The U.S. faces huge challenges trying to stay ahead of growth in wireless broadband use, and putting the right band plans in place is critical, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday at the start of an all-day agency workshop conducted by the commission’s Technological Advisory Council (TAC). “We are going to be listening very closely to what happens at this workshop and what comes out of the TAC process in terms of directions and recommendations for the FCC."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday asked the FCC’s Technology Advisory Committee to start work on a report on the future of band planning, especially in light of a pending auction of broadcast TV spectrum. Genachowski said during a speech at CTIA last month he would ask TAC “to convene a forum on the future of band plans to inform the incentive auctions and other upcoming auctions.” Genachowski spoke to the TAC Wednesday, then stuck around for more than three hours to hear reports from the various working groups (http://xrl.us/bnc4g3).

T-Mobile USA continued its war against Verizon Wireless’s planned purchase of advanced wireless services spectrum from four cable operators. The smaller carrier said in FCC filings and a conference call that Verizon Wireless is the least efficient of all the major wireless carriers in its use of spectrum. T-Mobile cited a study it commissioned from Roberson and Associates to dispute Verizon Wireless’s claim of superior efficiency. Verizon Wireless’s “spectral efficiency analysis” is “fundamentally and fatally flawed,” T-Mobile said. When the flaws are corrected to account for smartphone usage and compare Verizon Wireless against additional carriers, “Verizon Wireless’ spectrum efficiency is seen to lag behind that of the rest of the industry, in many cases by a wide margin” (http://xrl.us/bm9ymi), T-Mobile said.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling was grilled by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., over allegations that broadband grants pay for expensive, unnecessary telecom equipment for small libraries and schools in West Virginia. Walden told a subcommittee hearing Wednesday that he has two primary concerns with the Rural Utilities Service programs: “They appear to fund the same aims as the Universal Service Fund … and I am concerned about [their] performance.” Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and full Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., hailed NTIA’s decision to partially suspend seven public safety grants following the creation of FirstNet.

LTE is becoming significantly more important as prepaid carriers like MetroPCS saw growth slow in Q1 due to competition and economic uncertainty, executives said. MetroPCS’s Q1 profit of $21 million was a 63 percent year-over-year decline, while another prepaid carrier, Leap, reported a widened Q1 loss of $98.4 million. Meanwhile, MetroPCS said it is interested in spectrum that could potentially be divested as part of the regulatory approval of the Verizon/cable deal.

Sprint Nextel reported a Q1 net loss of $863 million, up from a loss of $439 million in the year-ago period. Despite subscriber growth on the Sprint network, which includes CDMA, WiMAX and LTE, the carrier lost 455,000 postpaid customers on a net basis on its Nextel network iDEN from Q4, leading to a total postpaid subscriber loss of 192,000. The carrier’s prepaid brands, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, will gain access to WiMAX in Q2, executives said during an earnings call Wednesday.

Sprint Nextel won’t introduce any new WiMAX 4G smartphones this year as it shifts focus to LTE, the deployment of which will ramp up quickly after the initial six markets launch mid-year, Development Director Ryan Sullivan told us following a New York news conference for HTC’s new Evo 4G LTE model. Sprint’s Network Vision 4G LTE network, expected to be nationwide with 38,000 cell sites by late 2013, will debut in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Kansas City, Mo. In each of the markets, Sprint will install new multi-mode base stations supplied by Alcatel, Harris and Samsung. Field testing is being conducted in the first six markets consisting of internal Sprint trials and those with third-party companies, Sullivan said. The first multi-mode base station went on line in December.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell is questioning whether the time frame for a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum laid out by a top FCC official last week is realistic. Amy Levine, a senior aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski, predicted an auction would occur in the next 18-24 months (CD March 7 p3). McDowell suspects it could take at least twice as long, given the complexities involved.

Verizon Wireless and cable companies shot back at critics of Verizon’s proposed buy of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox in a reply filed at the FCC. The companies said that by their calculations, in 98 percent of the counties covered the combinations will not push Verizon Wireless above the FCC’s spectrum screen, or the level at which the FCC would consider divestitures as part of any order approving the deals. Critics led by T-Mobile, small carriers, and public interest groups, took aim at the transaction last month, in various petitions to deny (CD Feb 23 p1). SpectrumCo is a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.

CTIA’s top priority is getting Congress to pass spectrum legislation, and the association thinks it’s not a question of if, but when a bill will be approved, CTIA President Steve Largent said during a press conference Wednesday. CTIA officials also said Universal Service Fund reform remains a significant issue for wireless carriers, with the FCC poised to take up an order at its Oct. 27 meeting. Largent said he’s confident the 1755-1780 MHz band will be reallocated for wireless broadband.