Integra is expanding its network infrastructure in Minneapolis with its buildout of about 1,600 fiber miles in Q4, said the company in a news release Wednesday (http://yhoo.it/17zRYSE). It said the expansion will focus on the central business district, giving more than 225 downtown-area buildings and more than 3,000 businesses access to Integra’s portfolio of high-bandwidth solutions. “The construction in Minneapolis marks the largest single network investment made by Integra in eight years that is aimed at expanding our fiber footprint,” said CEO Kevin O'Hara.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council agreed with FirstNet that the FCC should consolidate technical service rules for the 758-769 MHz and 788-799 MHz bands under its Part 90 rules (CD Aug 20 p12). “Such a consolidation is a logical outgrowth of the reallocation of the D block spectrum to public safety,” NPSTC said in comments filed at the FCC (http://bit.ly/1efmTGI). “These technical service rules, together with other provisions yet to be defined by FirstNet, the nationwide licensee of the spectrum, will form the basis for operations in the public safety broadband spectrum.” NPSTC also urged the FCC to lift its suspension on the acceptance and processing of applications for equipment authorization on the public safety broadband spectrum, which was imposed pending the adoption of technical service for the band. “Resuming equipment authorizations for the public safety broadband is essential and ... such authorizations should cover the full 10+10 MHz of public safety broadband spectrum,” the group said.

This year’s IFA marks CTIA’s debut as a “partner association” to the Berlin show, according to signage posted throughout the Messe Berlin fairgrounds. Among its other IFA activities, CTIA will host a media lunch Friday, the same day it figures prominently in an IFA keynote being delivered by Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. IFA show materials say the keynote is being staged “in cooperation” with CTIA. In his keynote, titled “From Transformative to Revolutionary: The Impact of Wireless on Our World,” Hesse will discuss “the impact of a society that is ‘always on,'” the IFA materials say. “Wireless is challenging the status quo and affecting everything from grocery shopping to driving to politics. With the advent of ultra-high-speed mobile networks, wireless will play an even more integral role in virtually every aspect of our lives. Advances once thought far in the future, like augmented reality, vocal recognition and real-time translation, will become commonplace.” It’s promoting those very themes with an eye toward 2014 and beyond that made timing the partnership with IFA right, CTIA Vice President Rob Mesirow told us Wednesday by phone. IFA marks the kickoff of a one-year “promotional partnership” with CTIA that “culminates” with the CTIA-sponsored “Super Mobility Week” event launching Sept. 9, 2014, at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas, Mesirow told us. IFA signage touted that Las Vegas event with the slogan, “The future begins 9/9/2014.” As for Hesse’s keynote, CTIA “procured” the Sprint CEO for that role, since Hesse is a “prominent” CTIA board member, Mesirow said.

President Barack Obama backed “thoughtful” surveillance reform, during a news conference Wednesday in Stockholm. “What I've asked my national security team to do, as well as independent persons who are well-known lawyers or civil libertarians or privacy experts to do, is to review everything that we're doing with the instructions to them that we have to balance the ends with the means,” Obama said, referring to his five-member review group, according to White House transcripts (http://1.usa.gov/14raOHA). “And just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should do it. And there may be situations in which we're gathering information just because we can that doesn’t help us with national security, but does raise questions in terms of whether we're tipping over into being too intrusive with respect to the interactions of other governments.” He described increased “risks of abuse” due to the U.S.’s greater surveillance capabilities and wireless and Internet technology changes, and “times where the procedures -- because these are human endeavors -- have not worked the way they should.” He noted “legitimate questions” regarding how “as technology advances and capabilities grow, it may be that the laws that are currently in place are not sufficient to guard against the dangers of us being able to track so much.” But he insisted the U.S. is “not a surveillance state,” and sought to “give assurances to the publics in Europe and around the world that we're not going around snooping at people’s emails or listening to their phone calls. What we try to do is to target very specifically areas of concern.” He emphasized tightened procedures and the checks and balances on the surveillance within the U.S.

