Officials from AT&T and small carriers made their case for a revised designated entity (DE) program, holding meetings with aides to all five FCC commissioners, said a series of filings in docket 12-268. Among those representing carriers was former Rep. Robin Tallon, D-S.C. AT&T and the small carriers proposed revisions to the DE program May 11, which would recast it to provide limited bidding credits to small carriers rather than traditional DEs (see 1505110048). “The parties explained that the original intent of the FCC’s DE program has been lost due to gamesmanship and exploitation of existing rules within the DE program as evidenced by the results” of the AWS-3 auction, one of the filings said. “FCC adoption of the Joint Proposal will benefit those legitimate small businesses that the program was created to benefit.”

Global shipments of tablets, including stand-alone devices and tablets built into 2-in-1 convertible laptops, will reach 221.8 million units this year, a 3.8 percent decline from 2014, IDC said Thursday in its quarterly “tablet tracker” report. IDC’s new downgraded outlook follows two consecutive quarters of declining sales and is a "modest" downward revision from the previous forecast of 234.5 million units and 2.1 percent year-over-year growth in 2015, IDC said. “While IDC expects overall sales to decline in 2015, some segments of the product category are poised to experience strong growth,” it said. For example, “cellular-capable” tablets and 2-in-1 devices are “a huge opportunity for the entire tablet ecosystem," it said. Although still a small portion of the entire market, this segment is expected to grow this year and beyond, it said. IDC forecasts that this segment will see a five-year compound annual growth rate of 5.6 percent compared with Wi-Fi-only devices, which will experience a 0.4 percent five-year CAGR decline, it said.

Government policymakers should be careful about relying too heavily on outside forecasts that show spiraling wireless data demand, said Armand Musey, president of the Summit Ridge Group, and Aalok Mehta, a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California, in a new paper. The stakes are higher in wireless when policymakers get things wrong, they argue. “Unlike most other resources, the electromagnetic spectrum, by its very nature, is a physically limited resource; no new frequencies can ever be created or destroyed,” they wrote. “In general, this means that once spectrum is allocated to one set of users, it is not available for alternative applications or technologies.” This differs from wireline, they said: In wireline industries, expansion of fiber backbones -- even when this requires access to public resources such as rights-of-way -- "does not generally crowd out the ability of competing companies or applications to deploy their own infrastructure.” Spectrum is also a public resource, they said. “Its exploitation carries a much stronger consideration of public welfare than many other resources.” Decisions about spectrum are long lasting, they said. “Moving incumbent users off spectrum bands in response to technological or economic changes, for example, is generally time-consuming, expensive, and contentious, often taking billions of dollars of upfront investment to facilitate relocation and more than a decade to complete.” The two said in a footnote that they weren't compensated by any party for writing the paper.

Crown Castle and Quanta Services asked the FCC for authorization for a deal in which Crown Castle will buy Quanta Fiber Networks, also called Sunesys. The $1 billion transaction was unveiled in April and will give Crown Castle 10,000 miles of fiber in major metropolitan markets across the U.S., including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Silicon Valley. “The Transaction will serve the public interest,” the companies told the FCC. They said "the financial, technical, and managerial resources” Crown Castle “will bring to Licensees are expected to enhance the ability of Licensees to compete in the telecommunications marketplace.” Customers will receive service “at the same rates, terms and conditions” after the deal is complete, the companies said. Crown Castle said in April that the deal bolsters its “leading position in small cell networks by more than doubling Crown Castle's fiber footprint available for small cell deployments and expanding Crown Castle's presence in many of the top U.S. metropolitan markets.”

Annual IP traffic will likely triple between 2014 and 2019, when it will reach 2 zettabytes, said a news release Wednesday releasing the Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast. Some of the growth will come from increasing mobile access and demand for video services, which will represent 80 percent of global IP traffic by 2019, the study said. Global IP traffic will reach 168 exabytes per month by 2019, up from 59.9 exabytes per month in 2014, Cisco predicted.

