AT&T’s planned buy of Leap Wireless and similar deals “likely enhance overall consumer welfare, which, after all, ought to be the FCC’s chief concern,” said Seth Cooper, a Free State Foundation adjunct senior fellow, in a paper released Wednesday. AT&T/Leap would likely increase competition for prepaid options by boosting Leap-owned Cricket’s brand availability, reliability and service, Cooper said. The deal would also “almost certainly” enhance spectral efficiency by giving AT&T the ability to use Leap’s unused spectrum and better utilize the portions Leap does use, he said. Leap uses about 42 percent of its spectrum footprint, and holds AWS and PCS licenses that remain unused, Cooper said. AT&T/Leap would also improve wireless broadband service “capacity and reliability by integrating Leap’s cell sites into AT&T’s network,” Cooper said (http://bit.ly/169C5oe).

NAB claimed that a Time Warner Cable executive’s letter to a House Judiciary Subcommittee contained “erroneous accusations” about the testimony of NAB outside counsel Gerard Waldron during a subcommittee hearing last week. Claims by TWC Chief Government Relations Officer Gail MacKinnon that TWC has no power to impose restrictions on broadcasters in dealing with the company’s competitors is contradicted by its own public statements, NAB said in a letter to members of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet (http://bit.ly/1aLzpeQ). TWC CEO Glenn Britt said in June that “some of TWC’s contracts explicitly bar media outlets from providing content to online pay-TV services,” NAB said. NAB urged the lawmakers to reject “the disinformation campaign of Time Warner Cable.” During the hearing, Waldron, a Covington Burling attorney, said the retransmission consent model is working (CD Sept 11 p7). Waldron’s suggestion that TWC “could try to preclude CBS from dealing with any of TWC’s competitors is preposterous,” MacKinnon’s letter said. TWC didn’t seek any foreclosure of distribution agreements between CBS and other parties, it said.

Digital literacy remains a sticking point in getting Americans online, said Angela Simpson, NTIA acting deputy secretary, at a National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors conference event Wednesday. “Broadband adoption is the least common denominator in helping people accomplish their goals,” said Simpson. “Those who do not have broadband are disadvantaged from educational opportunities, access to healthcare information and government services.” Through its Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, NTIA learned partnerships with neighborhood institutions are effective in helping people recognize why they need to get broadband, said Simpson. “The most successful projects show how the Internet will matter to people in a tangible way,” she said. Older Adults Technology Services (OATS), a BTOP grantee, created digital literacy courses that directly connected to seniors, said Tom Kamber, the company’s executive director. “We created a curriculum for what 65-year-olds want to learn, which is Internet and email,” said Kamber. “Once they have a good experience with technology, they may want to take the next step to buy a laptop and get Internet access.” With most of the BTOP grants ending this month, Simpson said, the political climate in D.C. is not conducive to more funding, so NTIA needs to distribute lessons it learned as widely as possible. When its BTOP grant expires, OATS will replace those dollars with local, state and private funding, said Kamber.

About two dozen privacy groups are pushing Congress to change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to prevent government surveillance of citizens without a warrant, said the Center for Democracy and Technology in an email Wednesday. It said VanishingRights.com was launched and members include the American Library Association, Engine Advocacy which promotes startups, Free Press, Techdirt, TechFreedom, ACLU, and the Liberty Coalition, which includes ACLU and ex-Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga, as partners. ECPA “says hundreds of federal entities -- including the IRS and FBI -- as well as state and local agencies can access your old emails and documents stored in the cloud without a warrant,” said CDT. The site asks visitors to fill out a suggested form asking senators to back bipartisan legislation (S-607) to update the 1986 act.

Arianespace and Astrium signed an agreement for the delivery of 18 additional Ariane 5 ECA launchers. The 18 are scheduled to be launched beginning in 2017, “following on from the 35 launchers ordered in 2009,” Arianespace said in a news release. Of the 35 launchers, 20 are currently in production, it said. The companies plan to sign the full production contract for the additional launchers by the end of the year, it said. The agreement enables Astrium “to ensure the continuity of production beyond 2017,” Arianespace said.

