Jimm Phillips

If portions of the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that come out of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) next month prove objectionable to the U.S., there’s no chance the Senate would vote to ratify the revisions to the treaty-level document and make it a part of U.S. law, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said Wednesday. But McDowell and others at an American Enterprise Institute event said they believed a worst-case scenario coming out of WCIT could result in a “balkanization” that would disrupt the growth of the Internet. The U.S. delegation to WCIT sees controversial proposals that would expand the ITRs into the realm of Internet governance -- including cybersecurity and Internet traffic compensation -- as “non-negotiable” items, said U.S. delegation head Terry Kramer. That makes it all the more critical that the delegation focus on outreach efforts to wavering delegations in the weeks before WCIT convenes in Dubai Dec. 3, he said.

FCC process reform will likely return as a major tech issue in the next Congress, industry experts said Tuesday at a TechFreedom event, but they were unsure of how effective a legislative solution would be. Continued Republican control in the House means FCC reform measures like those introduced in the last session -- including by Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Steve Scalise, R-La. -- will remain on the agenda when the new House convenes (CD Nov 13 p1).

T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS believe some losses in Q3 resulted from their anticipated merger. T-Mobile said Thursday that the deal drove it into a net loss in Q3, while MetroPCS said it was losing prepaid customers to T-Mobile. No. 4 national carrier T-Mobile saw a net gain of 365,000 prepaid customers during Q3, which came at the expense of MetroPCS, MetroPCS Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said Thursday during an investor conference. T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom inked a deal in October to join MetroPCS with T-Mobile. The deal would give MetroPCS shareholders $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the combined carrier (CD Oct 4 p1). T-Mobile blamed its overall net loss of $7.8 billion for the quarter on the merger, saying Thursday in an earnings report that the figure included an $8.1 billion “goodwill” non-cash impairment charge related to the deal (http://xrl.us/bnyoqp). The carrier posted a $332 million net profit a year ago.

AT&T’s $14 billion “Project Velocity IP” plan to expand its wireline and wireless broadband network will broaden the company’s reach into areas that are “underserved and unserved” by this technology thus far, industry analysts and brokers told us. AT&T told investors at a company conference Wednesday that it plans to spend $8 billion to expand its 4G LTE wireless broadband coverage and $6 billion to increase offerings of its U-verse and U-verse IPDSLAM services.

A federal three-judge panel should vacate an FCC ruling that barred Northern Valley Communications from requiring long-distance phone companies to pay an access charge on calls to an end-user that receives Northern Valley’s services for free, the competitive LEC argued Monday before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The telco had been levying an access charge on telcos providing long-distance service for calls delivered to its customers. Northern Valley was one of many telcos the FCC said had engaged in “traffic pumping schemes,” in this case because it serves conference-calling companies that naturally generate high incoming call volumes. Although the FCC originally allowed Northern Valley to levy the access charge tariff, the agency said in a brief it eventually rescinded its approval in 2011 over changes to the tariff’s wording (http://xrl.us/bnx5qr).

The upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) will give the U.S. an opportunity to deepen its ties with Europe, officials and experts said Friday during an event at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies. The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) has largely been in agreement with the U.S. on important and controversial issues set to be discussed at WCIT, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation. For example, in October CEPT rejected the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association’s (ETNO) controversial “sender-party-pays” proposal for Internet traffic compensation that could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission (CD Oct 24 p5).

A new set of proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) outlines the U.S.’s vision for addressing issues that originally prompted other nations and trade groups to propose what the U.S. viewed as objectionable revisions. The proposals, which were to be submitted Wednesday to the ITU in advance of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), update the original set of proposals the U.S. submitted in early August (CD Aug 6 p2). Delegates will convene at WCIT in Dubai starting Dec. 3 to consider the proposed revisions. Proposed revisions to the ITRs must be submitted to the ITU by Friday.

The proposed T-Mobile USA/MetroPCS merger will create a combined carrier with more spectrum and a wider network, MetroPCS CEO Roger Linquist said Tuesday during an investor call. If the deal clears and closes as expected next year, MetroPCS shareholders will get $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the merged carrier (CD Oct 4 p1). “We have spent the last couple of years looking to add spectrum to our current holdings,” Linquist said. “Combining our spectrum with T-Mobile’s spectrum portfolio is a significant strategic benefit in this transaction. In our current coverage areas, we have an average of 22 MHz of spectrum. Following this transaction, MetroPCS’s major metropolitan areas will have an average of 83 MHz of spectrum, almost a four-fold improvement."

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).

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.