Jimm Phillips

The U.S. will need to make global engagement a priority as it makes its case for its vision on Internet and telecom governance issues following last month’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S.’s WCIT delegation, during a news conference Thursday. Kramer has been in Washington, holding a series of final briefings with government officials and members of the telecom industry on the outcome of WCIT and the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) produced at the conference in Dubai, which ended Dec. 14. Those briefings are Kramer’s last acts as head of the delegation; he said his appointment to the position ends Friday.

C Spire Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless say they haven’t experienced any impacts from a winter storm that has brought freezing rain, sleet and flooding to large portions of the southeastern U.S. Impacts from the storm had prompted Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) to declare a state of emergency in 45 counties in the northeastern part of that state; the storm has affected portions of other states along the East Coast and Gulf Coast, the National Weather Service said. Verizon Wireless’s network was “performing well” as of Wednesday afternoon, a spokeswoman told us, saying the carrier will “continue to monitor our network 24/7 to ensure it is performing for our customers.” Sprint’s network isn’t “experiencing any impacts” from the storm, which The Weather Channel refers to as Winter Storm Helen, a Sprint spokeswoman said. However, the carrier is “diligently monitoring the storm progress and [has] plans in place to deploy resources if the storm poses a significant threat,” the spokeswoman said. C Spire “has not experienced any service interruptions or impacts” to its network from the storm, the carrier said late Tuesday in a news release. The carrier was “taking precautionary steps to bolster its network and mobilize employees to protect against potential damage” Tuesday amid concerns about deteriorating conditions, said Eric Hollingsworth, C Spire vice president-network operations (http://xrl.us/boa4g7).

The intellectual property (IP) market “cannot work effectively unless innovators know what a patented invention covers and know some reasonable amount about who owns it,” U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos said during a roundtable at the USPTO with industry experts. “We need as much transparency as possible to get IP rights into the hands of those who are best able to make the investments and create the jobs and drive growth and generate economic activity that, after all, is the purpose of having a patent system in the first place.” Kappos and other USPTO officials held the roundtable to collect public input on how the the office should change its rules on collecting and publishing real-party-in-interest (RPI) patent ownership information.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T say they had a record-breaking Q4, with both releasing some information on their performance ahead of official quarterly earnings announcements set for later this month. Verizon Communications, which owns a majority of Verizon Wireless, will release its full Q4 earnings Jan. 22; AT&T plans to release its full results Jan. 24.

Progress toward combining T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS remains very positive, executives from both carriers said Tuesday during a presentation at a Citigroup investor conference. T-Mobile CEO John Legere said he believes the entire process is progressing ahead of schedule and that he’s “anxious that we will become the new company relatively soon."

The U.S. decision not to sign the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) means controversial changes to the treaty-level document will have no effect on U.S. law or the telecom sector’s work within the U.S. -- but the treaty’s effect on U.S. businesses’ dealings internationally remain far less clear, industry experts and insiders say. The U.S. was among 55 ITU member nations to not immediately sign onto the revised ITRs last month after they were adopted at the conclusion of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. Another 89 nations signed the treaty (CD Dec 17 p1). Non-signatory nations will continue to follow the original ITRs enacted in 1988, Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to WCIT, told us. The original ITRs are “antiquated, but they're very high level, they don’t get into any Internet issues,” he said. The revised ITRs will take effect Jan. 1, 2015.

The results of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) show the West must find ways to enable developing-world participation in the current multistakeholder Internet governance model, said Philip Verveer, U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy and a member of the U.S. WCIT delegation, at an Internet Governance Forum event Friday.

The revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that emerged last week from the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) may have contained “poison pills” on the Internet and other controversial issues, but that does not mean the U.S. should stop advocating for its vision on such issues, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation, Wednesday during an Internet Society event. “There’s a bigger discussion here about the benefits of the Internet that will carry the day I believe fundamentally,” he said in his first public comments since WCIT concluded Friday. “It is a long game that has to be played. We need to see the commercial benefits, the human benefits, et cetera."

Sprint Nextel’s successful bid to buy full ownership of Clearwire is unlikely to face a tough time winning regulatory approval, industry legal experts told us. Sprint, which already owned 51 percent of Clearwire, said Monday that Clearwire’s other shareholders had unanimously agreed to sell Sprint their 49 percent stake for $2.2 billion. That deal represented an improvement from the $2.1 billion Sprint offered last week (CD Dec 14 p15).

Most of the eligible delegations at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) signed on to the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) Friday in Dubai during a ceremony to close out the conference, but a significant number of nations outright refused to endorse the controversial treaty or were still consulting with their national governments. Of the 144 nations with signing rights in the ITU, 89 signed onto the ITRs Friday. An additional 55 “may sign later,” the ITU said, but that figure includes the U.S., Australia, Canada, the U.K. and others that have outright committed to not sign the document (http://xrl.us/bn6iov). The figure also includes the nations consulting with their governments, including the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy and Poland. The EU condemned the attachment of a non-binding Internet governance resolution to the ITRs (see separate item in this issue). That resolution was one of several provisions included in the revised ITRs that prompted the U.S. decision not to sign (CD Dec 14 p1).