Competitive carriers formed a new coalition, SaveWirelessChoice, to fight against what they see as Verizon and AT&T domination of the wireless market. Initial members include Comptel, the Competitive Carriers Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, C Spire, Dish Network, NTCA, the Rural Wireless Association, Sprint, T-Mobile and other companies and associations. “The members of SaveWirelessChoice are united by a single issue that holds massive consequences for U.S. consumers, businesses and the entire broadband economy -- and that is whether the future of wireless will be dominated by a duopoly or by competition,” said CCA President Steve Berry. The 600 MHz spectrum offered in the TV incentive auction is “the last prime spectrum real estate available,” the group said in a news release. “It is critical to ensure that smaller wireless providers have fair access to enough low-band spectrum to meaningfully compete against the country’s two largest carriers -- AT&T and Verizon -- who already own nearly three quarters of this valuable spectrum nationwide.” Public Knowledge joined the Save Wireless Choice Coalition, the group said in a news release Monday. “We can’t let AT&T and Verizon, the two largest carriers, completely dominate the wireless market by buying up all the spectrum licenses,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “This lack of competition drives prices up for consumers and encourages carriers to overlook updating their own networks.” Mobile Future fired back. “As consumer demand for mobile connectivity skyrockets, all wireless carriers need access to additional spectrum to support the millions of data hungry consumers devouring exponentially more bandwidth each year," the group said. "With Sprint leading the spectrum holdings pack and T-Mobile loudly touting more spectrum per subscriber than any other wireless provider, calls to 'help' Sprint and T-Mobile through spectrum set asides at taxpayer expense are misguided and gratuitous.”

Verizon updated FCC officials on its allegations that Dish Network manipulated bidding in the AWS-3 auction, said an ex parte filing posted Monday. Dish indirectly captured the second-most spectrum of any player in the auction, behind AT&T, but at a discounted price through designated entities (DEs) Northstar and SNR Wireless (see 1501300051). Verizon officials were accompanied at the meetings described in the filing by Leslie Marx, professor of economics at Duke University, said the filing in docket 14-78. “Dr. Marx concluded that the auction data reveal extensive evidence of collusion by DISH, Northstar and SNR, which violates antitrust law and the Commission’s rules and policies,” Verizon said. “DISH and the DEs frequently bid on the same licenses in the same rounds while other bidders were active, which created the false perception that multiple other parties were interested in those licenses (though did so generally without bidding each other up),” Verizon said. “After competing bidders dropped out, DISH and the DEs avoided bidding against one another. This conduct is indicative of a bidding ring, intended to drive out competitors and then suppress rivalry among the ring members.” The two Dish DEs appeared to divide markets between them, Verizon said. Dish also “colluded with the DEs to exit the auction early, without risk and without penalty,” Verizon said. “It did this by ensuring that, when DISH exited the auction following round 20 when it was the high bidder on several hundred licenses, the DEs topped its previous high bids on virtually all those licenses.” Verizon said its representatives met with Wireless Bureau Chief Roger Sherman and Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, among others. Dish is confident it complied with the law during the auction, a spokesman responded. “Our approach -- which was fully and publicly disclosed ahead of the auction -- was based on DE investment structures that have been approved by the FCC in past wireless spectrum auctions, including structures used by Verizon,” he said. “Participation by small businesses through the DE program helped make the AWS-3 auction, on a gross and net basis, the most successful spectrum auction in FCC history.”

Acer is expanding its smartphone business to the U.S. with its June introduction of the Liquid M220 smartphone at $79.99 through Microsoft stores. Acer concedes that smartphones are a “busy market,” CEO Jason Chen told a company event in New York Thursday. “Some people say it’s not a very healthy industry.” Acer’s smartphones’ “reach” now extends to more than 50 countries, he said. In smartphones, “we doubled our business again last year,” he said. So volatile is the smartphone space that “more people will try to exit the segment than will try to enter the segment,” Chen said. That’s because “there’s only one company that’s making any profit meaningfully in this segment, and we know which one,” Chen said, in one of several unnamed nods to Apple made by Acer executives throughout the presentation. “If there’s not enough profit, people will try to exit, and our strategy here is to make sure we go through our own learning curve while the industry is going through its consultation process." Windows 10 “is a big, big thing for us,” said S.T. Liew, president of Acer’s Smartphone Business Group, of the M220 smartphone soon to debut in the U.S. “This year was the first time that here in smartphone we decided that we shall do a Windows 10 phone and we shall make it successful.”

