The Edison Electric Institute fired back against arguments by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) and other groups against granting EEI the relief it sought from class-action lawsuits against its members for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. EEI and the American Gas Association said in a February petition that utilities should be able to provide information on planned or unplanned outages, repair work, service cancellation, service restoration and energy efficiency to their customers without risking suits alleging they violated the TCPA (see 1503270020). Allowing the relief requested in the petitions would “legalize many more automated and prerecorded phone calls” to cellphones, NCLC said in comments filed at the FCC last month. “The extent to which this relief should be granted should be analyzed through a filter which examines the impact of so many more calls on the most vulnerable wireless cell phone customers who have limited minutes, especially those low-income customers who rely on the Lifeline program.” EEI countered that the consumer group gets the dynamic of its request wrong. NCLC "just assumes" that energy consumers have little interest in hearing from their electric utilities, EEI said. Electricity isn't an ordinary good or service, the utility group said. “Electricity is a necessity to survive in a modern society: it provides heat, light, and cooling; it is needed to keep food and to cook food; it allows one to connect to the outside world through the internet and through the use of mobile phones; and in rural areas it is often necessary for access to water.” The filings were in docket 02-278.

The Open Technology Institute at New America and Public Knowledge jointly urged the FCC to set aside either one or two vacant TV band channels in every market nationwide for unlicensed use after the TV incentive auction. “The Commission can best optimize the use of TV band spectrum for communication, innovation, job creation, consumer welfare and economic growth more broadly only by ensuring the availability of a substantial number of six megahertz blocks of unlicensed access to TV White Space spectrum in every local market nationwide,” the groups said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268. Wi-Fi generates at least $200 billion in consumer welfare each year in just the U.S., they said. “Yet Wi-Fi never would have flourished without access to a substantial and predictable amount of unlicensed bandwidth in every market nationwide.” Google also backed the proposal. "The preservation of sufficient unlicensed channels is critical to achieving the FCC’s goal of expanding the availability and affordability of unlicensed wireless broadband services, and therefore well worth the small practical impact on broadcasters," the company said.

Sprint said it's raising the price of its $60 unlimited plan to $70 for new customers starting Oct. 16. “At Sprint, we give customers what they want -- and they want the option of unlimited data,” Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure in a Wednesday news release. ”At $70 a month, Sprint still beats the competition. Rather than increase the price without warning, we want to give customers one last chance to take advantage of the $60 rate.” The plan offers unlimited high-speed data, talk and text. Sprint noted that between 2010 and 2014, U.S. mobile data traffic climbed 947 percent.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau sought comment on a petition by Colorado-based Broadnet Teleservices asking the FCC to decide Telephone Consumer Protection Act restrictions don't apply to calls made “by or on behalf of federal, state, and local governments when such calls are made for official purposes.” Broadnet raised the issue in a Sept. 16 petition to the FCC. Absent clarification from the FCC “citizens that rely on their wireless phones as their primary, or only, means of telephone communication will be deprived of important opportunities to engage with their government that wired citizens currently enjoy,” Broadnet said. “Receiving calls from the government with important information is not the type of harm from which Congress was attempting to shield consumers.” Comments are due Oct. 29, replies Nov. 13, in docket 02-278, the bureau said in a Wednesday public notice. The FCC has taken a tough stand on the TCPA, approving an order and declaratory ruling in June that industry critics said would expand the number of TCPA-related law suits (see 1506180046).

Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry and CCA members complained about the potential side effects of what's expected to be an unusually long quiet period before and after the TV incentive auction, said a filing at the FCC. FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Roger Sherman has reassured the industry repeatedly that the FCC will soon provide a road map on permissible discussions and other activities under the agency’s anti-collusion rules (see 1509160057). The “breadth and duration” of the rules “will significantly deter ongoing business activities in the wireless industry, and worse, quell participation in the Incentive Auction by both reverse and forward auction applicants,” the CCA representatives warned. CCA said the quiet period could last as long as a year. “If the Commission cannot reduce the length of the quiet period, it is imperative for the FCC to clarify the scope of the rules and to ensure that their application is as narrowly tailored as possible,” CCA said. “At the very least, the Commission should clarify that the scope of disclosures that need to be made pursuant to the anti-collusion rules is intended to be narrowly tailored to agreements relating to the licenses being auctioned, allow forward auction participants to continue operational agreement negotiations after the quiet period has commenced, and provide additional guidance regarding what agreements would be considered ‘solely operational.’” The group met with officials from the Wireless Bureau and the Incentive Auction Task Force, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 12-268.

