An Arizona company is marketing license preparation services for spectrum the FCC is not even close to making available, is not accepting applications for, and which may have little value when it does, Communications Daily learned from company documents and interviews. The company, Smartcomm LLC of Phoenix, also has charged up to 280 times what others are charging for similar license preparation services.
An Arizona company is marketing license preparation services for spectrum the FCC is not even close to making available, is not accepting applications for, and which may have little value when it does, Communications Daily learned from company documents and interviews. The company, Smartcomm LLC of Phoenix, also has charged up to 280 times what others are charging for similar license preparation services.
From Sprint Nextel’s perspective the biggest news for Q4 was AT&T’s decision to drop its plans to buy T-Mobile, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said Wednesday. Sprint, a leading opponent of the deal, reported quarterly results for the first time since the transaction fell apart. “We believe the industry outlook would have been bleak, had this takeover succeeded,” Hesse said. “We also believe that Sprint’s successful championing of a healthy industry and customer choice will have lasting benefits for the way business customers and consumers view Sprint.”
The FTC settled with a marketer that made “bogus promises of nonexistent sales jobs” to desperate job searchers through job boards such as CareerBuilder.com and through telemarketers, the agency said Tuesday. The commission alleged National Sales Group and others charged fees to job searchers for “background checks and other services” in order to be considered for Fortune 1000 jobs, sometimes “taking $97 from consumers who agreed to pay $29 or $38,” and in other cases charging them recurring monthly fees of $13.71 or more. The U.S. District Court in Chicago halted the operation and froze the defendants’ assets a year ago. The proposed order (http://xrl.us/bmqcto), which must be approved by the court, would bar Anthony Newton, National Sales Group and I Life Marketing, also doing business as Executive Sales Network and Certified Sales Jobs, from selling employment products or services. Along with co-defendant Jeremy Cooley, they're permanently prohibited from “misrepresenting material facts about any product or service” or violating the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule, including by billing consumers without consent and not “clearly and promptly” disclosing the seller’s identity and purpose, the FTC said. Newton must pay $279,000, end a lease on a Mercedes-Benz car and surrender his interest in a California home, under the order. The suspended judgment of $13 million will be imposed if it’s found the defendants misrepresented their financial condition, the agency said.
The FCC “has continued” to make great improvement in addressing its backlog, Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a letter released Monday. Genachowski responded Jan. 10 to a letter by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. Since Genachowski arrived at the commission, the FCC has reduced by 12 percent the number of pending license and license renewal applications, Genachowski said. The Public Safety Bureau reduced its pending applications by 38 percent, the International Bureau by 52 percent and the Media Bureau by 43 percent, he said. The FCC reduced the number of pending reconsideration petitions and review applications by 24 percent, with the Media Bureau reducing the ones older than two years by 43 percent, he said. Genachowski said 99 percent of all consumer complaints pending more than two years can’t be resolved by the FCC while courts consider indecency issues. The FCC has reduced the number of open dockets by 43 percent, and reduced the number of dockets with no filings in more than five years by 89 percent, he said. The House Commerce Committee didn’t comment.
President Barack Obama received twice as many campaign contribution dollars from the Communications and Electronics sector as the entire field of GOP challengers in the 2012 election cycle so far. But among House incumbents, GOP members continued to receive more than Democratic members in political action committee contributions from the sector heading into 2012, showed data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The numbers are consistent with a trend of PACs favoring incumbents and the party in control (CD July 19 p1).
The ITU-R study group on terrestrial services will approve one new recommendation and revise 13 others unless objections arise by March 15, the director of the Radiocommunication Bureau said in a letter to administrations. The new recommendation deals with frequency arrangements for public protection and disaster relief radiocommunication systems in UHF bands in accordance with the WRC-03 resolution on public protection and disaster relief. The recommendation provides guidance on frequency arrangements for public protection and disaster relief radiocommunication in certain regions in some of the bands below 1 GHz that are identified in the resolution, it said. The recommendation currently addresses arrangements in the ranges 746-806 MHz and 806-869 MHz in the Americas, 380-470 MHz in certain African, European and ex-Soviet countries and 806-824/851-869 MHz in some Asia-Pacific countries, in accordance with ITU-R and WRC resolutions. Revisions, including new fixed service system parameters, were made to the recommendation on considerations in the development of criteria for sharing between the fixed and other services. A recommendation on global circulation of IMT-2000 terminals was revised so it doesn’t deal with the IMT satellite component. Another draft revision addresses generic unwanted emissions characteristics of mobile and base stations using IMT-2000 terrestrial radio interfaces. Changes were also made to radio frequency channel arrangements for fixed wireless systems operating in the 7, 10, 11, 18 and 23 GHz bands, and for systems of the fixed service operating in the 38 GHz band. Changes were made to channel arrangements for medium- and high-capacity digital fixed wireless systems operating in the upper 6 GHz band, it said, referring to 6425 to 7125 MHz. Changes were made to channel arrangements for radio-relay systems operating in the 14 GHz band, it said.
States should ban all use of cellphones and other electronic devices by drivers not using hand-held devices, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday. The five-member NTSB agreed unanimously to call for the ban, in a report on an August 2010 accident near Gray Summit, Mo. In that accident, a pickup plowed into the back of a truck, and in turn was hit by a school bus. A second school bus ran into the back of the first bus. Two people died and 38 were injured. NTSB’s investigation found that the driver of the pickup sent and received 11 text messages in the 11 minutes preceding the accident (http://xrl.us/bmkv7z). “According to [government figures], more than 3,000 people lost their lives last year in distraction-related accidents,” said Chairman Deborah Hersman. “It is time for all of us to stand up for safety by turning off electronic devices when driving.” “Manual texting while driving is clearly incompatible with safety, which is why we have historically supported a ban on texting while driving,” said CTIA President Steve Largent, responding to the NTSB. “As far as talking on wireless devices while driving, we defer to state and local lawmakers and their constituents as to what they believe are the most appropriate laws where they live."
The GOP overcame Democratic opposition to FCC process reform proposals, approving two bills Wednesday in the House Communications Subcommittee. On a party line vote, the subcommittee voted 14-9 on HR-3309, which requires rulemaking shot clocks, cost-benefit analyses and a variety of other process changes. However, Democrats supported HR-3310, a bill that would consolidate many FCC reports and eliminate others. The subcommittee approved that bill by voice vote but said more work needs to be done before the next markup in the full committee.
A new paper by Michael Kleeman of the University of California San Diego’s Global Information Industry Center makes the case for why the wireless industry needs more spectrum for wireless broadband (http://xrl.us/bmhrmc). Kleeman concludes that U.S. mobile data traffic grew at a 120 percent annual rate over the previous two years and by 2014 voice is likely to represent only 2 percent of total wireless traffic. “The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2010 was 79 MB per month, up from 35 MB per month in 2009,” the paper said. Today “10 percent of mobile users are watching video content on their devices and consuming 38 percent of data volume on mobile networks. By the end of 2011, video content will jump to 60 percent of network data volume.”