Verizon is trying to get the balance right on buying spectrum versus densifying its network, Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis told analysts Thursday as it turned around subscriber losses. “We continue to look at the trade-off,” Ellis said: The carrier wants to find “the most efficient way to add the capacity that we need.” Based on the cost of spectrum in some markets, it’s cheaper there to densify the network through small cells and other build outs, he said. “Cost of densification, just like any technology, has come down,” Ellis said. The company continues to add spectrum through buys in the secondary market when it's “priced at the right level,” he said. Verizon lost 398,000 retail postpaid wireless subscribers in the first six weeks of 2017 before it launched an unlimited offering (see 1704200044). Q2, Verizon reported 590,000 postpaid smartphone net adds, with retail postpaid churn of 0.94 percent and postpaid phone churn of 0.7 percent. Ellis said it's very “confident” in low- and mid-band spectrum holdings, remaining interested in the shared 3.5 GHz band. "Verizon reignited its growth engine in the quarter," CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement. MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said results overall impressed, beating analyst estimates. "The meme that perhaps best captures the current investor Zeitgeist about the U.S. telecoms is that 'AT&T is playing chess while Verizon is playing checkers,'" Moffett wrote, the thinking being that "at least AT&T, with its string of vertical media moves and diversification, HAS a strategy. Verizon is, to mix metaphors, lost in the woods." But Verizon is showing it also may have a strategy, he said.

AT&T said its decision to join June 12's net neutrality "Day of Action" (see 1707120017) "confounded" organizers. Despite "years" of AT&T open internet support, there was "much seething" from "the Fight for the Future crowd," accusing the telco of "a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, all because we share a common goal but do not embrace common means," blogged Senior Vice President Joan Marsh Wednesday. "Things got weirder" as Twitter effectively blocked tweets of an AT&T blog and other content for several hours, which Twitter blamed on an anti-spam filter "glitch." Twitter told us "the account was erroneously caught in Twitter's anti-spam filters and the glitch was fixed." Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Twitter should “partner with Congress on a real solution to codify open internet principles. ... It is not difficult to imagine the outrage that would have occurred had an [ISP] experienced a 'glitch' that blocked Twitter” or other tech firms that favor keeping the rules. Net neutrality supporters “do not need a day of action to get Republicans to the negotiation table” on a bipartisan bill, the senators wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “We sit ready and waiting for a real, factually informed discussion.” House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., plans a Sept. 7 hearing with the heads of Google parent Alphabet, AT&T, Netflix and others aimed at promoting net neutrality legislation amid perceptions of lack of appetite among Democrats to negotiate (see 1707130063 and 1707250059).

Apartment companies asked the FCC not to propose rules restricting their ability to sign "exclusive marketing, bulk billing, revenue sharing or exclusive wiring agreements" with communications providers. AvalonBay Communities, Equity Residential, Related Cos., Trammel Crow Residential and others shared National Multifamily Housing Council's concerns that regulating such agreements could "raise prices, result in degraded services, decrease competition and slow broadband deployment," said their comments, one of several that trickled in after others were posted this week in docket 17-142 on an inquiry into the multiple tenant environment (MTE) broadband market (see 1707250050). The 31 companies said they have about 1.29 million apartment homes; most of their buildings offer more than one video or broadband service option; and their "unique relationships with service providers that begin prior to building construction" partially "defray the multi-million dollar expense of installing and maintaining the wiring and other infrastructure necessary to provide broadband, video, voice, security and other services." But Public Knowledge urged the FCC to move quickly "to improve choice, competition, affordability, service quality, and deployment of broadband services" in MTEs, including by prohibiting exclusive marketing, bulk billing and exclusive wiring arrangements, revenue sharing agreements and other contractual provisions that limit broadband choice. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Next Century Cities backed local ordinances, such as San Francisco's Article 52, giving MTE occupants competitive choices.

American Oversight asked a court to force the FCC to release documents about agency leadership contacts with telecom industry parties on efforts to roll back net neutrality regulation. The group said the FCC "repeatedly delayed" releasing records in response to two Freedom of Information Act requests in April seeking information on meetings and correspondence among Chairman Ajit Pai, five senior staffers, Congress and telecom companies. “The FCC has made it clear that they’re ignoring feedback from the general public, so we’re going to court to find out who they’re actually listening to about Net Neutrality," said Austin Evers, AO executive director, in a release Wednesday. "If the Trump administration is going to let industry lobbyists rewrite the rules of the Internet for millions of Americans, we’re going to make them do it in full view of the public.” A complaint seeking injunctive relief from U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the commission violated FOIA time limits and improperly withheld records (American Oversight v. FCC, No. 17-1492). The FCC didn't comment. Another 167,669 public comments were posted Wednesday in net neutrality docket 17-108 as of late afternoon, bringing the cumulative total to 12.6 million. Tuesday saw 1.27 million comments posted after only 203,519 were posted Monday. The commission said 1.5 million comments filed over the weekend created a backlog (see 1707240070).

