FCC rules for the TV incentive auction must prioritize the rights of companies that buy spectrum in the auction to build out those frequencies, CTIA said in reply comments on a public notice on defining the term “commence operations” in the context of the 600 MHz band transition rules. The FCC should “err on the side of protecting primary uses” of the spectrum, said the filing posted Monday in docket 12-268.. Carriers should be able to “engineer and test their networks free from interference by defining ‘commence operations’ as the moment of first transmission on the licensed spectrum,” said the association. “This will ensure that the band is cleared of secondary uses early enough in the testing process that essential network testing functions are not subject to interference.” After carriers buy licenses in the auction, they have lots to do to build out their networks and test services and equipment before service begins, CTIA said. The 600 MHz licensees face a tough spectrum environment, with white spaces devices, low-power TV and wireless mics also using the 600 MHz spectrum, the wireless association said. “These secondary operations have the potential to interfere with the testing and use of licensed spectrum if permitted to operate in close proximity to licensed wireless transmissions.”

The FCC should draw the line against giving competitive carriers any more incentives to buy spectrum in the TV incentive auction, said Kathleen Grillo, Verizon senior vice president-federal regulatory and legal affairs, Monday in a blog post. “If ever there was an example to confirm the old adage about taking a mile after gaining an inch, we’re seeing it in the incentive auction,” Grillo wrote. “T-Mobile, Sprint and DISH are large, spectrum-rich companies that have already received a spectrum set-aside from the FCC in the incentive auction. Now they are agitating for an even bigger one. Policymakers should see this spectrum grab for what it is: a case of greed masquerading as need.” The three want the FCC to set aside as many as three 10 megahertz licenses in every market for competitive carriers, Grillo said. The three “may play the sympathy card at the FCC, but they are multibillion dollar corporations capable of bringing serious money to the auction table and bidding for spectrum on the same terms as everyone else,” she said. Competitors should have a fair shot at buying incentive auction spectrum and consumers deserve more competition, responded Steve Berry, president of the Competitive Carriers Association. “Verizon fails to recognize the fundamental fact that it and AT&T together control 73 percent of all low-band spectrum, spectrum that is uniquely suited for wireless coverage in rural areas and in-building penetration alike,” he said. “To encourage competition in the marketplace, spur innovation and benefit consumers, the commission must work to prevent additional spectrum aggregation.” With the success of the AWS-3 auction, which raised enough to pay off FirstNet's start-up costs, “it is abundantly clear that carriers are hungry for additional spectrum,” he said. “The FCC must ensure that all carriers have the opportunity to walk away with a piece of the spectrum pie.” Andy Levin, T-Mobile US senior vice president-government affairs, said the FCC should consider the source of the complaint. "Those who live in spectrum warehouses shouldn’t throw stones," Levin said. "Verizon sat on the [700 MHz] A-block spectrum we bought from them for six whole years. When T-Mobile bought it, we immediately began building it out. We don’t warehouse spectrum, the big guys do. Verizon can try to make this about T-Mobile, but the incentive auction is really about the future of wireless competition, and dozens of consumer advocates and smaller carriers agree."

Representatives of the newly formed SaveWirelessChoice coalition met with Priscilla Delgado Argeris, aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, to explain the group’s priorities, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 12-268. “Conduct the incentive auction in early 2016, as planned, to meet burgeoning consumer demand for wireless broadband services,” the filing said. “Ensure that the quantity and quality of the spectrum reserve is sufficient to promote greater broadband competition and increased bidder certainty.”

Lawyers for True Wireless defended the FCC’s Lifeline program in a meeting with FCC officials, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 09-197. The carrier primarily offers Lifeline service in five states, according to its website. “Much of the criticism of the Lifeline program cannot be supported by the evidence, which shows that the program is decreasing in size and has an extraordinarily low rate of erroneous payments under the federal government’s own … standard,” True Wireless said.