CTIA applauded the NTIA for its Tuesday petition to the FCC to encourage a rulemaking on cellphone unlocking, it said in a release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/15DlF51). It said, “Of paramount importance to this discussion is educating policymakers and consumers about the numerous unlocking policy options when considering wireless providers or service plans, as well as the technological realities that exist among different phones and different carriers.” It also urged support for cellphone unlocking legislation that passed the House Judiciary Committee in July. The Consumers Union also applauded the petition in a statement Tuesday saying “restoring the right to unlock their cell phones is critical to empowering consumers” (http://bit.ly/16n3X2j). “Consumers need a solution to this problem, and we hope that lawmakers and regulators can work to solve this important consumer issue,” said George Slover, CU senior policy counsel.

Justin Brookman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Privacy Project, and Carl Cargill, Adobe’s standards principal, will join Intel Chief Technology Officer Matthias Schunter as co-chairs of the Do Not Track working group at the World Wide Web Consortium, the group said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/16mZA7D). “I harbor no illusions that this is going to be an easy job,” Brookman said in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/15Djy1b). But he strongly believes users deserve tools to control how their personal information is collected and used, he said. The group “cannot just continue to have the same discussions over and over again --searching for an elusive grand bargain between advocates and third-party ad networks that hasn’t materialized over two years of negotiations,” he said. Cargill and Brookman replace Peter Swire, who left the group in August to head the Obama administration’s surveillance review group. A W3C spokesman said the group decided to appoint an extra co-chair because “the group has a lot of work to do. We need more resources to get that done in a timely fashion.”

Bentley Walker, based in the U.K., is extending its service coverage toward Libya with Newtec’s Ka-band very small aperture terminal broadband platform. It will deploy services mainly using the MDM220 IP Satellite Modem, Newtec said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1dpBjTe). The service will be available Sept. 26, and will use Avanti’s HYLAS 2 Ka-band capacity, it said. Libya’s complex geography and poor terrestrial infrastructure “means satellite-based broadband Internet is quickly becoming the only high-speed solution for the majority of the country,” Newtec said.

Radio and TV stations nationwide have donated $12 million worth of airtime -- more than 106,600 airings -- for NAB’s mental health public service announcement campaign, called OK2TALK, said NAB in a news release (http://bit.ly/1gzev3c). The PSAs direct people to OK2TALK.org, a Tumblr page “where teens and young adults struggling with mental health problems can share personal stories of recovery, tragedy, struggle or hope,” or view resources for those seeking help, said the release. The site has received 256,000 page views, 2,003 submissions and has 15,387 followers, NAB said. The site also has a “Get Help” button that takes visitors to mentalhealth.gov and suicide prevention information, which has recorded 23,000 clicks. NAB CEO Gordon Smith said mental health issues are “the common thread” in incidents such as the Navy Yard shooting in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. “As stewards of the airwaves, local radio and television broadcasters and our network partners have a unique megaphone and a remarkable capacity to change attitudes in a positive way,” he said in the release.

Pandora released a redesigned version of its iPad app, it said Wednesday. Pandora 5.0 for iPad is the “biggest redesign” of the tablet app since launching on the platform when the iPad was introduced in April 2010, it said in a news release. Pandora 5.0 offers an “enhanced listening experience” and personalization, it said. The app interface was “optimized” for large screens and has “upgraded core Pandora functionality,” including the ability to “easily shuffle, rename and delete” stations, it said. Social sharing features were also made available on iPads for the first time, with listeners now able to publish their music activity to Facebook via the Pandora Timeline app, and also manually share links to favorite stations with followers on Twitter, said Pandora. The tablet category “continues to demonstrate strong growth and momentum,” Pandora Chief Technology Officer Tom Conrad said in the news release.