Eatel completed its buy of data center and cloud management provider Venyu Solutions, said the family-owned telco in Ascension Parish, La., in a Wednesday news release. “Venyu’s success in the Gulf South coupled with our expanding fiber network and corporate footprint will provide both entities with new growth opportunities,” said Eatel President John Scanlan. Venyu will become an Eatel subsidiary and will maintain its headquarters, data center locations and existing staff in Baton Rouge and Shreveport-Bossier, Eatel said (http://bit.ly/14YUIII).

Ramsey County, Minn., selected TriTech Software Systems’s Inform computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and mobile solutions to support its dispatch operations, said the company in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/14jOMvF). The system will be used by the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center (RCECC) and other law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services agencies across the county, said TriTech. The RCECC is responsible for dispatching 400,000 police, fire and medical assistance calls for service annually to 17 agencies, said TriTech.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s plan to focus on broadband adoption will make the most out of private investments and help Iowa’s economic potential, said Broadband for America (BfA) in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/14YQ3qa). The app economy employs more than 750,000 Americans, and more than 6 million jobs are supported or created by broadband and related information and communications technology industries, said BfA. These gains have been driven by private investment, with $1.2 trillion invested in broadband networks from 1996 to 2011, said BfA. Branstad (R) tasked the Iowa STEM Advisory Council’s Broadband Committee with developing legislative recommendations by Dec. 1 for broadband buildout throughout the state (CD Sept 4 p8).

Broadband reaches more than 95 percent of Americans, but the FCC still might declare in its next broadband progress report that broadband is not being timely deployed, said Free State Foundation’s Seth Cooper in a report Wednesday (http://bit.ly/14YFlAb). Section 706 of the Communications Act, which directs the commission to make such a report, was written in “deregulatory terms,” but the commission continues to use it to take a pro-regulatory approach, Cooper said. The FCC could remove regulatory barriers to broadband infrastructure investment by abstaining from enforcing legacy telephone regulations, approving trials to facilitate the ongoing Internet Protocol transition, and setting a sunset date for the public switched telephone network, Cooper said. On the wireless side, the commission could remove regulatory barriers to cell site construction, conduct the incentive spectrum auction in a “simple and timely manner,” and promptly review mergers and secondary market transactions involving transfers of spectrum licenses, he said. “If the FCC continues to suggest -- wrongly, in my view -- that progress in broadband deployment is a problem, a deregulatory and market-driven approach offers an answer,” Cooper said. “Should the FCC continue to allow regulatory barriers to stand in the way of infrastructure investment, the agency will have itself to blame for any lack of timely and reasonably deployment of broadband services to all Americans."

The secretive collection of call records by the National Security Agency and the private collection of phone records tapped by the Drug Enforcement Agency show how U.S. privacy laws fail, said American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Catherine Crump in a Tuesday blog post (http://bit.ly/1dPvRgb). She cited details from a government presentation on the Hemisphere Project, published by The New York Times last weekend (http://nyti.ms/17EAh2e). That report showed how the government paid AT&T to access phone records going back multiple decades as part of its drug investigations. “The Hemisphere Project is similar to the NSA’s mass call-tracking program, in that both involve collecting vast troves of private phone records, virtually all of which are about innocent people,” Crump said. “Telecommunications companies are keeping far too many records about all of us and holding onto them for far too long.” She called for more government transparency about programs such as this as well as more information from the telcos about the customer data they retain.

The House Cybersecurity Subcommittee plans a hearing on “The Threat to Americans’ Personal Information: A Look into the Security and Reliability of the Health Exchange Data Hub,” Wednesday at 2 p.m. in the Cannon House Office Building. A Republican aide said the committee expects testimony from Michael Astrue, former general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); Stephen Parente, Carlson School of Management professor and director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute; and Kay Daly, assistant inspector general for audit services at HHS. The aide said the minority would also invite a witness to testify.