Policymakers have had enough of T-Mobile’s requests for preferred treatment in the TV incentive auction and are just saying no to a larger spectrum reserve -- spectrum set aside for competitors without extensive low-band holdings in a particular market -- Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter alleged Friday in a blog post. T-Mobile CEO John Legere has made the issue a top regulatory priority for the carrier (see 1507020057). “After Periscoping his way through Washington, John Legere has left a path of alienation in his wake,” Spalter wrote. “Rather than declaring victory for convincing the FCC to block national rivals AT&T and Verizon from bidding on up to 30 MHz of prime spectrum in the upcoming broadcast spectrum auctions, Legere is seeking to publicly bully the commission into giving his company right of first refusal over even more bandwidth and at an even steeper discount.” T-Mobile is not responding to Spalter, a spokesman said.

Notifications on cellphones inevitably impair a person’s ability to focus on a given task, said a new Florida State University study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. “The level of how much it affected the task at hand was really shocking,” said Courtney Yehnert, an FSU research coordinator. “Although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance,” the paper said. “Cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants do not directly interact with a mobile device during the task.”

The Obama administration is lagging behind the needs of industry as it struggles to make more spectrum available for wireless broadband, Free State Foundation Visiting Fellow Gregory Vogt said Friday in a paper. “The time to locate and begin reallocating more spectrum for mobile broadband use is now,” Vogt wrote. The administration’s 2010 plan to reallocate 500 MHz of spectrum is out of date and work on the plan is “lagging,” he said. “Reallocating spectrum takes time, a lot of it, and therefore the government needs to redouble its efforts now to find more spectrum for commercial mobile broadband use,” Vogt said. “Because government is sluggish to respond to the market, the need should be classified and considered ‘urgent.’”

The Wireless ISP Association defended its proposal to establish a professional installer program for TV white spaces devices and the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band. The FCC should keep in place rules that allow professional installation in both bands, WISPA said. “The effectiveness of a professional installation certification program will benefit all spectrum users,” the group said. “To that end, WISPA invites stakeholders to work with WISPA to help develop an effective program that can apply in all spectrum bands.” The letter was posted in docket 14-165. NAB has questioned the viability of professional installer programs, especially in the 3.5 GHz band. “Simply put, experience has confirmed that professional installation is unreliable and inadequate,” said an NAB letter in the same docket. “Further, professional installation is not appropriate for consumer devices that are likely to be deployed in the 3.5 GHz band, and mere tweaks to the rules regarding the definition of 'professional installation' are unlikely to address the fundamental problems.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau settlement with TerraCom and YourTel America Thursday "highlights the problem of making policy through enforcement actions," said Commissioner Mike O'Rielly in a statement later that day. The companies agreed to jointly pay a $3.5 million civil penalty and take actions to improve their data security practices, as part of a bureau order and consent decree to resolve an investigation of possible Lifeline USF customer privacy violations (see 1507090035). YourTel also agreed to improve its compliance with Lifeline eligibility and de-enrollment rules. "I am certain that attempts will be made to cite the Consent Decree as precedent for an entire industry even though it was the product of company-specific negotiations," O'Rielly said. "Other interested parties had no opportunity to comment at any point in time on the substance of the Commission’s claims or legal theories, but will now be forced to embrace the product of a closed and slanted process that will be portrayed as consensus practices and rules."

The FCC should ignore T-Mobile’s “eleventh-hour request” to change the trigger for the set-aside of reserve spectrum in the TV incentive auction, Verizon said in a filing Wednesday in docket 12-269. T-Mobile last week asked the FCC to rethink the trigger (see 1507010023). “T-Mobile has repeatedly asked the FCC to change the rules for the incentive auction in ways that favor T-Mobile at the expense of the American taxpayer,” Verizon said.

