AT&T, CenturyLink, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and other industry representatives...

data collection process, the companies said in separate ex parte filings. Potential changes FCC officials outlined Friday with AT&T included: changing the number of speed tiers, “providing the Commission “shape files” for wireless services depicting the relevant technologies, frequency bands and maximum advertised speeds,” providing aggregated wireless device data that reflect the highest device speed capabilities, reporting national machine-to-machine wireless device counts and reporting data on wireless devices sold in a bundle with wireline services (http://bit.ly/WizboB). CenturyLink and FCC officials Thursday discussed “the burdens of more granular reporting requirements, including how to make distinctions between services that are residential and those that are business, and potential submission of information on a confidential basis,” said John Benedict, CenturyLink vice president-federal regulatory affairs (http://bit.ly/XyGlCG). Sprint committed during its call to FCC officials “to produce such data,” but said “the additional data and changes to the existing format of the data would increase the burden on carriers.” FCC officials also discussed continuing to provide the mapping information that carriers submit semi-annually to NTIA for its Broadband Map. Sprint representatives told the FCC “that it is time consuming to produce the maps. We agreed with staff that preparing a single nationwide map would be less time-consuming than the current state-by-state mapping,” said Marybeth Banks, Sprint government affairs director (http://bit.ly/V4nBAu). T-Mobile said Friday during its call “it agrees that a single process for providing broadband adoption and deployment data on a nationwide basis likely would be preferable to the current FCC reporting that requires collecting data at the census tract level and having to file a separate report for each state.” FCC officials outlined its proposed changes and noted “that carrier involvement in collaborating on beta tests is a possibility,” said Indra Sehdev Chalk, T-Mobile principal corporate counsel-federal regulatory affairs (http://bit.ly/VPPQmt). Industry representatives from NTCA, the Western Telecommunications Alliance, Alpine Communications, Blackfoot Communications and Enhanced Telecommunications jointly spoke with FCC officials Monday on the proposed Form 477 changes, NTCA Economist Richard Schadelbauer said Tuesday in a filing. The industry representatives said changing the rules to distinguish between residential and non-residential services “would likely double the overall data reporting burden,” Schadelbauer said. FCC officials told the representatives a proposed new tool that aids in geocoding could ease some of their concerns (http://bit.ly/159r3vr).