SAN FRANCISCO - Verizon executives shared few product details about the company’s pending LTE service with reporters Wednesday at CTIA, where they announced an aggressive deployment plan for the faster wireless data service. Verizon’s new LTE network will replicate its 3G network coverage within three years and by the end of this year, it will turn up LTE service in 38 U.S. markets using C-block 700 MHz spectrum, Verizon President Lowell McAdam said. Verizon is still working out how the service will be priced and marketed, he said. “We think there is a place for unlimited plans, but we think that over time … our customers are going to shift their consumption to more of a pay as you use plan,” he said. “I expect we will evolve to that, but I don’t think LTE necessarily forces us to that model."
At the FTC’s request, a U.S. district judge has permanently shut the illegal operations of a firm that placed bogus charges on the phone bills of thousands of small businesses and consumers for Internet-related services they hadn’t agreed to buy, the commission said. The judge barred the defendants from charging consumers’ phone bills and barred them from telemarketing unless they get prior approval from the FTC and the court. The court also ordered third parties through which charges were placed, including local exchange phone companies, to return money in escrow to consumers, and ordered the defendants to pay up to $38 million in restitution to consumers. The commission sued Inc21 in January, charging that the company hired offshore telemarketers to call prospective clients to sell its Web-based services. The defendants used LECs to place charges, usually $12.95-$39.95 a month, for the services on the phone bills of consumers and businesses that were told by telemarketers that a call was only to verify business information, that declined Inc21’s offer of Internet services, or that were told they would receive a free trial offer but weren’t informed that they would be charged if they didn’t cancel, the FTC said. The commission charged that the defendants had violated the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
A handful of companies have turned down loan awards from the Broadband Initiatives Program, and officials in the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service are in negotiations to get the companies to stay with the program, a RUS spokesman said. “Fewer than 10” of about 300 grant winners have turned down awards, he said.
The FCC let Comcast out of local rate regulation in Carroll County, Md., and some nearby towns, a Media Bureau order said. It said the company had requested the relief, contending it was subject to effective competition from DBS operators. The commission granted Cox the same relief for 38 Louisiana communities, another order said. Separately, the city of Laredo, Texas, opposed a Time Warner Cable petition for a finding of effective competition. Laredo said the company failed to show that 15 percent of the households in the city buy pay-TV from a satellite operator.
About 66 percent of Iowans had broadband at home in April, said a report put together by a nonprofit state affiliate of Connected Nation with Iowa’s Utilities Board and its Broadband Deployment Governance Board. The report, the first in a series that Connect Iowa plans on the topic, is to be formally released Wednesday. The document is based on data collected for an interactive map at http://connectiowa.org/mapping/interactive_map.php.
More data on the wireless market would help the FCC better assess how competition may be hurt by special access rates, spectrum policies, early termination fees (ETFs) and exclusive handset arrangements, said the GAO. In a report released Thursday by Capitol Hill Democrats, GAO found significant consolidation and increased wireless usage since 2000. That has resulted in lower prices and better coverage, but also has made it tough for small and regional providers to win subscribers, make network investments and get handsets, GAO said. The report offers support to conclusions in the FCC’s wireless competition report that consolidation has hurt competition. In its May 20 report, the FCC declined to find that the U.S. wireless market is competitive, a sharp departure from previous reports (CD May 21 p1).
Saga Communications Q2 sales rose 4 percent to $32.9 million from a year earlier. Profit gained 38 percent to $7 million.
A $302 million cut in the NTIA’s Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program, signed into law by President Barack Obama this week (CD Aug 12 p8), raises questions for applicants -- many of which spent tens of thousands of dollars in their efforts -- and for public safety agencies across the country that hope to use grants to build out networks in 700 MHz spectrum. RUS’s broadband program was not cut. Many applicants were surprised by the cut, which came in a bill providing $26.1 billion to states for Medicaid and teachers’ jobs.
Veterans could avoid co-payments on telehealth and telemedicine visits under a bill approved Thursday by voice vote in the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. S-3325, sponsored by Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, would modify Title 38 of U.S. Code to authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to waive imposition or collection of the co-payments.
Reps. Gene Green, D-Texas, Fred Upton, R-Mich., and 46 other members introduced a House resolution Friday opposing FCC reclassification of broadband transport for regulation under Title II of the Communications Act. “Currently, Congressional Leadership is working on crafting targeted legislation aimed at broadband Internet,” Green said in a written statement. “It is important that the FCC gives Congress time necessary to complete its work.” Meanwhile, two more House Democrats opposed reclassification of broadband transport for regulation under Title II of the Communications Act. In a letter Thursday to Chairman Julius Genachowski, Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., said Genachowski should be “an active participant in Congressional efforts to assign the [FCC] appropriate authority” over broadband. In a July 23 letter to Genachowski, Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., said he’s “extremely concerned that the Commission’s approach impinges on the prerogatives of the Congress.” If the commission goes forward with its plan without Congress’s direction, “it is engaging in anti-democratic behavior that is contrary to our system of government,” Grayson wrote. More than half the House opposes the FCC’s proposed reclassification, including 171 Republicans and 78 Democrats. In the Senate, 38 Republicans and three Democrats have expressed opposition.