Industry will need to move to 5G in the next five years or so to deal with rapid expansion in data demands on wireless networks, said Norimasa Sugiura, an official at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communication Technology. Sugiura spoke Wednesday at a Wireless Telecommunications Association policy workshop at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. His institute is an agency of the Japanese government.

Many eyes will be on Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) reauthorization during the lame-duck session of Congress in November and December, Capitol Hill staffers said Wednesday at an event hosted by the FCBA in Washington. They suggested many questions remain about how STELA reauthorization will be resolved. The staffers, representing Democrats and Republicans in both chambers, also predicted an active year of more overhaul and FCC oversight starting in 2015.

T-Mobile added the most branded postpaid customers in its history in Q3, with 1.4 million net adds, the carrier said in an earnings release. The carrier said it added 10 million customers in six quarters and 6.2 million so far in 2014. But T-Mobile also slipped back into the red, with a loss of 12 cents per share in Q3, compared to a gain of 48 cents in Q2 and a loss of 5 cents in the year-ago quarter. Revenue came in at $7.35 billion -- up 9.9 percent over the same quarter last year.

The FCC Wireless Bureau is focusing heavily on spectrum, infrastructure deployment and competition, said Chief Roger Sherman. Under Chairman Tom Wheeler, the bureau has been moving at a very fast pace and taking on many complex issues, Sherman said Tuesday at a Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) event in Washington. There are many opportunities in the marketplace that fit into the bureau’s agenda, following the H block and AWS-3 auctions, and the wireless infrastructure proceeding, that can help promote innovations, he said. There also are opportunities to remove barriers to the deployment of wireless infrastructure, to make more spectrum available “in new and innovative ways,” and to promote and protect the competitive marketplace, he said.

Multiple state agencies say they believe FirstNet should give maximum possible latitude to the states to develop localized definitions for their segments of the planned national public safety broadband network (PSBN) but also encouraged FirstNet to adopt a federal standard for its request for proposals (RFP) process. Telcos and industry groups provided mixed opinions on both issues. FirstNet had sought comment from stakeholders on its proposed interpretations of the 2012 Spectrum Act, which established FirstNet to create a nationwide PSBN, to inform forthcoming RFPs and the creation of network rules and policies.

Public interest groups and New York politicians criticized FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the rest of the commissioners Monday for not attending a public hearing in Brooklyn on the commission’s net neutrality NPRM and its review of Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, a Democrat, said she had sought an FCC-sponsored hearing on net neutrality and Comcast/TWC in the New York area, but the commission hadn’t “taken us up on our offer.” Commissioner Ajit Pai chaired a net neutrality field hearing in College Station, Texas, last week (see 1410210049).

Consumers need to keep in mind the high value of their smartphones and protect them like they're a wad of cash, said John Breyault, vice president-public policy at the National Consumers League, during an FCC tutorial Tuesday. The agency, which has made device theft a priority under Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1406200065), provided practical advice to consumers during the session at FCC headquarters in Washington.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a proposal Tuesday to change the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor to be “technology neutral,” he said in a blog post Tuesday. As expected (see 1410220044), the draft proposal would open the definition up to include providers of linear online video, the blog post said. The change would give the new MVPDs “the same access to programming owned by cable operators and the same ability to negotiate to carry broadcast TV stations that Congress gave to satellite systems in order to ensure competitive video markets,” Wheeler said, referring to program access and retransmission consent rules.

A circulating FCC order would resolve a dispute arising from the USF/intercarrier compensation order by requiring long-distance providers to pay access charges to over-the-top VoIP providers, a commission official told us Tuesday. The order would determine that VoIP providers and carriers they partner with are entitled to the same compensation as others when they exchange voice traffic, the official said.

The FTC’s lawsuit against AT&T for allegedly misleading its customers over promised unlimited data programs and subsequently throttling some of those users’ data arrangements has put the agency squarely in the mobile regulatory space, said industry lawyers in interviews. The suit announced Tuesday alleges AT&T throttled or slowed data speeds of millions of unlimited data users since October 2011, sometimes after the consumer had used only 2 GB of data. AT&T throttled its unlimited data plan users more than 25 million times, affecting 3.5 million unique users, said the suit. The FTC is seeking injunctive relief against AT&T and expects restitution for affected consumers to be worth millions of dollars, said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a conference call Tuesday. The carrier disagreed with the allegations.