The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council supports the FCC’s order giving Grain Management and similarly situated companies a waiver of parts of the commission’s designated entity (DE) rules (CD July 24 p3), the group said in a news release Thursday. Grain sought a waiver of the attributable material relationship (AMR) rule, which limits the ability of a DE to lease out spectrum licenses it buys to another carrier rather than build out its own network. MMTC hopes the FCC will eliminate the AMR rule in its entirety “because it impedes a DE’s ability to create flexible business plans and access the capital necessary to participate in FCC spectrum auctions,” the group said. “On Wednesday, the Commission took a step in the right direction by enabling greater, near-term participation by small businesses in the upcoming AWS-3 auction and in the secondary markets,” said David Honig, MMTC president. The FCC is looking at more sweeping changes to the DE rules, but agency officials said they're unlikely to be released prior to the AWS-3 auction. “In line with Congress’s mandate to advance small business participation in wireless auctions, the FCC’s decision to engage Designated Entities in November’s AWS-3 auction will increase their participation in wireless spectrum ownership,” MMTC said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler named Brian Daly of AT&T and Robert Kubik of Samsung as chairs of the FCC Technological Advisory Council’s Working Group on Mobile Device Theft Prevention. The working group is to develop industrywide recommendations for reducing device theft, the FCC said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1sZbow3). Wheeler also appointed panel members from industry, law enforcement and consumer groups.

Correction: The reply comment deadline on T-Mobile data roaming petition is Aug. 20 (CD July 24 p11).

Samsung is sending mixed messages on its choice of operating systems for wearables, DisplaySearch analyst Paul Gray said in a blog post Thursday. “The announcement that Samsung’s latest generation of wearables will use Android Wear raises interesting questions about its software strategy,” Gray said. This after Samsung, with its Gear 2 smart watch, had “made the switch to the Tizen platform, which appeared to be Samsung’s strategic direction,” Gray said. Gray speculated Samsung will make the “return” to Android Wear to “maximize interoperability with other smartphones,” or because it realized that development efforts are vested in the software, not the hardware. Of that realization, Gray said, Samsung “has demonstrated its ability to develop products faster than its competition. However this has largely been in hardware. If the real R&D effort lies in software, then it questions whether Samsung still has the aces in its hand.” Samsung has shown it’s determined to “evolve rapidly to find a winning formula” in wearables, Gray said. “However the switch to Android Wear suggests that interoperability and off-the-shelf software are more valuable than uniqueness. This will in turn feed through into a vibrant app environment for consumers.” Samsung representatives didn’t immediately comment.

As of March 31, remaining expenditures for non-Sprint licensee costs to complete the 800 MHz rebanding were projected to be $441.6 million, the 800 MHz Transition Administrator said in a filing at the FCC in docket 02-55. The administrator provided the information at the request of the FCC Public Safety Bureau, the filing said (http://bit.ly/1pgsSO1). The FCC approved an order in 2004 that launched the rebanding. The commission’s goal was to eliminate interference to public safety systems in the 800 MHz band.

Dutch-based supplier AVG Technologies is claiming it devised one of the first apps optimized for the Dynamic Perspective feature on the Amazon Fire Phone, which gets released Thursday through AT&T. Amazon has called Dynamic Perspective its biggest differentiator in setting the Fire Phone apart from other smartphones. The AVG Alarm Clock Xtreme app’s alarm clock and stopwatch features are controlled with simple head gestures, making “selecting snooze or turning off the alarm an easy and immersive experience” using Dynamic Perspective, AVG said Wednesday. The app “incorporates movements like nodding and shaking your head, and other physical gestures such as left to right movement, to communicate commands to the app,” it said. The app will be available free from the Amazon store, it said.

CWave, an ultrawideband (UWB) technology developed by Pulse~LINK, can help to solve some of the most significant issues facing the FCC, company CEO Brady Buckley, Chief Technology Officer John Santhoff and Vice President-Engineering Greg Elmassian told FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp; Chief Technology Officer Henning Schulzrinne; Walter Johnston, chief of the Electromagnetic Compatibility Division; and other officials from the Policy and Rules Division, the OET and the Wireline Competition Bureau, according to an ex parte notice (http://bit.ly/1qAf9rN) posted in docket 13-184 Wednesday. CWave provides a second, independent ethernet layer that can be used to lay an additional data path over existing coaxial or copper networks, without interfering with existing content, company officials said at the meeting Monday. The technology can be used on the existing coaxial cable found in most schools to distribute large bandwidth to classrooms; offers an affordable alternative for rural and small-town cable systems to upgrade to gigabit data speeds; and allows a service provider to use the technology over existing coaxial cable to offer broadband services without disturbing the incumbent cable provider, the filing said. Douglas Dawson, president of CCG Consulting, and Jim Baller of the Baller Herbst Law Group also participated in the meeting.

The alleged perpetrator of a text message scamming scheme agreed to settle FTC charges over sending false text messages promising $1,000 gift cards in exchange for personal information, the FTC said in a Tuesday release (http://1.usa.gov/1uc6LQQ). The monetary judgment in the settlement, $2,863,000, will be mostly suspended due to the defendant Verma Holdings’ inability to pay. The settlement, approved unanimously by the commissioners, closes one of numerous FTC charges filed against 29 defendants in March 2013 over similar texting scams (http://1.usa.gov/1rtmMym).

The FCC Public Safety Bureau said it will hold in abeyance a request for a further waiver by Miami-Dade County, Florida, of the original June 26, 2008, deadline for completion of the rebanding of its 800 MHz radios. Sprint had requested the FCC ask several questions of the county before extending the waiver, the bureau said Wednesday. Sprint had said the rebanding had started in 2005 and “it is the last licensee, excepting those in border states, to return frequencies in the ‘old’ NPSPAC band to Sprint,” the bureau said. Much of the delay is attributable to Miami-Dade’s decision to replace, rather than reband, its 800 MHz communications system, the bureau said (http://bit.ly/Utj8Ye). “We impress on Miami-Dade the imperative of completing its firmware reprogramming in the shortest feasible time."

AT&T had its lowest postpaid customer churn ever in the second quarter, at 0.86 percent, it said Wednesday. The carrier also reported postpaid net adds of more than 1 million, the most in a quarter in nearly five years (http://soc.att.com/1pHpugE). Q2 consolidated revenue was $32.6 billion, up 1.6 percent over the year-earlier quarter. AT&T has about $6 billion cash on hand, headed into the AWS-3 auction, said John Stephens, AT&T chief financial officer. AT&T’s buy of DirecTV was approved without restrictions by Brazil’s antitrust regulator, he said. The carrier also completed the review process, without conditions, at the state level, which included Arizona, Hawaii and Louisiana, he said.