Eden Rock Communications said it agreed to be bought by Nokia Networks. Financial terms weren't announced. The deal gives Nokia Eden’s self-organizing network (SON) technology -- designed to make the planning, configuration, management, optimization and healing of mobile networks easier and quicker. Eden said the deal is expected to be completed in Q3. “A massive appetite exists among operators for a proven SON solution with disruptive technologies, open framework and carrier-class capabilities,” said Eden Rock CEO Charles Immendorf in a Wednesday news release. “Via this acquisition, Nokia Networks brings complementary SON functionality, a renowned reputation for wireless excellence and an ascending market presence to Eden-NET.” Eden Rock is to spin off a new company taking in its spectrum sharing solutions, technology and patents, the company said. More details are to follow, Eden Rock said.

Mobile phone data and mobile Twitter use are helpful in estimating crowd sizes, said researchers at the Data Science Lab at Warwick Business School in the U.K. “Using a football stadium and an airport as case studies, we present evidence of a strong relationship between the number of people in restricted areas and activity recorded by mobile phone providers and the online service Twitter,” they said in a paper. “Our findings suggest that data generated through our interactions with mobile phone networks and the Internet may allow us to gain valuable measurements of the current state of society.” Measuring crowd size is difficult, as evidenced by “the hugely varying estimates we see of the number of people at protests,” said Federico Botta, lead researcher on the project. “We found that this automatically generated data provides an excellent basis for estimating the size of a crowd. Quick and accurate measurements of crowd size could be of vital use for police and other authorities charged with avoiding crowd disasters."

Unlicensed spectrum is no solution for positive train control, said Richard Bennett, network engineer, on the HighTech Forum blog. PTC emerged as a big issue after the May 12 deadly Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia (see 1505150047). Some public interest groups argued at the time unlicensed spectrum is the answer, but it's not, at least not by itself, Bennett wrote. “One of the most important takeaways from the Amtrak derailment is the difficulty of developing new systems for old industries that use spectrum,” he said. “This is a very technical subject that is well outside the expertise of railway engineers; it’s similar in that respect to auto safety systems that are targeted to use 5.9 GHz spectrum allocated by Congress for their use. That spectrum directly conflicts with the planned expansion of Wi-Fi. These systems also stress the ability of radio engineers because they don’t know the application very well.” Bennett said LTE-unlicensed could have use in PTC. “It could very well be the case that the railroads would be best served by an LTE-U-like hybrid system that combines the licensed spectrum already in the hands of mobile operators with unlicensed spectrum capable of doing the up-close work of monitoring train speed, direction, and identity,” he said.

Northstar Wireless asked the FCC to reject a pleading by AT&T that it said supports petitions asking the agency to reject Northstar’s applications for the licenses it won in the AWS-3 auction. Northstar was one of the two designated entities (DEs) working with Dish Network in the auction (see 1505190046). The AT&T motion is “misleadingly styled as a ‘partial opposition’ when it actually arguably appears to seek denial of Northstar’s applications,” Northstar said. “Rather than file a petition to deny, AT&T has attempted to piggyback on timely filed applications.” The “stratagem” should be denied, Northstar said. The DE is controlled by Doyon, an Alaska Native Corporation. Dish is “confident” it and the DEs followed FCC rules in the auction when they bought $13.3 billion worth of spectrum for $10 billion, saving more than $3 billion in discounts, Dish CEO Charlie Ergen said on a recent earnings call (see 1505110035). AT&T is "not an applicant for the licenses at issue in this proceeding," Northstar said. "Moreover, AT&T does not qualify within the meaning of an 'interested party' under Section 1.939(f) of the Commission’s rules as it alleges no ownership or other interest in the licenses in question." The AT&T filing was made May 18 and challenges to the license applications were due at the FCC May 11, Northstar said.

Wireless has a big role to play if the FCC moves forward on a Lifeline program overhaul (see 1505010051), CTIA said in an ex parte filing at the agency. CTIA officials met with Gigi Sohn, aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and officials in the Wireline Bureau, the group said. CTIA offered “general support for the Commission’s recent efforts to deter waste, fraud and abuse in the Lifeline program, including support for the National Lifeline Accountability Database, which has successfully limited duplicate enrollments,” the filing said. The FCC is expected to expand the program to offer a minimal level of broadband support, CTIA said. “In potentially defining broadband as an eligible service for purposes of the Lifeline program, CTIA encouraged the Commission to recognize the unique characteristics and ability of mobile broadband services to offer affordable broadband services to low-income consumers.” The filing was in docket 11-42.