Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son told the Competitive Carriers Association trade show Thursday small carriers “need to fight back” against the Verizon Wireless-AT&T wireless carrier “duopoly” that’s “taking over our country.” The top two U.S. wireless carriers had 73 percent of postpaid wireless subscribers in 2013, up from 56 percent five years earlier, according to statistics Son cited from the GSM Association. During the same period, the two carriers’ combined share of enterprise customers rose to 80 percent from 51 percent in 2008, Son said. “What happens in the next five years?” he said. Son has previously used similar arguments in arguing for further consolidation in the U.S. wireless industry, but did not address Sprint’s rumored interest in buying No. 4 U.S. carrier T-Mobile US in his remarks Thursday.

Opposition to Comcast’s buy of Time Warner Cable is about at the level the companies expected before they unveiled the $45 billion deal, Comcast Senior Vice President David Cohen said Thursday, during a taping of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, set to air this weekend.

A merger of Dish Network and DirecTV would have a very tough time getting a nod from the FCC and antitrust regulators, some media observers and analysts said. Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen approached DirecTV CEO Mike White with an interest in merging the two direct broadcast satellite companies, a Bloomberg report said this week. Last year, Ergen said a partnership with DirecTV is a “doable deal” (CD Aug 2/13 p9).

President Barack Obama wants to end the Patriot Act Section 215 phone surveillance program as it exists now, he confirmed Thursday. In a January speech (CD Jan 21 p1), Obama asked the Justice Department and intelligence officials to draft a plan to move the bulk collected phone metadata away from the hands of the government to either the phone companies or a third party. He asked for such a suggested path by this Friday, when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order authorizing phone surveillance expires.

Work to create incentives for participating in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s voluntary cybersecurity framework is ongoing. At a NIST workshop for representatives of state and local governments Thursday, a federal official said the effort is looking at ways to help the governments hire qualified information technology staff, find low-cost cybersecurity programs to use and share best practices.

The Senate Judiciary Committee deferred action Thursday on the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720), with Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., moving to table consideration until next Thursday. The committee had not reached consensus on a manager’s amendment that would constitute a compromise version of the bill, he said. Stakeholders had anticipated Wednesday that the committee would delay consideration of S-1720 in part because, while a deal appeared to be close to completion, negotiations were still ongoing (CD March 27 p13). Senators from both parties said during the committee meeting that they were optimistic they were close to a deal on S-1720, thus far the Senate’s marquee legislation aimed at combating patent abuse.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faced lawmakers again Thursday, this time addressing challenges such as rural broadband, tribal consultation and the pressing congressional deadline on the implementation of positive train control (PTC) technology, at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government hearing on the $375.38 million for the FCC that the White House requested in its FY 2015 budget proposal (http://fcc.us/1hNuRs2). Wheeler committed to working with a Senate Republican on larger telecom discussions, as well as the urgency of the PTC implementation deadline -- December 31, 2015.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Comcast stuck out as an atypical attendee at the Home Technology Specialists of America spring conference, which attracted some 210 vendors, dealers, journalists and industry association members. It’s the second appearance at a custom electronics event for Comcast, which attended CEDIA Expo last fall. That event calls itself the “leading tradeshow in the residential electronic systems industry."

Action from Congress on liability protections and improvements to federal hiring will aid the Department of Homeland Security in its work to strengthen public-private partnerships on cybersecurity, said Phyllis Schneck, DHS deputy undersecretary-cybersecurity, during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday. The hearing focused on how DHS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and critical infrastructure entities have been implementing President Barack Obama’s 2013 cybersecurity executive order. NIST released its “Version 1.0” Cybersecurity Framework in mid-February, while DHS began to encourage voluntary industry use of the framework at the same time through its Critical Infrastructure Cyber Community program (CD Feb 13 p5).

Service rules for the AWS-3 auction were in flux Wednesday, with an FCC vote on the rules slated for the agency’s meeting Monday. Small carriers appear to be winning in their fight to get more AWS-3 spectrum sold in smaller license sizes, rather than the paired 10 x 10 MHz licenses favored by AT&T and Verizon. Dish Network and advocates of bidirectional sharing also are likely losers in the revised order, FCC officials said.