EarthLink’s new 4G Wireless Internet-at-Home wireless Internet plans combine “Clearwire’s leadership in 4G with EarthLink’s keen focus on customer care [and] satisfies a real need in the marketplace,” said Kevin Brand, EarthLink executive vice president, in a news release Tuesday. The new service uses Clearwire’s 4G network via a wholesale agreement, EarthLink said. The program is now available in 80 major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington, Seattle and Miami. The service includes two programs, EarthLink said. A $29.95-per-month “Standard” plan gives consumers 3 Mbps download speed and 5 GB of monthly data usage, and a $49.95 “Premium” plan gives consumers 6 Mbps speed and 10 GB of monthly data usage. Incremental monthly data plans start at $4.95 per month. Each plan can be used on up to 8 Wi-Fi-enabled devices, including smartphones, tablets and laptops, EarthLink said.

T-Mobile made an economic case for limiting how much spectrum any single carrier can buy in the upcoming incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, in a white paper filed at the FCC and written by University of Maryland economist and auction expert Peter Cramton. “Well-crafted spectrum aggregation limits can increase competition both in the market for mobile broadband services and in the spectrum auctions in which they are applied,” the paper said (http://bit.ly/1fW70D2). “The increased competition leads to consumer benefits such as increased innovation, accelerated deployment of advanced mobile services, and expanded consumer choice. It also can lead to improved auction efficiency and higher auction revenues.” Meanwhile, a paper released by Mobile Future, the subject of a Tuesday webinar, reaches the opposite conclusion. That paper, by Robert Earle and David Sosa of the Analysis Group, looked at the effect of such restrictions on auctions around the world (http://bit.ly/14uwIIr). “Restrictive and preferential participation rules in place for the 1994 U.S. PCS spectrum auctions resulted in lost consumer welfare of as much as $70 billion,” the paper said. “Underfunded and unfunded business plans developed by new entrants acquiring set-aside licenses resulted in substantial amounts of spectrum sitting idle for many years.” The paper cites the German 3G auctions held in 2000: “Policies intended to encourage market entry were unsuccessful and resulted in a 10-year delay in the assignment of one-third of the 3G spectrum, delaying its development and the benefits consumers would have otherwise enjoyed.” The paper asks “What happens, actually, when governments have chosen to adopt such discriminatory rules?” Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said on the webcast. “Are the auctions less successful, do they serve their ultimate goals of getting more spectrum efficiently available for consumer use?"

More information on key cost drivers, cost estimates and broader input from stakeholders would help guide future investment decisions on lower-cost solutions for GPS capability, found a GAO study (http://1.usa.gov/17VS9Ud). Without a more comprehensive assessment that addresses each of these concerns, “the Air Force is not yet in a position to make sound future GPS investments,” GAO said in response to the Air Force report, Lower Cost Solutions for Providing Global Positioning System Capability. The future GPS options presented and evaluated in the report are based on a GPS constellation of 30 satellites, “whereas the Air Force’s requirement is for a 24-satellite constellation,” said GAO. The larger constellation assumption has a significant effect on the cost of the options studied, it said. It’s unclear whether investment costs for these options will in fact be lower than the baseline cost of the current GPS III program, it said: Basing all options on a 30-satellite constellation “may actually increase the overall GPS investment because the limited differences between the options assessed narrows the range of costs across the seven options that rely on a core of GPS III satellites.” GAO also found that the Air Force didn’t fully consider the cost impact of its dual launch approach. Cost savings may eventually be accrued from dual launches, but the Air Force’s report “doesn’t address the acquisition and operations strategy -- what is necessary to buy and conduct dual launches up front,” said GAO. It urged the Defense Department to affirm the future GPS constellation size that the Air Force plans to support and to ensure that future assessments are comprehensive.

FairPoint Communications is introducing cloud services with the ability of hosted private branch exchange (PBX) in its fiber network in northern New England, said the telco in a news release Tuesday (http://prn.to/14CEoiI). FairPoint’s hosted PBX is a VoIP service delivered through its ethernet network, so calls are transmitted “over a high-quality, reliable, private network -- not the open Internet,” said the company. It’s a “robust, carrier-class network that enables communications anywhere, anytime and that provides constant flexibility and scalability” for customers, said FairPoint Vice President-Product Management Chris Alberding.

