Broadcom efforts to buy Qualcomm date to April 2016 and involved talks with a Qualcomm senior management team that initially showed signs of being receptive to a deal, said a preliminary proxy statement filed Monday at the SEC. Broadcom last week began courting Qualcomm shareholders to vote for 11 directors that would be friendly toward approving Broadcom’s buy (see 1712060065). Qualcomm didn’t comment Monday. Broadcom board member Kenneth Hao, managing director of the Silver Lake venture capital firm, was an initial go-between when he arranged two meetings with Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and his Qualcomm counterpart Steve Mollenkopf in late-summer 2016, said the proxy. The meetings ended with Mollenkopf and Chief Financial Officer George Davis indicating “they would be assembling a larger team to evaluate a potential combination transaction with Broadcom and would be in touch ... once they were ready,” the proxy said. Those were the last face-to-face discussions, it said. After Qualcomm's board unanimously rejected the bid Nov. 13, Tan left Mollenkopf a voicemail that “reiterated that Broadcom stood ready to engage with Qualcomm,” it said. He texted Mollenkopf “asking for a time to speak,” it said. Mollenkopf texted back Qualcomm's announcement “spoke for itself,” it said.

AT&T said it launched real-time text service as an alternative to the text technology long used by the deaf and hard of hearing to communicate. FCC members approved an order a year ago on a common standard for the transition from TTY to RTT (see 1612150048). The service works on Apple or Android smartphones with updated operating systems. RTT alleviates many of TTY’s shortcomings, blogged Linda Vandeloop, AT&T assistant vice president-federal regulatory. “Each text character is transmitted and received in near real time, allowing for a conversational flow of communication, simultaneously with voice. This allows for a two-way conversation without requiring turn taking.”

The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s decision compelling arbitration in a class-action lawsuit against AT&T Mobility (case 16-16915). The plaintiffs alleged AT&T falsely advertised their mobile service plans as unlimited when actually the carrier slowed data speeds after certain usage levels. AT&T moved to compel arbitration and the court agreed. “There is no state action here,” wrote Judge Richard Tallman for the 9th Circuit in a Monday opinion. “AT&T’s actions must be attributable to the government for state action to exist.” The judge and two other disagreed with plaintiff arguments there's state action whenever a party asserts a direct constitutional challenge to a permissive law under the 1996 decision in Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. FCC. Also, AT&T isn’t a state actor under the Federal Arbitration Act “encouragement” test, the judge said.

Silicon Labs' buy of Sigma Designs and its Z-Wave business for $282 million is contingent on Sigma selling its smart TV unit, said executives from the acquirer on a Friday investor call. If certain closing conditions aren’t met, Silicon Labs will buy Sigma’s Z-Wave business only for $240 million, subject to Sigma shareholders’ approval, it said. On any divestiture of Sigma's set-top box business, Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle said the company is “quite comfortable” with the stability and profitability of the broadcast business over time. “While that is something that was discussed, that’s not something that’s in the cards,” he said. Sigma is in discussions to divest its media connectivity business comprising G.hn solutions, HomePlug AV and HomePNA, which Silicon Labs Chief Financial Officer John Hollister called a “covenant and imperative,” not a condition. Silicon Labs is evaluating Sigma Designs’ mobile IoT initiative, said Hollister. The CEO said IoT, the connected world and home automation devices with voice control have "a large tailwind.” The Z-Wave protocol is “sub-gigahertz,” while ZigBee, Thread and Bluetooth are 2.4 GHz, he noted.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and Broadcom stressed in meetings at the FCC why the agency should move forward on key 6 GHz spectrum as part of its actions on mid-band spectrum. “We discussed the importance of the 6 GHz band to unlicensed broadband investment and innovation, as well as approaches to protect incumbent licensees from harmful interference,” said a filing in docket 17-183. The executives met with Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp and aides to the commissioners, except Brendan Carr. “A set of FCC rules requiring interference-protection mechanisms tailored to the environment in each 6 GHz sub-band will protect incumbents, and ... the Commission should reject calls to clear portions of the band of incumbents,” the filing said.

The FCC is right to attempt to bring twilight towers into compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act “so that they can be used in the future for collocation, and thus reduce the need to build new towers” but still should require reviews, the National Trust for Historic Preservation said in docket 17-79. A draft order is set for a vote at commissioners' Thursday meeting (see 1711220026). “The preferred approach would be a special, streamlined Section 106 review for the Twilight Towers themselves, with an emphasis on minimizing and mitigating any adverse effects, which would then leave the towers certified for eligibility,” the trust said. "There is nothing that currently prevents tower owners from seeking retroactive Section 106 review, and indeed, many towers have gone through such a process.” The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers also raised questions. Tribes often don’t know where the twilight towers are, said a filing. “Industry and the FCC continue to be unwilling to share the locations of the Twilight Towers with the preservation community and Tribal Nations cannot make informed decisions without that.”

BlackBerry and Qualcomm announced a strategic collaboration to develop and produce connected vehicle platforms. The nonexclusive relationship pairs select Qualcomm hardware platforms with BlackBerry’s QNX software for use in virtual cockpit controllers, telematics (including eCall and Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything technology), electronic control gateways, digital instrument clusters and infotainment systems, said the companies. They agreed to optimize BlackBerry’s over-the-air software and secure credential management services for use with select Qualcomm Snapdragon modems. It builds on a decade-long relationship and aims to accelerate delivery of next-generation automotive platforms, they said.

Hilton is beta-testing Connected Room, a “first-of-its-kind" for guests to control a stay from mobile devices, it said Thursday. It's being beta-tested in the Hilton Garden Inn Memphis/Wolfchase Galleria, a spokeswoman told us. The model will begin to scale “rapidly” to hotels in the U.S. next year, the company said. Guests can load streaming media and other accounts to in-room TVs. A video in the news release shows CNBC, ESPN, Food Network, Showtime, YouTube and TuneIn. Consumer acceptance of digital room keys shows guests want connected capabilities that are simple, the representative said, and conventional controls must "remain functional at all times."

The Colorado State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) is the latest state group to raise questions about a draft proposal by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to change rules for twilight towers (see 1712050044). “Nothing in the existing Agreement or regulations precludes a licensee from making use of any existing tower or facility for the purpose of expanding capacity, service, or technology,” SHPO said in docket 17-79. “Placement of these facilities is almost always driven by demand and the limits of technology, so we do not believe that this Program Comment will greatly ‘reduce the need for new towers,’ or reduce adverse effects on historic properties.” A problem is recordkeeping by carriers, which should be standardized, the SHPO said: “Each carrier uses its own system of names, codes, and geographical information to track towers, and these are not standardized.”

CTIA wants a change to the draft commercial mobile radio services presumption order set for a vote at Thursday’s commissioners' meeting. The draft, which has gotten little attention since circulated by Chairman Ajit Pai last month, would remove the CMRS presumption and instead allow licensees to rely on statutory definitions to identify the nature and regulatory treatment of their mobile services based on how it uses licensed spectrum, to eliminate an “outdated and incomplete list of certain services meeting the statutory definition” mobile service. “The Draft Order correctly recognizes this trend toward regulatory flexibility and ends the disparate treatment of similar services in different frequency bands,” CTIA said in docket 16-240. “CTIA supports this approach, which will not only harmonize the requirements for wireless licensing, but will further the Commission’s goal of eliminating outdated and unnecessary regulatory mandates.” It said the order makes “corrective edits” to rule sections 4.3 and 9.3, but should make similar edits to 1.907.