Representatives of the newly formed SaveWirelessChoice coalition met with Priscilla Delgado Argeris, aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, to explain the group’s priorities, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 12-268. “Conduct the incentive auction in early 2016, as planned, to meet burgeoning consumer demand for wireless broadband services,” the filing said. “Ensure that the quantity and quality of the spectrum reserve is sufficient to promote greater broadband competition and increased bidder certainty.”

Lawyers for True Wireless defended the FCC’s Lifeline program in a meeting with FCC officials, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 09-197. The carrier primarily offers Lifeline service in five states, according to its website. “Much of the criticism of the Lifeline program cannot be supported by the evidence, which shows that the program is decreasing in size and has an extraordinarily low rate of erroneous payments under the federal government’s own … standard,” True Wireless said.

One mechanism that operating systems use to mediate developer access to resources is permission-based access control, which asks the user to decide which resources an application can access, wrote FTC Privacy and Identity Protection Division attorney Nithan Sannappa in a blog post Thursday. The usability of permissions has been widely debated in the security community, he said, because researchers have noted users may become habituated to run-time warnings, making them ineffective. Developers have observed that run-time dialogues in mobile operating systems can be similarly problematic since an application “usually barrages users with a stack of dialogs on its first launch,” which can lead to the user “carelessly dismissing all of them without reading them,” Sannappa said. The risk of habituation prompted Google and Microsoft to implement install-time permissions in Android and Windows Phone so users wouldn’t say "OK" or ignore every dialogue shown, he said. “Despite a history of usability concerns, permissions appear to be a useful tool in increasing transparency and encouraging developers to adhere to the principle of least privilege,” Sannappa said. “The Commission has long supported the idea of layered disclosures presented in a context that is useful for consumers,” he said. “From this perspective, permissions in mobile operating systems are clearly an improvement over the opacity of traditional operating systems, which often led to disclosures buried in lengthy legal documents.” Increasing the usability and efficacy of permissions remains an important challenge to address, he said. “To minimize habituation and increase user comprehension, mobile operating systems should only ask users to make security decisions when information flows defy user expectations,” Sannappa said. “By providing incentives and opportunities for developers to adhere to the principle of least privilege, mobile operating systems can help minimize the situations in which users must confront such information flows,” he said. “And by providing greater context for access requests, mobile operating systems can help users make informed decisions about such information flows.”

Verizon said as it achieved a goal set in 2010 to collect by the end of 2015 2 million pounds of electronic waste in communities it serves. The 2 million pounds collected for recycling over the past five years is equivalent to the weight of 500 average cars, or roughly 50,000 cathode ray tube computer screens, it said Thursday. The company has set another five-year goal to collect 2 million more pounds of electronic waste by 2020. Verizon adheres to a zero-landfill objective for e-waste with all materials it collects reused or recycled so they don't end up in a landfill, the company said. Its recycling rallies also benefit Verizon's HopeLine program, which donates working mobile phones from recycling programs to domestic violence prevention and support organizations. More than 9 million wireless phones have been collected through the program since 2001, it said.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council is seeking volunteers for an Interference Protection Working Group, it said Thursday. “This Working Group will focus on interference protection and spectrum sharing issues as they arise,” NPSTC said. “The Working Group will provide the Spectrum Management Committee with recommendations on policy issues involving protection of public safety spectrum from interference and on relevant issues which arise regarding spectrum sharing.”

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA) and Pacific DataVision, which does business as pdvWireless said they're pleased the FCC sought comment on their proposed rules for a private enterprise broadband allocation in the 900 MHz band (see 1505130022). “EWA and pdvWireless have listened to feedback and comments from affected entities and these proposed rules are intended to be responsive to their concerns,” said EWA President Mark Crosby in a news release. “The rules are based, wherever possible, on procedures and regulations adopted by the FCC for realignments in other spectrum bands and seek to balance incumbents’ rights with public policy goals of using spectrum more efficiently with new technology.” The commission notice “continues the momentum towards building a complete record on which the FCC can consider the realignment proposal,” said Morgan O’Brien, pdvWireless vice chairman.

