C Spire will disclose the initial Mississippi communities from its request for information that are finalists for gigabit-speed connectivity at an event in Jackson, Miss., on Nov. 4, said the wireless carrier and Fiber to the Home in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/15Fgjbo). FTTH named C Spire the first North American “Gimme Fiber Day” Award winner at its annual conference that day.

The FCC Media Bureau granted EchoStar’s request for a waiver of the commission’s analog tuner requirements for the Channel Master K77, which is a HD, Internet-enabled, over-the-air DVR without an analog broadcast tuner. The waiver is in the public interest because “it will enhance consumer choice for retail equipment, offer consumers an additional way to access video programming and reduce the cost and power consumption of the Channel Master devices,” said a bureau order (http://fcc.us/GzyYJG). The waiver is conditioned on EchoStar’s voluntary commitment to educating consumers and retailers on the capabilities and limitations of the Channel Master devices, the bureau said. It said the waiver won’t negatively impact consumers’ access to analog TV signals. EchoStar had asked the bureau to approve the waiver by Sept. 1, saying the request was unopposed (CD Aug 13 p14).

The FCC denied a CTIA petition seeking to eliminate the text-to-911 bounceback requirement contained in the commission’s May text-to-911 order, but amended the requirement to address roaming. “We are persuaded by the technical representations made in the record that under the current technical standard developed for SMS-based texting to 911, the home provider alone has control over sending a consumer a required bounce-back message,” the order said (http://bit.ly/16aUsqM). “Current network architecture is such that, when a roaming consumer sends an SMS message, that message is routed first to the home provider, which has control over the further routing of that SMS message to its intended recipient. It is therefore the home provider that has direct control over the delivery of the SMS message to its intended recipient. Thus, we agree with CTIA that based on current network architecture, it would be technically challenging for a host provider to originate a bounce-back message to a roaming consumer.” The FCC’s May text-to-911 order had required all CMRS providers and providers of interconnected messaging services to provide an automatic bounceback text message starting Monday when a consumer attempts to send a text message to 911 in areas where text-to-911 is not available (CD May 9 p4). Under the revised rule, a carrier providing roaming service satisfies its bounceback obligation “provided that it does not impede the consumer’s text to the consumer’s home network provider (home provider) or impede any bounce-back message generated by the home provider back to the consumer."

Engage in “additional outreach” to broadcasters in planning the voluntary incentive auction, House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., told acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn in a letter Monday. Eshoo commended the FCC’s existing outreach but called for more. The auction’s success depends on “a collaborative process that brings together broadcasters, wireless carriers and technology companies for the purpose of revolutionizing the mobile broadband marketplace,” she said.

A new privacy law to replace the 27-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act is necessary and could protect Americans’ access to their online content with a uniform standard for content access, said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and cybercrime law expert. In a speech Monday at the Library of Congress (http://bit.ly/1bmruIx), Kerr discussed his recent article, “The Next Generation Privacy Act,” (http://1.usa.gov/14YH4oP) which details the history of ECPA, how, in his view, it has become irrelevant, and how to craft the law’s replacement legislation. “The incredible growth of the Internet and its rapid transformation from a toy to an essential part of daily life has made the accuracy and timeliness of the electronic privacy laws more important than ever before,” Kerr wrote. A new law should focus on “particularity and minimization,” he wrote, “and deal explicitly with the problem of extraterritoriality.” A consistent legal standard for content access would also eliminate the varying standards for government access to information depending on how old the data is, he said. From 1998 to 2001, Kerr worked for the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, where he wrote the agency’s manual on computer crimes (http://bit.ly/GztcbG).

A law firm is beginning an investigation of Dish Network’s interest in LightSquared. Kahn Swick attorneys will focus the investigation on “whether Dish’s officers and/or directors breached their fiduciary duties to Dish’s shareholders or otherwise violated state or federal laws,” the law firm said in a news release (http://bit.ly/16aNGkT). Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen made a $2.22 billion bid for the spectrum. A lawsuit filed by Harbinger Capital Partners against Ergen alleging a scheme to become LightSquared’s biggest lender is pending (CD Aug 26 p11). Dish had no comment.

Marvell Technology said its Armada Mobile PXA1801 world modem is now certified to operate on AT&T’s 4G LTE and 3G networks. The modem supports a Category 4 data rate of 150 Mbps downlink throughput, Marvell said Monday. The modem’s architecture allows “fast implementation on the latest LTE, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WB-CDMA), and it is backward compatible with previous generations” of WB-CDMA and EDGE, Marvell said. The company completed what it calls the world’s first end-to-end voice over TD-LTE call in June as part of its partnership with China Mobile and ZTE, and developed the first mass market quad-core 5-mode Category 4 LTE single-chip solution to support LTE TDD and HSPA-Plus, TD-HSPA-Plus and Enhanced Data for GSM Environment (http://bit.ly/15GvL1E).

The FCC will hold a workshop Oct. 24 on unlicensed wireless and the incentive auction of TV spectrum, said a notice released Monday (http://bit.ly/GzyCTr). The workshop is part of the FCC’s Learn Everything About Reverse-Auctions Now Program. “The workshop will focus on the benefits and uses of unlicensed spectrum in the existing and future television bands white spaces and in the guard bands of the new 600 MHz band following the upcoming incentive auction, as well as technical questions associated with proposed unlicensed operations in the 600 MHz ban,” the notice said.

