Molded plastic cellphone components are set to increase their presence in the marketplace, with the global market for such components predicted to generate $4.5 billion revenue by 2017, research firm IHS said Thursday. Global revenue from plastic components in cellphones is expected to reach $3.5 billion this year -- up from $3.3 billion in 2012, IHS said. The most recent example of use of such components came from Apple, which introduced a version of its iPhone 5c smartphone last week that includes a polycarbonate casing, the research firm said. “The plastic polycarbonate enclosure of the new iPhone 5c weighs just 14.2 grams, according to a recent IHS teardown,” said Jagdish Rebello, IHS’s senior director for consumer & communications, in a news release. “With 20 million iPhone 5c smartphones forecast to be sold through the rest of 2013, this represents a total consumption of 283 metric tons of polycarbonate resin by just one device, in just one quarter.” Total plastic usage in cellphones is set to reach 282,000 metric tons for 2013 and will rise to 336,000 metric tons in 2017, IHS said (http://bit.ly/17wIRCi).

The window for filing short-form applications to participate in Auction 902, the reverse auction that will award up to $50 million in one-time Tribal Mobility Fund Phase I support, will stay open until 6 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, said a notice from the FCC Wireless and Wireline bureaus published in the Federal Register Thursday. “All other dates and deadlines for Auction 902 remain as previously announced,” the notice said (http://1.usa.gov/1f3iBEs).

ViaSat chose Axiros technology for device management and provisioning, Axiros said in a news release (http://bit.ly/18yDVMY). The deal is ViaSat’s first deployment of the TR-069 protocol over satellite, Axiros said. It will allow ViaSat to manage its satellite modems dynamically over the Internet using HTTP/HTTPS, and “to accelerate time to implementation and market with seamless integration, interoperability and support for TR-069 functionality,” Axiros said.

Time Warner Cable is expanding to 1,350 Wi-Fi hotspots in Austin by the end of 2013, said the company in a news release Thursday (http://yhoo.it/1ho62At). The Wi-Fi network is available at no cost to TWC customers with standard Internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis to nonsubscribers, said the company. TWC will offer a free two-week trial of Wi-Fi in honor of its partnership with the ACL Music Festival, and customers will be able to connect with the network at the festival’s Austin Eats area, said the company. “The timing of the announcement is good because the public, subscribers and attendees will be able to get Wi-Fi access during the festival,” Rondella Hawkins, Austin Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs officer, told us. On Tuesday, AT&T said it would be building a gigabit broadband network in Austin with 300 Mbps available to customers in December (CD Oct 2 p7). AT&T currently offers a Wi-Fi service to its subscribers, but the city of Austin is not sure if this will encourage the company to also increase its Wi-Fi presence in addition to its gigabit network, said Hawkins. “Time Warner Cable has partnerships in other markets for its Wi-Fi hotspot network, so if you are a Time Warner customer you will certainly benefit,” she said.

The surveillance overhaul that House Judiciary Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., plans to introduce is called the USA FREEDOM Act. Sensenbrenner authored the Patriot Act, and the new bill would amend many critical provisions of the act’s Section 215, which authorizes the government’s bulk collection of phone metadata, said a three-page outline of the bill provided by Sensenbrenner’s spokesman. Sensenbrenner will introduce the proposed legislation in the House, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will introduce it in the Senate, the spokesman told us. It would end bulk phone record collection, as both Leahy and Sensenbrenner have advocated. Leahy has described collaboration with Sensenbrenner on multiple occasions in the last two weeks. The bill’s full title is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet Collection, and Online Monitoring Act. The purpose of the USA FREEDOM Act, according to the outline, is “to rein in the dragnet collection of data by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies, increase transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), provide businesses the ability to release information regarding FISA requests, and create an independent constitutional advocate to argue cases before the FISC.” The government would also have to “more aggressively filter and discard information about Americans accidentally collected through PRISM and related programs,” the outline said. Any metadata the government seeks would need to be “relevant to an authorized investigation into international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities” as well as pertain to a foreign power or its agents, the activities of a suspected agent of a foreign power being investigated or someone in contact or known to such a suspect, said the document. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board would have subpoena power, it said, also laying out new reporting requirements for the intelligence community. The bill calls for “the Attorney General to publicly disclose all FISC decisions issued after July 10, 2003 that contain a significant construction or interpretation of law,” the document said. Internet companies and telcos also would be allowed to report on the requests for data they receive and comply with, under the bill. It would adopt one standard for Section 215 and National Security Letters protection to make sure the government does not tap different authorities for its bulk record collection. It would provide a sunset date for the National Security Letters.

Verizon Communications said Thursday it is extending its cloud services offerings through Verizon Cloud, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform and cloud-based object storage service. The service, which targets businesses of all sizes, is “fundamentally changing how public clouds are built,” Verizon said in a news release. Verizon Cloud Compute, the service’s IaaS platform, has flexible sizing options that can be easily expanded or contracted to fit changing needs, the telco said. The IaaS service will include templates for various versions of Linux, Windows Server versions 2008 and 2012, as well as a version of BSD. Verizon Cloud Storage, the service’s cloud-based storage component, “overcomes latency issues that have plagued traditional storage offerings,” providing more reliable traffic performance, Verizon said. The telco plans to open a beta version of the service in Q4, but the beta test will be limited to “a few hundred users per month” (http://vz.to/16kvVQ2).

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council Thursday asked for volunteers to serve on a new Broadband Working Group task team. “In December of last year, NPSTC finalized a Public Safety Launch Requirements document that was delivered to FirstNet,” the group said (http://bit.ly/JyifSy). “Those requirements were qualitative in nature only -- meaning they did not include any quantitative aspects. This new initiative will review the Launch Statement of Requirements (SoR), and, where appropriate, add quantitative elements.” The group is expected to start meeting by teleconference this month and volunteers are being asked to come forward by Oct. 15.

T-Mobile and Budget PrePay in their reply comments Wednesday opposed Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s comments on the state’s proposed Lifeline requirements. T-Mobile said it supports the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable’s decision to not adopt state-specific requirements related to consumer protection because it’s duplicative as applied to wireless carriers. The DTC should not require eligible telecommunications carriers to include Lifeline information on their websites unless the FCC requires it, said T-Mobile. The company should not have to do outage reporting more than once a year because it’s “inconsistent with federal law, unnecessary, and premature in the context of ongoing efforts by the FCC,” said T-Mobile. Budget PrePay opposed Coakley’s recommendation that eligible telecommunications carriers should sell refurbished phones with a 90-day warranty or return policy because the length of a carrier’s warranty should be a commercial decision, said the company in its comments (http://1.usa.gov/18Tu6de). Budget PrePay said it agreed with T-Mobile that a five-day advance notification on changes to Lifeline terms and conditions prior to implementation would be difficult to meet and result in competitive harm.

More than 17 million people generated 45 million interactions on Facebook related to the government shutdown this week, a Facebook spokesperson told us Thursday. Users in D.C. are talking more than others, followed by Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Alaska and Arkansas, she said. Men are engaging about 37 percent more than women, she said. “When breaking news like the government shutdown sparks a national conversation, people turn to Facebook to share their thoughts and to talk about the personal impact,” she said.

Suddenlink acquired some Texas cable systems from Northland Communications. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014, Suddenlink said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1fLLO85). The Northland systems operate in and around Texas towns, including Gun Barrel City and Flint, Suddenlink said. After the acquisition closes, “there is an opportunity to interconnect the Northland systems with nearby Suddenlink systems in Terrell, Tyler and Kingwood,” it said. Suddenlink didn’t disclose the price.