Google unveiled two new versions of its Nexus phone, both of which use the Marshmallow mobile platform. The Nexus 6P is the first all-metal-body Nexus phone, built in cooperation with Huawei and crafted from aeronautical-grade aluminum, Google said in a Tuesday blog post. It starts at $499. The Nexus 5X is an updated version of the popular Nexus 5, developed in cooperation with LG, Google said. It starts at $379. They're available for pre-order on the Google Store from several countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and Japan, and come with a free 90-day subscription to Google Play Music, the company said.

The FCC set the comment dates on a proposal to amend rules to provide railroad police with access to public safety interoperability and mutual aid channels. In a May 2014 petition, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council asked the FCC to make railroad police eligible to use public safety interoperability channels (see 1509010044). Comments are due in docket 15-199 Nov. 13, replies Nov. 30. The dates were set in a Tuesday notice in the Federal Register.

If FirstNet moves forward with a request for proposal based on its draft RFP template, there's a “high risk” it won't succeed, public safety consultant Andrew Seybold said Tuesday in a commentary carried by trade publication Urgent Communications. “A partnership is not an acquisition of widgets,” he wrote. “It is made up of two or more entities that believe, by partnering, they can accomplish together what neither could accomplish on its own.” FirstNet’s success is based on its ability to negotiate deals with industry, he said. Network service is not just a product, wrote the consultant. “The real issue is whether the final RFP will be conducive to finding partners, or if it will be just another federal-procurement document demanding product and imposing penalties, if that product is not delivered on time and in working order.”

The Massachusetts Constitution requires a warrant for tracking a person’s location using cell site location information (CSLI), unless law enforcement is searching a time period of six hours or less, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in an opinion in Commonwealth v. Estabrook Monday. Attorneys for Adam Bradley and Jason Estabrook argued that law enforcement shouldn't have been able to search or seize their phone records without first obtaining a warrant (see 1505070048). Arguing on behalf of the commonwealth, Jamie Michael Charles said because law enforcement knew the time of the murder they believed Bradley and Estabrook committed, they collected two weeks' worth of cellphone information but searched only a six-hour time frame around the time of the murder, so a warrant wasn’t needed. The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have written amicus briefs asking the court to close the six-hours-or-less loophole in the state’s warrant requirements for cellphones as authorized under Commonwealth v. Augustine (see 1504270048). The court partially agreed with the ACLU and EFF, saying the commonwealth’s request of two weeks of CSLI violates the state constitution, even if just six hours' worth of CSLI is used during a trial. In a blog post Monday, EFF Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker applauded that part of the court’s opinion, saying, “Too often law enforcement and intelligence agencies successfully argue that they should be able to access large amounts of private information as long as they only use a smaller amount.” However, Crocker expressed concern with the court’s decision not to end the six-hour loophole authorized in Augustine as well as the court’s decision to add a footnote in its opinion saying the exception to the warrant requirement for CSLI applies only to phone call CSLI and not registration CSLI. “Why should you have more protection when you walk around playing Words with Friends than when you actually exchange some words with a friend over the phone,” Crocker said.

The FCC released a memorandum of understanding with the Colombian Ministry of Information Technology and Communications agreeing to cooperate to fight mobile device theft. To “foster a vibrant and legitimate market for mobile devices,” rules need to “ensure consumers are protected from purchasing stolen devices,” the Monday memo said. The U.S. and Colombia said they plan to work with carriers to block activation or use of devices that have been identified as being stolen. They also pledged to take steps to disrupt the market for stolen handsets and share data on stolen handsets with other nations.