Several additional AT&T competitors and interest groups expressed concerns about the proposed AT&T-Leap Wireless merger in FCC filings posted Friday and Monday, including five more petitions to deny. Public Knowledge, Consumer Action and the Writers Guild of America West had already filed a joint petition to deny, while the Competitive Carriers Association asked the FCC to attach conditions to any approval of the merger (CD Sept 30 p8). Wireless carrier NTCH, which does business under the Clear Talk brand, said in its petition to deny that it’s concerned the elimination of Leap will further erode NTCH’s cadre of CDMA roaming partners. NTCH has roaming arrangements with Leap in markets where NTCH does not hold spectrum. If Leap merges with AT&T, it will eliminate one of the last “large-scale” CDMA carriers, “leaving smaller carriers like NTCH without viable roaming partners outside of the nationwide carriers,” NTCH said. The FCC has already permitted the “extinction” of CDMA roaming partners such as MetroPCS and Atlantic Tele-Network, and their CDMA networks “are now fated for dismemberment” as part of their integration into GSM-based T-Mobile US and AT&T. “With each kill by the majors, smaller providers like NTCH are also weakened by being placed at an even greater competitive disadvantage, both in terms of spectrum assets and in terms of reasonable roaming arrangements to enable nationwide coverage,” NTCH said. The carrier recommended that if the FCC approves the merger, it should require AT&T to continue maintaining Leap’s CDMA network for “at least a reasonable period of time” and require AT&T to honor existing roaming arrangements between Leap and other carriers. The FCC should also require AT&T to offer carriers with existing CDMA roaming arrangements with Leap comparable roaming rates, terms and conditions if those carriers end up moving to GSM during the next three years, NTCH said (http://bit.ly/18GICmx). Broadvox-CLEC said in its petition to deny that the FCC should deny the AT&T’s effort to expand its prepaid market presence given “AT&T’s ongoing efforts through its long distance affiliates to disrupt the prepaid calling card market, including routine resort to self-help nonpayment, its failure to file good faith disputes, and its brazen flouting of the Commission’s VoIP Symmetry and other rules and orders.” If the FCC does approve the merger, it should require AT&T to “refrain” from self-help nonpayment on undisputed amounts to other carriers, report as “material disputes” to the FCC and abide by FCC rules, Broadvox said (http://bit.ly/15F6UAx). The Greenlining Institute argued in its petition to deny that an AT&T-Leap merger would harm competition by eliminating Leap as a competitor, particularly in the “value-conscious” market for prepaid wireless services. The merger would also harm competition by eliminating AT&T’s Aio Wireless prepaid brand as a competitor in an “undetermined” number of markets, Greenlining said (http://bit.ly/1fX9STh). AT&T has said it plans to keep Leap’s Cricket prepaid brand alive post-merger (CD July 25 p10). The merger also has the potential to limit low-income consumers’ access to prepaid services, Greenlining said, saying AT&T and Leap “have failed to provide sufficient information about their plan to migrate Leap customers to AT&T’s network.” The merger would also eliminate an unspecified number of jobs, Greenlining said. If the FCC approves the AT&T-Leap merger, it should include conditions that would require AT&T to continue serving Cricket subscribers and to require AT&T to fulfill its “commitments to pass the economic benefits of the transaction through to customers.” The group’s petition to deny is based only on currently available information, and it said it’s continuing to investigate the merger’s details. Greenlining is reviewing confidential documents AT&T and Leap filed with the FCC, and planned to meet Monday with California-based members of AT&T’s senior leadership. The group said it “hopes to gain greater clarity about this transaction after this meeting and after a comprehensive review of the unredacted documents. Greenlining hopes that a mutual and reciprocated effort to learn about the interests involved in this matter will help open the possibility of settlement or other resolution.” Youghiogheny Communications (http://bit.ly/1bmti0X) and David Smith, a Cricket customer in Douglasville, Ga., also filed petitions to deny (http://bit.ly/19QVHJ7). The Rural Wireless Association (RWA) said the FCC should hold off on a decision on the deal until the FCC wraps up its spectrum aggregation proceeding. “In addition to removing yet another facilities-based operator from the mobile wireless playing field (which reduces consumer choice) this proposed transaction also results in AT&T holding an even greater and even more disproportionate amount of spectrum in over a third of the country’s counties where both AT&T and Leap currently hold licenses,” RWA said (http://bit.ly/1eUwiWb). “A final resolution to the Commission’s current open proceeding on spectrum holdings would provide clarity on just how much spectrum companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless may amass before genuine competition is tossed aside for good."

Shoppers are quickly adopting smartphones as their preferred method to both research and buy items, according to a new study backed by Local Corporation, an online consumer marketing company (http://bit.ly/18GEips). Of the 1,005 consumers surveyed (all of whom claimed smartphone ownership and spend at least $250 annually shopping online), 73 percent researched products on a smartphone in 2013, more than double the 34 percent that did so in 2012. But often smartphone research -- looking up product information, comparing prices and searching for digital coupons -- informed future in-store visits. More than three quarters of consumers accessed local store information on their smartphone ahead of an in-person visit. Smartphone research “is directly impacting their purchase decisions,” said Michael Sawtell, Local chief operating officer. “As a result, retailers need to take notice and adjust their engagement strategies.”