Sen. Olympia Snowe will ask the FCC commissioner nominees about their attitude to having more technical expertise at the agency, the Maine Republican’s telecom adviser told us Wednesday. Snowe isn’t opposed in principle to either Ajit Pai or Jessica Rosenworcel (CD Nov 2 p1), but she has long been concerned that the agency employs so few engineers and other technical experts, Matt Hussey said. The commission employs about 300 engineers, less than 15 percent of the payroll, and Pai and Rosenworcel are lawyers, Hussey said.
Verizon is doubling the amount of smartphone data to drive upgrades, save on costs and better compete, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said during the Wells Fargo investor conference Wednesday. The carrier may be interested in potential divested spectrum from AT&T’s planned buy of T-Mobile, he said.
SILICON VALLEY -- Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Wednesday she wants to make sure that the zeal for raising federal revenue doesn’t prevent adding “open space for innovation” in the airwaves. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is looking to spectrum auctions “to raise money for the federal government,” she noted at the Silicon Valley Wireless Symposium, organized by Joint Venture Silicon Valley. But Lofgren said she wants to make sure that when it comes to adding spectrum for broadband “not everything gets auctioned,” so unlicensed capacity is available. “We need to think about how we can incent additional efficient use of spectrum,” she added.
Spectrum sharing between federal government and commercial users may be of only limited usefulness, warns a draft document scheduled to be taken up Thursday by the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee during a meeting at the Commerce Department. Sharing of spectrum is getting a lot of attention due to growing demand for a scarce resource.
Dish Network will weigh acquisitions, alliances and partnerships with telecom operators as a means for plunging into the wireless business pending FCC approval of its proposed acquisitions of TerreStar and DBSD Networks, CEO Joe Clayton told us Tuesday at the CES Unveiled event in New York.
No senator broke with party lines in floor debate Wednesday over the FCC’s net neutrality order scheduled to take effect Nov. 20. Republicans universally supported a joint resolution (SJ Res 6) to disapprove the December order under the Congressional Review Act. As expected (CD Nov 9 p4), Democrats lined up against disapproval. Republicans need the support of at least four Democrats when the Senate votes Thursday. The House passed an identical resolution in April, but the White House has threatened a veto if presented with the bill.
Building a communications network to facilitate a smart grid energy network will require more than one networking technology, and utilities and vendors are looking at hybrid powerline communications (PLC) and wireless networks to meet the task, said executives at the HomePlug Powerline Alliance technology conference Tuesday. “We're using what we call a dual approach,” said Gary Stuebing, a strategic planning manager for Duke Energy. “When we start looking at over-the-air technologies, we decided we're going to use Wi-Fi,” he said. “Our long-range approach is for PLC technologies, because we're going to need both."
Work on FCC implementation of 2010 legislation to temper the volume of all broadcast and pay-TV ads (CD Aug 3 p8) is picking up steam. Career officials at the Media Bureau and other offices have spent significant time in recent weeks working on CALM Act rules. The staffers are in the final stages of drafting an order, expected to circulate this month, that would require TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to help ensure that the sound level of all ads they carry don’t significantly exceed that of the programming they appear within.
Clearwire is pushing for a new agreement with Sprint by month’s end, in advance of a $236.9 million interest payment on its debt due Dec. 1, analysts said Tuesday at the Wells Fargo investor conference in New York. Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch declined to comment on the timing for completing an agreement with Sprint, but discussions appear to have warmed since Sprint said in early October that it would make its own 4G network and stop selling phones that would work with Clearwire’s, analysts said. Since then, Clearwire and Sprint have signed a memorandum of understanding on technical specs for LTE, agreeing to work together on an “eco-system” and site selection, Prusch said.
The Coalition to Save Our GPS said the FCC should permanently bar LightSquared from using the upper 10 MHz of its spectrum for wireless broadband. The coalition said even if LightSquared gets FCC clearance to use the lower 10 MHz for broadband, the upper 10 MHz should be off limits. LightSquared fired back, saying the coalition is only revisiting old arguments. The upper 10 MHz band is part of the spectrum identified for wireless by the FCC last year in its National Broadband Plan.