Friday’s release of the Apple Watch prompted the National Safety Council to issue an advisory warning consumers that smart watches and driving don’t mix. “Numerous studies have shown that drivers using cell phones significantly increase their risk of being involved in a crash,” the council said in a statement. Smart watches, “which have capabilities similar to smart phones, could be even riskier,” the council said, citing a study by the U.K.’s Transport Research Lab. “Drivers wearing smart watches can call, text, email and surf the web, but the watch also vibrates when it receives a notification,” the council said. “That vibration could be very difficult to ignore,” as human “impulse” will be to look at one’s wrist, it said. “This could take a driver’s eyes off the road and mind off the drive -- a recipe for disaster.” Anyone who buys a smart watch should turn it off or remove it before getting behind the wheel, the council said. “All calls can kill, and no text, email or social media update is worth a life.” Apple representatives didn’t comment.

Declan Byrne, president of the WiMAX Forum, and officials from Hitachi, Honeywell and the Federal Aviation Administration updated FCC officials on the forum's efforts to “develop a consensus within the aviation industry over possible service rules to facilitate the deployment of the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System,” an ex parte filing said. The World Radiocommunication Conference approved a global allocation for AeroMACS in 2007, a presentation by the group said. The core band is 5091-5150 MHz. In an earlier filing, NTIA said AeroMACS is an airport surface local area network. The filing was posted in docket 12-338.

NTIA asked for expressions of interest from individuals interested in being on the FirstNet board. Four of the 12 appointments of nonpermanent members to the board are expiring in August, NTIA said in a notice in Thursday's Federal Register. “The Secretary of Commerce may reappoint individuals to serve on the FirstNet Board provided they have not served two consecutive full three-year terms,” the agency said. Expressions of interest can be filed at NTIA through May 15.

U.S. Cellular representatives elaborated on the carrier’s proposal for a point system to help determine which licenses in the 600 MHz band a bidder will be assigned after the TV incentive auction. Northwestern University professor Robert Weller made the proposal in a note attached to a March ex parte filing by U.S. Cellular. “To allow bidders to express preferences without generating payments, the FCC could allocate a supply of, say, 1000 bidding ‘points’ to each bidder,” Weller suggested. “Let the bidders allocate these points across assignments, in order to indicate their preferences. Then either choose an assignment which maximizes some objective function which incorporates the point allocations, or resolve the assignment as if the points were bid amounts, but collect no payments (many colleges handle the allocation of seats in popular courses in this manner).” In the meeting last week, U.S. Cellular argued that the point system would be doable. The system “could be implemented without informing bidders of the spectrum block assignments that remain feasible for them after the auction system has optimized for the ... objectives proposed by the Commission in the Procedures PN,” the carrier said. “Our proposed ‘point system’ likely would not result in a large number of ties after bidders have expressed their preferences for particular spectrum blocks in a” particular market, said the filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268.

Intel will do what it can to make the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band a success story, the company said in a statement released Friday. The FCC approved the 3.5 GHz order April 17 and it was released last week. “It’s clear that the FCC, NTIA, and Federal Agencies are serious about enabling spectrum sharing with the federal government,” Intel said. “The 3.5 GHz band has been globally harmonized for mobile broadband and is incredibly valuable for improving peak cellular use in major markets, for WLAN use, and for enabling new wireless broadband uses in general. Importantly, the Commission's approach protects incumbent use and includes an innovative sensor-based scheme in a future phase of development which could further enhance spectrum utilization and may provide the key to unlocking other highly desirable bands especially the 5 GHz band."

The FCC’s designated entity rules need to be revised before the TV incentive auction to ensure that small carriers at least have a shot at winning licenses, Panhandle Telephone Cooperative and Pine Belt Telephone Company said in a filing at the FCC. The small carriers told an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel they are interested in buying 600 MHz licenses during the auction, but noted that the track record for small carriers was “dismal” in the recently completed AWS-3 auction. “Of the 70 qualified bidders in the auction, over half (38 or 54.3 percent) were rural telcos or rural telco affiliates, yet only 28.9 percent of the rural entities were successful in winning any licenses. Many rural bidders were completely shut out, and those that were successful won only 25 of 1,611 licenses (1.55 percent).” Despite some larger companies' use of “shell” companies as DEs to buy spectrum with bidding credits, fewer than half the successful rural telco bidders in the AWS-3 were able to qualify under DE rules as small businesses, the two carriers said. The filing was posted by the FCC Friday in docket 10-208.

The FCC Wireless Bureau dropped its requirement that ACS Wireless and General Communication Inc. not share nonpublic, commercially sensitive information (CSI) due to their joint ownership of the Alaska Wireless Network. ACS recently wrapped up the sale of its interest in the network to GCI (see 1502020052) and the two asked that the stricture be dropped, especially since ACS has also exited the retail wireless market. “Because the pertinent bases for these conditions as they relate to the CSI Policies no longer are present given ACS’s divestiture of its ownership interest in AWN and its exit as a retail wireless service competitor, we grant the request and hereby remove the … condition,” the bureau said.