SAN FRANCISCO -- A Sprint executive laid into AT&T as seeking to dominate spectrum holdings and thereby the wireless market, rousing an otherwise staid three-round California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) debate about the T-Mobile deal (CD July 11 p5). Administrative Law Judge Jessica Hecht repeatedly scolded Sprint’s director of spectrum proceedings, Trey Hanbury, on behalf of executives from the deal parties that he appeared with late Friday.

The latest and one of the FCC few video news release fines on a 2006 complaint purporting to show widespread use of VNRs on broadcast TV again demonstrates stations must disclose who provides the material even if it is aired during news programs and no money changes hands. A News Corp. unit was fined $4,000 Friday by the Enforcement Bureau for not telling viewers of KMSP Minneapolis that the station didn’t get on its own 12 different shots of General Motors convertibles used in a segment on that type of car that didn’t mention autos from any other carmaker. The bureau disagreed with Fox TV Stations that it’s entitled to use such material without identification because KMSP wasn’t paid for running the VNR and because the outlet paid another unit of News Corp. to use the material through participation in a news service.

XO Communications will file comments opposing Level 3’s proposed $3 billion acquisition of Global Crossing, XO Vice President Heather Gold told us Friday. “Everybody’s caught up in the AT&T/T-Mobile merger,” Gold said. “The way we see the Level 3-Global Crossing merger, in a very, very short period of time this will have a much bigger impact.” If the FCC and Justice Department approve Level 3’s acquisition, it will create a company with 55 percent of the Tier 1 Internet backbone market, she said. That'll be three times the size of the next largest Tier 1 company, NTT Communications, Gold said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- California regulators could act substantively on the T-Mobile sale, members of the Public Utilities Commission told us at a workshop where representatives of would-be buyer AT&T and lead challenger Sprint faced off directly over the deal for the first time in a government forum. State law requires the commission to decide whether action can be taken to reduce any harms to the public interest, communities served or employees from a deal such as this, and it allows the body to approve or disapprove the transaction, said Catherine Sandoval, the lead commissioner on a PUC inquiry into the deal on Friday.

New York regulators urged the FCC to adopt and enforce geographic redundancy requirements and contingency power standards for “critical” wireless and broadband facilities being studied in docket 11-60. But USTelecom, ATIS and the Telecommunications Industry Association said the commission ought to use a light touch in ensuring the safety of wireless and broadband emergency networks.

The FCC should write a fallback plan in case some wireless carriers refuse to support mobile alert technology, Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., said at a Friday hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications. Richardson is the subcommittee’s ranking member. But FCC and CTIA witnesses said market forces are pushing carriers to voluntarily support the Commercial Mobile Alert Service, also known as the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN). The service, designed to send text-message alerts to people in disaster areas, is scheduled to rollout nationwide next April. Legislators also raised concerns about privacy and training issues related to mobile alerts.

Sprint’s continued vigilance in protecting its long-time claims against the mobile satellite service companies DBSD and TerreStar could be a headache for Dish Network as it moves forward in buying those S-band licensees out of bankruptcy. Sprint is trying to recoup more than $200 million in costs the wireless company took on when clearing broadcast auxiliary spectrum (BAS) from the 2 GHz band. The issue could also come up again once the FCC asks for comment on the transfer of control of either company to Dish, said an industry executive.

Among the comments that have started to arrive on AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile at the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Association of Competitive Telecom Companies asked the PUC to open a separate proceeding into AT&T’s retail service quality. The group wants the state regulators to examine “demand lock up” agreements for special access and to file comments with the FCC, Sarah DeYoung, the group’s executive director, told us. “We hope the FCC can address this in its special access proceeding.”

Christine Varney’s pending departure as head of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division injects another note of uncertainty into the government’s review of AT&T’s $39 billion buy of T-Mobile, said industry and government officials. Still, with the review fairly far along, officials disagree on whether change at the top of the division will have much effect on the ultimate outcome of the review.

The FCC must remedy paperwork problems and other shortfalls in its cross-ownership and diversity rules (CD Dec 19/07 p1) in the current media ownership review, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Thursday. It threw out those rules, sending them back to the commission to be reworked in the ongoing review. The Philadelphia court noted that the agency is curing some of the old paperwork flaws in the current review. Industry and agency officials told us that can be accomplished fairly easily. A question is whether the 3rd Circuit will rule on the issue once the paperwork problems are remedied, said President John Sturm of the Newspaper Association of America, a petitioner in the case. The court earlier tossed out previous rules promulgated by a different FCC chairman appointed by President George W. Bush. All members of the three-judge panel upheld other rules.