Crown Castle agreed to sell Australian subsidiary CCAL to a consortium of investors led by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets for an aggregate price of about $1.6 billion, the seller said in a news release Thursday. The deal is expected to be completed this quarter, it said. Crown Castle said it will likely use net proceeds to finance its previously announced acquisition of Sunesys and for general corporate purposes, including the repayment of debt.

AT&T and Verizon are more spectrum-constrained major carriers, per subscriber, than Sprint and T-Mobile, Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner said in a report Thursday. Verizon has 1.02 hertz per connection and AT&T 1.18 Hz/c, Entner wrote. T-Mobile has 1.37 Hz/c and Sprint 3.64 Hz/c. “T-Mobile, as it correctly boasts in its advertising, has more capacity per subscriber than Verizon and AT&T, with capacity per subscriber serving as a proxy for amount of spectrum the company has per subscriber,” he said. “T-Mobile has 34 percent more spectrum per subscriber than Verizon, and 16 percent more than AT&T. By comparison, Sprint has 2.6x to 3.6x times more than Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile.” The data explains why Sprint and T-Mobile have sat out various FCC auctions, he said. “Neither company faced an immediate need for more capacity and could not make a business case for spending money to buy spectrum at the time various auctions were being held.”

AT&T warned the FCC that without changes to its designated entity rules, bidders could continue to game the system in future auctions, in comments filed Thursday at the FCC. On Monday, AT&T and small carriers, proposed revisions to the DE program (see 1505110048). The AWS-3 auction raised new questions about the DE program as a result of Dish Network’s use of two DEs to attempt to buy $13.3 billion worth of licenses for $10 billion (see 1501300051), which Dish has repeatedly defended as being within FCC rules. “It is clear that these rules are no longer serving their intended purpose -- to benefit true small businesses to ensure diversity in spectrum ownership,” AT&T said. “Without major reform of the DE rules, such gamesmanship could be repeated in future auctions. AT&T believes that the Commission should adopt changes aimed at ensuring that designated entity benefits inure only to true small businesses and new entrants.” The rules the FCC developed should be “clear, readily understood, easy to administer, and free from loopholes that jeopardize auction integrity,” the carrier said. The filing was made in docket 14-70.

FirstNet held an industry day Thursday in Reston, Virginia, at which staff sought to answer basic questions from public safety officials and others involved in the launch of the network. “This is a great day for FirstNet because we’re continuing to progress on our strategic road map,” said acting Executive Director TJ Kennedy. The most important thing is to focus on FirstNet’s mission of building a national broadband network for first responders, he said. “It’s the most important thing at every step through this process, no matter where you fit.” It’s easy to “get hung up” on the details and whether FirstNet “is the perfect solution” for everyone, Kennedy said. The goal has to be that when “significant” incidents occur, like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, “we have the capacity and we have the capability to ensure that the prioritized traffic of public safety is able to get through,” he said. FirstNet wants feedback on how to make its proposal better and to launch a network that public safety can afford, he said. “We are looking for solution-oriented discussion.” Kennedy emphasized that the goal remains “nationwide” coverage. “We need to meet public safety requirements,” he said. “I say this in almost every talk I go to -- priority and preemption during emergencies for public safety. We need to make sure that it works when and where public safety needs it to work.” The network has to be resilient and reliable, but also affordable, he said. “There’s an important balance there.” The network has to be built to 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, but upgradable as technology advances, he said. “We are not looking to do something customized and one-off that would prevent that from happening,” Kennedy said. FirstNet will continue to seek comment after its pending request for proposals process is completed, through the deployment of a network, he said. Kennedy also spoke in a C-SPAN interview about the network's prospects, and said it may never reach the most remote U.S. areas (see 1505130055). Kennedy said in a news release after the event that FirstNet is pleased with the attendance in person and online. “It shows there is a great deal of interest from market participants and the public safety community in establishing the best possible network for public safety," he said.