorney general for antitrust. The agency’s antitrust division in general “isn’t afraid to litigate, and when it does, it wins,” she said at a Brookings Institution briefing Monday.
Google and Facebook more than doubled their lobbying spending in the first quarter of 2012 compared to a year earlier quarter, according to federal reports filed Friday. AT&T nearly doubled its lobbying spending from the fourth quarter of 2011 when its bid to purchase T-Mobile collapsed. Meanwhile, USTelecom, NCTA and CEA trimmed their Q1 lobbying spending by more than 20 percent compared to the previous quarter.
CenturyLink failed to meet the burden of proof in its petition for forbearance from certain dominant carrier regulations and the Computer Inquiry tariffing requirement, said comments filed Friday by tw telecom, Sprint Nextel, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel. Corning supported the forbearance, arguing it has “witnessed first-hand the impact of the Commission’s orders granting to other carriers the identical regulatory relief requested by CenturyLink."
Sixteen TV-station owners and the NAB proposed uploading most of what’s now in studios’ paper political-ad files to fcc.gov, and updating it at least every other day during the lowest unit charge period before elections. An exception is for the LUC cost for each commercial, which broadcasters want to keep confidential to all but those who visit stations to see files. FCC members are continuing to consider if listing everything but online LUC information would be sufficient for disclosure purposes, industry and public-interest officials noted.