Wireless carriers can’t completely control how third parties use location and other personal data of consumers, top carriers said. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, on Thursday released the carriers’ responses to the lawmakers’ inquiry on customer location tracking (CD March 31 p15). Also Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee announced a hearing next month on mobile privacy and consumer protection, becoming the second Senate panel to do so. The developments on Capitol Hill came one day after Apple said it would fix an iPhone “bug” that stores users’ location logs (CD April 28 p5).

The risks faced by 700 MHz lower A-block licensees unless the FCC acts to clear TV Channel 51 were stressed by CTIA, the Rural Cellular Association and wireless carriers large and small, in filings at the commission. In a March petition, CTIA and RCA jointly asked the FCC to prohibit the future licensing of TV stations on Channel 51, freeze all applications for new or modified broadcast facilities on the channel and accelerate channel clearing. Comments were due Wednesday.

Delivering IP video to tablet devices is just the first step in Time Warner Cable’s adoption of IP video technology, which it will eventually expand to smart-TVs and other video display devices, said CEO Glenn Britt. “Although the initial application was for the iPad … not everybody has an iPad,” he said. “The bigger story here is about the TVs, which are all going to be receiving our video service in this way,” he said.

Sprint Nextel posted a Q1 loss of $439 million, cutting its losses nearly in half from the same period of last year. During an earnings call Thursday, CEO Dan Hesse continued his sharp criticism of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, claiming a strong third competitor is necessary.

GENEVA -- Questions about the suspended use of assignments in the Zohreh-2 satellite network may fuel pressure on the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference to tighten a regulatory provision with a deadline and other limits for notification, Francois Rancy, the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) bureau’s director, told us in an interview. The BR will meet May 18 to 20 with officials from Iran, France and Saudi Arabia so two satellites worth several hundred million dollars can coexist, he said.

The Supreme Court Wednesday ruled in favor of AT&T in a case examining whether a state can prohibit wireless contracts that allow only arbitration, not class-action lawsuits. A divided court, split along ideological lines, confirmed that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) places sharp limits on these lawsuits. Justices heard arguments on AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion in November (CD Nov 10 p1).

Using reverse auctions to speed up broadband deployment is contrary to the 1996 Telecom Act and could “blow up” the FCC’s ambitious Universal Service Fund reforms, U.S. Cellular Senior Director Grant Spellmeyer said during an FCC workshop Wednesday. Section 214 of the act gives states the power to designate eligible telecommunication carriers and USF is otherwise under Title II, Spellmeyer said. Reverse auctions fail both tests by reducing ETCs to a single carrier and opening up universal service cash to non-Title II carriers. “We think the FCC needs to stop, go to the Joint Board, and get a recommendation for broadband support,” he said. “Sections 214 and 254 are very clear. You can’t ignore all that. This is going to blow up if we skip all that stuff."

An FCC auction of 144 FM licenses garnered muted bidding, with 35 percent of the construction permits failing after three rounds Wednesday to get the minimum bid set by the agency. Meanwhile, deals to sell radio stations continue to be fewer than in previous years, and some industry officials said that’s borne out by the auction results. There are some positive signs for AM and FM mergers and acquisitions, with the market for deals for stations generating cash flow picking up, they said. Radio M&A activity has been declining for years, from a height in 1999 of $28.5 billion to transactions in the hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years (CD Aug 30 p1).

The battle lines formed more clearly Wednesday over whether the FCC should approve AT&T’s application to buy T-Mobile. Four of AT&T’s main competitors and two associations representing smaller carriers formally asked the FCC to consolidate its review of the merger with a review of AT&T’s proposal to buy $1.9 billion in spectrum licenses from Qualcomm. Separately, five public interest groups asked the FCC to reject the Qualcomm purchase outright, or at least consolidate the review of the two transactions. AT&T and T-Mobile sought review of their merger in filings at the FCC last week (CD April 22 p1).

An NAB-backed study contending there’s no spectrum shortage gets many points wrong, said the FCC and several groups seeking to repurpose airwaves used by TV stations for wireless broadband. A spokesman for the commission emailed reporters with a long list of shortcomings the agency contends are contained in a report by industry consultant Uzoma Onyeije. Within hours, the CEA and Wireless Communications Association joined in on the criticism. Broadcasters, an “infrastructure dinosaur,” incorrectly try to downplay the coming growth of wireless data usage, CEA Vice President Julie Kearney said.