The House approved the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act Monday in a 415-0 vote, with 227 Republicans and 188 Democrats voting yea. The legislation calls for one Communications Marketplace Report rather than eight separate reports and kills outdated references. The House passed a similar bill in its last session, which failed in the Senate (CD March 27/12 p1). “The FCC’s reporting requirements are numerous, outdated, and unnecessarily burdensome,” FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a statement Tuesday. “Replacing them with a single biennial Communications Marketplace Report will not only enable more efficient use of agency resources, it will also provide Congress and the public with a comprehensive and far more useful set of data that reflects the realities of today’s converged marketplace. This is straightforward, good-government legislation, and I hope that the U.S. Senate will act quickly to send this bill to the President for his signature.” The bill’s authors emphasized the flexibility the bill would offer Monday on the House floor. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., called the bill “a bipartisan bill that seeks to provide flexibility and relief to both our job creators as well as the Federal Communications Commission.” He said dollars would be better spent now. “These are the sorts of odds and ends that can eat a small business alive, and they can eat an agency alive as well,” said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., on the House floor Monday, criticizing “these silly mandates” initially put in for good reason. “The House passed a similar bill in the last Congress,” said House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., recommending her colleagues sign on to this bill, “something that all members can stand for."

Forty-four percent of U.S. households with broadband have a subscription to an online video service, said research firm Parks Associates in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1eebLMK). The figure comes from a Parks Q1 survey of 10,000 households. “Online video is now a common source of video viewing in U.S. households, while transactional [video on demand] is near the bottom,” said Parks analyst Heather Way. Providers of VOD have to market their services better, said Parks on its website. “A significant portion of the pay-TV population is unaware of available VOD services,” said Consumer Analytics Director John Barrett. The survey also showed some younger consumers are more likely to subscribe to over-the-top video services like Hulu or Netflix, while 8 percent of consumers age 18 to 24 never subscribed to a pay-TV service, the release said.

The FCC should scrutinize recent large broadcast transactions -- including some involving Sinclair, Tribune and Media General -- to determine how they will affect ownership diversity in the industry, wrote the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters to acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn(http://bit.ly/18MU281). “The television trading market has become red-hot, but virtually no African American or other minority owned companies are showing up as buyers in the television trading frenzy.” Monday’s letter included a list of several transactions for the commission to look into, including Gannet’s purchase of 20 TV stations from Belo, Tribune’s buy of 19 TV stations from Local, and Sinclair’s buys of TV stations from Fisher, Titan, Barrington and Allbritton. “These transactions will clearly exacerbate the dearth of minority owners in the industry,” said NABOB. “The Commission must adopt meaningful policies in this proceeding to turn back the tide that is sweeping away minority ownership in the broadcast industry."

The failure of the public safety answering points in a CalNENA report to receive wireless Phase II location information wasn’t a failure of AT&T to deliver such information but a failure of those PSAPs to request it, said the carrier in an FCC filing (http://bit.ly/15NXpJV). Executives met with the Public Safety Bureau Friday following T-Mobile’s meeting (CD Sept 6 p10) to discuss an ex parte filing by CalNENA on Aug. 12 that showed a significant drop in wireless Phase II location data reporting by five major wireless carriers to the PSAPs (CD Aug 14 p4). CalNENA’s data and graphs raised concerns about location yield, or the quantity of E911 locates, not the location accuracy, said AT&T. The company’s investigation into location yield and location accuracy shows AT&T’s 911 network is functioning correctly, and AT&T believes “the difference in CalNENA’s data and our own is related to the time it takes to provide more accurate locates, as well as the PSAP’s own processes and practices,” said the carrier. CalNENA didn’t comment.

More than half of Americans ages 13 to 54 watch TV programs or movies using streaming video at least once a week, said a GfK survey released Tuesday (http://yhoo.it/17Ocf78). The weekly streaming audience for TV and movies has risen from 37 percent in 2010 to 51 percent this year, the survey found. Five percent of consumers use a tablet and 4 percent use a smartphone to stream TV programs and movies, it said. Three in five of those who stream access content through an app and a third stream directly from a website, said GfK. Twenty-seven percent of households have a streaming-capable HDTV, but only 5 percent of households use it to stream TV or movies on a weekly basis, the survey found. Forty-seven percent of TV households have streaming-ready 7G game systems, and 9 percent are using their game systems for weekly streaming, the survey found. Consumers ages 13 to 33 watch streaming TV the most (62 percent), followed by consumers ages 34 to 47 (46 percent) and consumers ages 48 to 54 (30 percent). The survey screened 1,065 persons between ages 13 and 53, and full surveys were completed by 1,007 respondents in June.

Dish Network supports the FCC’s proposal to set a reserve price for licenses in the upcoming H-block auction, it said. It also backed the commission’s plan to use hierarchical package bidding in auctioning the H block, “and in particular supports the offering of a package comprising all markets in the contiguous 48 states,” it said in an ex parte filing in docket 13-178 (http://bit.ly/1eAztR6). Dish estimates the value of the H block “is at least $0.50 per MHz of bandwidth per population on a nationwide aggregate basis,” it said. Verizon’s purchases of AWS spectrum from Cox and Spectrum Co. “appear to have valued that spectrum at $0.61 per MHz-POP and $0.69 per MHz-POP, respectively.” As a result, financial institutions have estimated the value of the H-block spectrum to be between 62 cents and $1 per MHz-POP, it said.