The FCC defended its denial of Spectrum Five’s request for a review of the International Bureau’s decision to grant EchoStar special temporary authority to move its EchoStar 6 satellite (CD July 10 p20). Spectrum Five appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The FCC questioned whether Spectrum Five has standing to appeal the ruling and asserted that the decision made was well within agency authority. Spectrum Five is a privately held company formed in 2004 to develop and operate satellite systems, and does not yet have any satellites in operation. “This case lies in the heartland of agency discretion: the Commission’s judgment involving the technically complex allocation of orbital slots and the evaluation of the public interest in light of arrangements with foreign nations,” the FCC said (http://bit.ly/1g4o2RU). “Spectrum Five questions the agency’s policy judgment, but the Commission acted reasonably and explained its actions. Nothing more is required."

GCI subsidy Denali Media will buy three Alaska CBS-affiliated stations from Ketchikan TV, Denali said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1dFToMb). The stations involved in the transaction are KXLJ Juneau, KTNL-TV Sitka and KUBD Ketchikan, Denali said. The deal is expected to close in Q2 2014, Denali said.

Twitter (TWTR) stock value was up by nearly 4.8 percent at the close of the New York Stock Exchange Thursday (http://bit.ly/K77WLU). After closing at $70 per share on Tuesday, Twitter stock was trading at $73.31 per share by the end of trading Thursday.

CTIA unveiled a website aimed at helping wireless subscribers make sense of the apps on their phones. CTIA, its members and the app developer community “created KnowMyApp.org so you know how the most popular apps use data,” CTIA said Thursday. “With Intertek Testing Services North America, we offer data usage estimates on some of the most popular apps in the Apple and Google stores.” Offering advice to help networks and devices run better, including using Wi-Fi connections when possible, CTIA said: “Adjust your apps’ settings to stop or minimize updates unless you're on a secure Wi-Fi hotspot. Minimize apps that aren’t in use so they're not running in the background. Uninstall any apps you don’t use.”

Purple Communications supports a request for a temporary waiver of the FCC’s speed-of-answer requirements for Video Relay Service, it said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1kJzDsp). ZVRS, Sorenson and the Communication Axess Ability Group asked earlier this month for waiver of the requirements, set to go into effect Jan. 1 (http://bit.ly/1bsDL80). Purple said it shares the FCC’s desire for consumers to get a faster speed of answer, but “without properly funding an elevated service level through increased VRS rates, the revised standard is neither operationally practical nor ultimately in the best interests of the consumers who are the intended beneficiaries of the standard,” the VRS provider said. In a separate filing Tuesday, Purple stressed the need for “greater interoperability” in the VRS industry (http://bit.ly/1kJCqSw). “The use of legacy equipment is the largest switching barrier preventing free consumer choice of providers, further perpetuating the highly concentrated market status quo,” it said.

It’s time for new telecom policies to match the “new marketplace,” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ijg7DA). One hundred years after the Kingsbury Commitment that made AT&T a government-sanctioned monopoly in exchange for “agreeing to pervasive economic regulation,” it’s time for “early 20th century policies” to sunset, McCormick said. “Today the notion of a single voice provider is quaint, at best,” he said. “After 100 years, it’s time to leave the wireline-centric regulation of the monopoly voice era behind, focus on the broader social compact between network operators and their customers, and embrace our nation’s highly competitive, consumer driven, Internet-enabled future."

The Rockstar Consortium has become a “patent dragnet” that’s intent on killing off Google’s Android mobile operating system, Google said Monday in a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Apple, BlackBerry and Microsoft are among the Google competitors that co-own Rockstar, which some critics claim is a patent assertion entity. Rockstar has filed multiple lawsuits against Google over the Android OS, including one in October that alleged Google had violated Rockstar-owned Nortel patents because of Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility (CD Nov 4 p18). Rockstar’s lawsuits have created “a cloud on Google’s Android platform; threatened Google’s business and relationships with its customers and partners, as well as its sales of Nexus-branded Android devices; and created a justiciable controversy between Google and Rockstar,” Google said in the lawsuit. Rockstar did not comment.

Members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition made their case for unlicensed use of the TV bands following the incentive auction and channel repacking, in a meeting with Roger Sherman, FCC Wireless Bureau acting chief, and others from the bureau. PISC said the FCC should designate “an unlicensed and contiguous duplex gap (and/or guard band) of at least 20 MHz” and maintain two designated channels for wireless mics, opening “them for shared unlicensed use; shrinking the separation distances that limit wireless microphone use of locally-vacant, out-of-market TV co-channels; and requiring microphones to rely first on out-of-market TV co-channels that are not available to unlicensed devices,” said a filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/1eCAKdd). It said the FCC should also make Channel 37 available on a limited basis for unlicensed use and maintain “the status quo with respect to unlicensed access to 600 MHz spectrum, post-auction, in each local area until it is actually in use.” Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge and Matt Wood of Free Press were at the meeting for PISC.

NCTA President Michael Powell, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President James Cicconi and Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen met with a senior aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday to discuss the pending judicial review of the net neutrality order, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1gUR1dT). They said that “regardless of how the case comes out, the principles articulated by the Commission enjoy widespread support and broadband customers will continue to enjoy unfettered access to Internet content and applications."

The bill text of the Department of Commerce and the Workforce Consolidation Act was posted online this week. This Senate legislation proposes to merge the Commerce Department and Labor Department; unsuccessful variations have been introduced in the past. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., introduced S-1836 Dec. 17, and it was referred to the Homeland Security Committee. “The goal of this legislation is twofold: to achieve cost savings by combining duplicative functions, and to improve the quality of our country’s economic policies by ensuring a coordinated approach,” Burr said in a document providing background information on the bill. It would save billions of dollars, he said, citing the potential consolidation of 35 offices into 12 and the killing or reducing of funds for seven programs or initiatives. The new cabinet agency the bill proposes to create would be called the Department of Commerce and the Workforce. In an envisioned organizational chart of the department, NTIA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology would report directly to the department’s secretary and deputy secretary. It would put the Small Business Administration within the Commerce Department and move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the Department of the Interior, a news release said (http://1.usa.gov/1c522RI). The bill has two co-sponsors, Dan Coats, R-Ind., and James Inhofe, R-Okla.