One mechanism that operating systems use to mediate developer access to resources is permission-based access control, which asks the user to decide which resources an application can access, wrote FTC Privacy and Identity Protection Division attorney Nithan Sannappa in a blog post Thursday. The usability of permissions has been widely debated in the security community, he said, because researchers have noted users may become habituated to run-time warnings, making them ineffective. Developers have observed that run-time dialogues in mobile operating systems can be similarly problematic since an application “usually barrages users with a stack of dialogs on its first launch,” which can lead to the user “carelessly dismissing all of them without reading them,” Sannappa said. The risk of habituation prompted Google and Microsoft to implement install-time permissions in Android and Windows Phone so users wouldn’t say "OK" or ignore every dialogue shown, he said. “Despite a history of usability concerns, permissions appear to be a useful tool in increasing transparency and encouraging developers to adhere to the principle of least privilege,” Sannappa said. “The Commission has long supported the idea of layered disclosures presented in a context that is useful for consumers,” he said. “From this perspective, permissions in mobile operating systems are clearly an improvement over the opacity of traditional operating systems, which often led to disclosures buried in lengthy legal documents.” Increasing the usability and efficacy of permissions remains an important challenge to address, he said. “To minimize habituation and increase user comprehension, mobile operating systems should only ask users to make security decisions when information flows defy user expectations,” Sannappa said. “By providing incentives and opportunities for developers to adhere to the principle of least privilege, mobile operating systems can help minimize the situations in which users must confront such information flows,” he said. “And by providing greater context for access requests, mobile operating systems can help users make informed decisions about such information flows.”

Verizon said as it achieved a goal set in 2010 to collect by the end of 2015 2 million pounds of electronic waste in communities it serves. The 2 million pounds collected for recycling over the past five years is equivalent to the weight of 500 average cars, or roughly 50,000 cathode ray tube computer screens, it said Thursday. The company has set another five-year goal to collect 2 million more pounds of electronic waste by 2020. Verizon adheres to a zero-landfill objective for e-waste with all materials it collects reused or recycled so they don't end up in a landfill, the company said. Its recycling rallies also benefit Verizon's HopeLine program, which donates working mobile phones from recycling programs to domestic violence prevention and support organizations. More than 9 million wireless phones have been collected through the program since 2001, it said.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council is seeking volunteers for an Interference Protection Working Group, it said Thursday. “This Working Group will focus on interference protection and spectrum sharing issues as they arise,” NPSTC said. “The Working Group will provide the Spectrum Management Committee with recommendations on policy issues involving protection of public safety spectrum from interference and on relevant issues which arise regarding spectrum sharing.”

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA) and Pacific DataVision, which does business as pdvWireless said they're pleased the FCC sought comment on their proposed rules for a private enterprise broadband allocation in the 900 MHz band (see 1505130022). “EWA and pdvWireless have listened to feedback and comments from affected entities and these proposed rules are intended to be responsive to their concerns,” said EWA President Mark Crosby in a news release. “The rules are based, wherever possible, on procedures and regulations adopted by the FCC for realignments in other spectrum bands and seek to balance incumbents’ rights with public policy goals of using spectrum more efficiently with new technology.” The commission notice “continues the momentum towards building a complete record on which the FCC can consider the realignment proposal,” said Morgan O’Brien, pdvWireless vice chairman.

Crown Castle agreed to sell Australian subsidiary CCAL to a consortium of investors led by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets for an aggregate price of about $1.6 billion, the seller said in a news release Thursday. The deal is expected to be completed this quarter, it said. Crown Castle said it will likely use net proceeds to finance its previously announced acquisition of Sunesys and for general corporate purposes, including the repayment of debt.

AT&T and Verizon are more spectrum-constrained major carriers, per subscriber, than Sprint and T-Mobile, Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner said in a report Thursday. Verizon has 1.02 hertz per connection and AT&T 1.18 Hz/c, Entner wrote. T-Mobile has 1.37 Hz/c and Sprint 3.64 Hz/c. “T-Mobile, as it correctly boasts in its advertising, has more capacity per subscriber than Verizon and AT&T, with capacity per subscriber serving as a proxy for amount of spectrum the company has per subscriber,” he said. “T-Mobile has 34 percent more spectrum per subscriber than Verizon, and 16 percent more than AT&T. By comparison, Sprint has 2.6x to 3.6x times more than Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile.” The data explains why Sprint and T-Mobile have sat out various FCC auctions, he said. “Neither company faced an immediate need for more capacity and could not make a business case for spending money to buy spectrum at the time various auctions were being held.”