CTIA officials stressed in a meeting with aides to Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly the need for the FCC to give carriers the time and information they need to make informed bids in the TV incentive auction, to guarantee the success of the auction. “CTIA urged the Commission to provide sufficient inter-service interference data, including detailed information on the television stations causing potential interference well in advance of the forward auction,” CTIA said in an ex parte filing on the meeting in docket 12-268. For example, carriers need information on potential impairments “as early as possible, including preliminary data once participants in the reverse auction are known,” CTIA said. “CTIA asked that the FCC release the formats for the files it will provide bidders during the auction well before the applications are due. In addition, the Commission should ensure that its proposals do not sacrifice informed decision-making in favor of auction speed.” The CTIA officials also cited the importance of minimizing impairment of the blocks offered for sale in the auction: “While a certain degree of impairment to 600 MHz licenses is inevitable, the Commission’s originally-proposed 20 percent threshold would result in significant impairment.”

T-Mobile continues its rapid growth, adding 2.1 million net customers in Q2, the carrier said Thursday. That's the ninth quarter in a row T-Mobile has had net adds of at least 1 million and is a 41 percent year-over-year increase, said a news release. Churn was 1.3 percent for branded customers with monthly plans, T-Mobile said. The adds bring T-Mobile’s total customer base to 58.9 million across postpaid, prepaid and wholesale customers. "T-Mobile’s momentum continued in full force for the second quarter, with 2.1 million customers voting in favor of the Un-carrier," said John Legere, T-Mobile CEO. He said on Peroscope T-Mobile’s market cap is now twice that of Sprint: “They have big problems; they have a lot of problems.” A Sprint spokesman declined to comment on Legere’s statement or on whether T-Mobile might pass Sprint this quarter to become the nation's third-largest wireless carrier. “We can’t comment on numbers until our quarterly earnings report in a few weeks,” the spokesman said. “While the media is going to focus on who is three or four, customers don’t care. Sprint is focused on long-term growth by offering customers value, providing a great experience and having a reliable and consistent network.” T-Mobile also unveiled a new initiative Thursday, “Mobile without Borders,” allowing customers to call between the U.S., Canada and Mexico without extra charges. Some 35 percent of all international calls and 55 percent of all international travel from the U.S. last year was to Mexico and Canada, T-Mobile said.

Microsoft’s decision to cut up to 7,800 jobs over the next few months in the restructuring of its mobile phone business was not taken “lightly," given that the cutbacks "affect the lives of people who have made an impact at Microsoft,” CEO Satya Nadella said in an email to employees Wednesday in which he addressed them as "Team." Microsoft is "deeply committed to helping our team members through these transitions,” he said. Microsoft will take a $7.6 billion impairment charge “related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services business,” in addition to a restructuring charge of about $750 million to $850 million, he said. “I am committed to our first-party devices including phones. However, we need to focus our phone efforts in the near term while driving reinvention. We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem that includes our first-party device family.” Microsoft’s plans for the “near term” are to “run a more effective phone portfolio, with better products and speed to market given the recently formed Windows and Devices Group,” he said. “We plan to narrow our focus to three customer segments where we can make unique contributions and where we can differentiate through the combination of our hardware and software.” Of those three segments, business customers will get “the best management, security and productivity experiences they need,” while “value phone buyers” will get the communications services they want, and “Windows fans the flagship devices they’ll love,” he said. Longer term, Microsoft smartphones “will spark innovation, create new categories and generate opportunity for the Windows ecosystem more broadly,” he said. “Our reinvention will be centered on creating mobility of experiences across the entire device family including phones.”

Broadcom, Google and Microsoft representatives raised concerns about an FCC staff proposal to put some TV stations in the duplex gap following the TV incentive auction (see 1507070055), in a meeting with aides to the various FCC commissioners. “We discussed the importance of access to low-frequency unlicensed spectrum and emphasized that a decision by the Commission to place broadcasters in the duplex gap in certain markets detracts from the goal of identifying three TV white space channels per market for consumers,” said a filing by the three in docket 12-268.