Sinclair and Tribune haven’t sufficiently explained why contracts and other information requested by Dish Network, Public Knowledge and the American Cable Association aren’t relevant to a public interest analysis, said Dish, PK and ACA in a joint reply to Sinclair and Tribune opposition (see 1707200048) in FCC docket 17-179. NTCA, Common Cause and networks supported the request (see 1707210050). Sinclair and Tribune’s submissions “include no documentary sources or affidavits that would allow their confirmation,” said ACA, Dish and PK. Their application “concedes that, as it stands, it violates several provisions of the Commission’s ownership rules, without offering a concrete plan for how to cure these violations,” they said. Though the combining broadcasters said the information request is procedurally out of order, Dish, ACA and PK said they're informing the FCC for what information it should request, not upending procedure. “The Commission cannot conclude that the transaction is in the public interest based on the record as it currently exists,” the joint filing said. Arguments that a 2015 court battle over confidential documents about AT&T/Direct TV and other MVPD deals shows retransmission consent contracts shouldn’t be part of the information available to third parties during deal review are incorrect, said Dish, ACA and PK. CBS v. FCC “does not say that retransmission consent agreements are off limits; it simply holds that the showing made by the Commission in that case was insufficient,” they said. The information initially requested by Dish, ACA, PK and the others is “not exhaustive,” the joint filing said.

AT&T launched 5G service in Indianapolis and Austin, and expects to be in 20 markets by year's end, executives said on a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. It's testing LTE licensed assisted access -- combining licensed and unlicensed spectrum -- in San Francisco, where users are seeing 750 Mbps peak speeds -- and it will expand testing in San Francisco and into Indianapolis in coming weeks. It said it still expects to close on its Time Warner buy by year's end, and its integration team is close to done with its advertising and bundling plan. For the quarter, AT&T had consolidated revenue of $39.8 billion, and had 2.3 million wireless net adds in the U.S. and 8,000 total broadband net adds. It said it had total video subscription losses of 199,000, with growth at DirecTV Now offsetting some traditional TV subscriber declines. CEO Randall Stephenson said AT&T soon will unveil the names of additional states that agreed to opt in to FirstNet, beyond the five revealed so far. “The timeline has been set and the opt-in process is underway,” he said. States are eager to get started on construction of the network “and so are we,” he said. Stephenson said AT&T will look at all of its options as construction starts.

Securus objected to an inmate calling comment by FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn at a Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) meeting last week. A Clyburn aide told us Tuesday she misspoke. Securus CEO Richard Smith said he was surprised to see Clyburn reported to have said some families were charged "as much as $25 per minute" for local inmate calling service (ICS) calls. "I hope that your remarks were reported inaccurately, because I am quite sure that no inmate provider has ever charged a per-minute rates anywhere near that level for any kind of call, let alone local. It has to be an error or an extreme outlier," he said in a letter to Clyburn posted in docket 12-375. At the BDAC meeting Thursday, Clyburn criticized exclusive ICS arrangements that she said imposed high costs on inmate families (see 1707200014). The Clyburn spokesman said she "was attempting to highlight the egregious practice of charging almost $25 for a 15-minute call. She inadvertently stated that said call would cost $25 per minute. Nonetheless, this rate and reports of calls being as high as $14 per minute highlight the fact that inmates can and are paying several thousand percent more than a non-incarcerated person.” Meanwhile, Securus, SCRS Acquisition and the Wright Petitioners continued to exchange fire on the ICS provider's planned sale to SCRS, which is under FCC review. Securus and SCRS disputed the inmate family advocates' previous arguments, said a filing Tuesday on a meeting with staffers for Chairman Ajit Pai and the Wireline Bureau. But the Wright Petitioners filed further information they said supports an FCC "pause" to investigate whether certain Securus practices violated the law. The parties have made various filings in recent days in docket 17-126.

Nine rural and agricultural groups wrote FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in opposition to proposals to reserve vacant channels in the TV band for unlicensed use, said a letter by American Agri-Women, the National Farmers Union, National Association of Wheat Growers and others. “This proposal will only serve to deprive our members of critical access to local broadcast television coverage,” said the groups. The vacant channel proposal would make it tough for low-power TV stations and translators to find new homes, which disproportionately will affect rural areas, the letter said. “Losing television translators and LPTVs would have a devastating impact on our members, as these services are often our only means of receiving free, over the air local broadcast television service.” The groups previously filed against the vacant channel proposals in 2013 and 2015, NAB noted in an email to reporters flagging the letter. NAB has opposed the vacant channel proposal (see 1707050048).

The FCC electronic comment filing system (ECFS) posted few filings by late Monday afternoon. We were able to view only a few routine filings, and no substantive comments or filings from outside parties in the main view of all incoming non-express documents. ECFS "is not experiencing problems receiving comments," said a commission spokesman. "Approximately 1.5 million comments were submitted over the weekend, and are being processed today. All comments submitted over the weekend and on Monday will be posted by Tuesday.” The system was slow to post filings last week, which included almost 2.8 million filings in the open internet docket.

Net neutrality "Day of Action" groups formed a "Team Internet" to fight the FCC's plan to "gut" its regulations and to counter congressional threats to an open internet, said a Free Press release Monday. Team Internet will employ a "distributed organizing model" used by the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to help individuals "self-organize and defend Net Neutrality at the local, state and federal levels," it said, citing organizers as Demand Progress, Fight for the Future and Free Press Action Fund. Meanwhile, the Phoenix Center said it found "numerous fatal flaws" in a paper by Internet Association Chief Economist Christopher Hooton on investment effects of the FCC's open internet regime. Hooton's paper uses "fabricated investment data" and investment projections instead of actual data, said a Phoenix release, which cited a paper by its own chief economist George Ford: If anything, Hooton’s analysis "is a further indictment of the FCC’s Net Neutrality policies ostensibly intended to spur increased broadband deployment via the Commission’s 'virtuous circle' theory of investment." The IA didn't comment.