U.S. Cellular representatives elaborated on the carrier’s proposal for a point system to help determine which licenses in the 600 MHz band a bidder will be assigned after the TV incentive auction. Northwestern University professor Robert Weller made the proposal in a note attached to a March ex parte filing by U.S. Cellular. “To allow bidders to express preferences without generating payments, the FCC could allocate a supply of, say, 1000 bidding ‘points’ to each bidder,” Weller suggested. “Let the bidders allocate these points across assignments, in order to indicate their preferences. Then either choose an assignment which maximizes some objective function which incorporates the point allocations, or resolve the assignment as if the points were bid amounts, but collect no payments (many colleges handle the allocation of seats in popular courses in this manner).” In the meeting last week, U.S. Cellular argued that the point system would be doable. The system “could be implemented without informing bidders of the spectrum block assignments that remain feasible for them after the auction system has optimized for the ... objectives proposed by the Commission in the Procedures PN,” the carrier said. “Our proposed ‘point system’ likely would not result in a large number of ties after bidders have expressed their preferences for particular spectrum blocks in a” particular market, said the filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268.

Intel will do what it can to make the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band a success story, the company said in a statement released Friday. The FCC approved the 3.5 GHz order April 17 and it was released last week. “It’s clear that the FCC, NTIA, and Federal Agencies are serious about enabling spectrum sharing with the federal government,” Intel said. “The 3.5 GHz band has been globally harmonized for mobile broadband and is incredibly valuable for improving peak cellular use in major markets, for WLAN use, and for enabling new wireless broadband uses in general. Importantly, the Commission's approach protects incumbent use and includes an innovative sensor-based scheme in a future phase of development which could further enhance spectrum utilization and may provide the key to unlocking other highly desirable bands especially the 5 GHz band."

The FCC’s designated entity rules need to be revised before the TV incentive auction to ensure that small carriers at least have a shot at winning licenses, Panhandle Telephone Cooperative and Pine Belt Telephone Company said in a filing at the FCC. The small carriers told an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel they are interested in buying 600 MHz licenses during the auction, but noted that the track record for small carriers was “dismal” in the recently completed AWS-3 auction. “Of the 70 qualified bidders in the auction, over half (38 or 54.3 percent) were rural telcos or rural telco affiliates, yet only 28.9 percent of the rural entities were successful in winning any licenses. Many rural bidders were completely shut out, and those that were successful won only 25 of 1,611 licenses (1.55 percent).” Despite some larger companies' use of “shell” companies as DEs to buy spectrum with bidding credits, fewer than half the successful rural telco bidders in the AWS-3 were able to qualify under DE rules as small businesses, the two carriers said. The filing was posted by the FCC Friday in docket 10-208.

The FCC Wireless Bureau dropped its requirement that ACS Wireless and General Communication Inc. not share nonpublic, commercially sensitive information (CSI) due to their joint ownership of the Alaska Wireless Network. ACS recently wrapped up the sale of its interest in the network to GCI (see 1502020052) and the two asked that the stricture be dropped, especially since ACS has also exited the retail wireless market. “Because the pertinent bases for these conditions as they relate to the CSI Policies no longer are present given ACS’s divestiture of its ownership interest in AWN and its exit as a retail wireless service competitor, we grant the request and hereby remove the … condition,” the bureau said.

Nomi Technologies agreed to settle FTC charges that it misled consumers about their ability to opt out of in-store tracking and that consumers would be informed when locations used Nomi’s tracking services, an FTC news release said Thursday. In late 2012, Nomi Technologies promised in its privacy policy to “provide an opt-out mechanism at stores using its services,” the release said. “This promise implied that consumers would be informed when stores were using Nomi’s tracking technology” to track the MAC address, device type, data and time the device was observed and signal strength of the device, the FTC said. But these promises weren't kept, the FTC alleged in its first-ever complaint against a retail tracking company, because “no in-store opt-out mechanism was available, and consumers were not informed when the tracking was taking place,” the FTC said. “Nomi collected information on about nine million mobile devices within the first nine months of 2013,” the FTC said. “It’s vital that companies keep their privacy promises to consumers when working with emerging technologies, just as it is in any other context,” said Director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau Jessica Rich. “If you tell a consumer that they will have choices about their privacy, you should make sure all of those choices are actually available to them,” Rich said. With its tracking technology, Nomi provided aggregated information on how many consumers passed by a store instead of going in, how long consumers stayed in the store, the types of devices used by consumers, how many repeat consumers a store had and whether the consumer had visited that store at another location, the FTC said. While the company provided an opt-out on its website, “consumers were not informed of the tracking taking place in the stores at all,” the FTC said. Under the settlement, Nomi “will be prohibited from misrepresenting consumers’ options for controlling whether information is collected, used, disclosed or shared about them or their computers or other devices, as well as the extent to which consumers will be notified about information practices,” the FTC said. The Commission voted 3-2 to issue the complaint and accept the proposed consent order, with Commissioners Maureen Ohlhausen and Joshua Wright dissenting, the FTC said. Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioners Julie Brill and Terrell McSweeny issued a joint statement in favor of the order, Ohlhausen and Wright issued separate dissenting statements. Comments on the consent agreement will be accepted through May 25, after which the Commission will vote whether to make the order final. “We continually review our privacy policies to ensure that they follow best practices and had already made the recommended changes in pursuit of that goal by updating our privacy policy over a year and a half ago, while we were still an early-stage startup that was less than a year old,” a Nomi spokesman said in a statement emailed to us. “Our mission has always been to help clients deliver the best possible customer experience, and a key part of achieving that goal is empowering consumers with choice,” the spokesman said. Ohlhausen noted in her dissent that Nomi is a “young company that attempted to go above and beyond its legal obligation to protect consumers but, in doing so, erred without benefitting itself,” he said. “Commissioner Wright believes that Nomi did not violate the FTC Act,” the spokesman said.

AT&T’s pursuit of three AWS-1, two lower 700 MHz C block licenses and other assets from Plateau Wireless remains controversial almost six months after the pleading cycle closed on the transaction Oct. 27. The licenses are in New Mexico and Texas. Last week, AT&T asked the FCC to approve the buy, which is a “relatively small transaction” and “will generate numerous significant public interest benefits without any harm to competition,” AT&T said. T-Mobile said in a filing posted by the FCC Tuesday that the deal should be approved only if AT&T is required to adhere to Plateau’s “long-standing” roaming agreement with T-Mobile. Without the condition, “once this transaction is consummated, the Plateau system would be integrated into AT&T’s network, subjecting T-Mobile to AT&T’s less favorable roaming practices in the Plateau service area,” T-Mobile said. The filings are in docket 14-144.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau approved a set of six channels for use nationwide by 700 MHz deployable trunked systems. The channel set is the one earlier recommended by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council and the National Regional Planning Council, an order released Thursday said. A joint NPSTC/NRPC working group had selected the six channels, at the behest of the FCC, based on public safety and industry feedback (see 1502200031). The channels are 37-38, 61-62, 117-118, 141-142, 883-884 and 939-940. Regional planning councils “may now incorporate these channels into their plans for deployable trunked systems provided any region with a T-Band market must give priority to these channels, in that market, to any public safety T-band incumbent seeking to relocate from the T-band,” the bureau said. A trunked radio system is a computer-controlled two-way radio system that allows sharing of relatively few frequency channels among a large group of users.

T-Mobile blasted away at a white paper filed last month at the FCC by Mobile Future, which said economics, not spectrum scarcity, is what has kept carriers like T-Mobile from making bigger investments serving rural America (see 1503170049). The Mobile Future paper was authored by American Rural CEO Diane Smith. “Mobile Future and American Rural falsely represent themselves as populist entities,” T-Mobile said Thursday in a filing in docket 12-268. “They are not. AT&T and Verizon fund Mobile Future’s operations and largely shape its advocacy.” American Rural never before filed in the proceeding and Smith “is also employed by Mobile Future, which, in turn, receives the majority of its financing from AT&T and Verizon,” T-Mobile said. Data released as part of the paper point to the opposite of the conclusions drawn by Mobile Future, T-Mobile said: “The availability of low-band spectrum is central to competition in rural areas because these frequencies largely determine whether, when, how, and where wireless carriers deploy broadband services.” Mobile Future is proud to have among its members the two national carriers serving the most rural subscribers, the group said in response. "With countless analyst reports touting T-Mobile's spectrum holdings and marketplace success, T-Mobile continues to hold much more spectrum per subscriber than any other major player," Mobile Future said. "T-Mobile clearly has one message for Wall Street and another for the FCC. Competition is hard but shooting at the messenger doesn’t change the facts."

Ikea chose P9030 Qi-compliant magnetic induction transmitters from Integrated Device Technology to embed in its furniture and accessories for wireless charging of enabled portable devices, IDT said in a Wednesday announcement. The products will be available this month in Ikea stores throughout North America and Europe, Ikea announced at last month’s Mobile World Congress (see 1503020002). In addition to the furniture, Ikea also has developed a line of charging pads and a wireless charger that consumers can build into furniture themselves using IDT components, IDT said. The P9030 transmitter complies with the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi standard, delivering a 5-watt single-chip in a compact package, IDT said. IDT wireless power transmitters and receivers also have been designed into smartphones, phone accessories, wearables and charging stations, it said.

FirstNet plans a special meeting via teleconference Friday, starting at 10 a.m. EDT, said a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. The FirstNet board is scheduled to consider a third notice on the definition of a “public safety entity” under the law that created FirstNet. Members of the public may listen in by dialing 1-888-997-9859 and using passcode 3572169, FirstNet said. “Due to the limited number of ports, attendance via teleconference will be on a first-come, first-served basis.”