NTIA awarded more than $23 million in grants to 12 states and the District of Columbia this week for planning for FirstNet, said NTIA Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1azbhhX). Under the State and Local Implementation Grant Program, the following states were awarded funds: Arkansas ($1.5 million), District of Columbia ($636,722), Georgia ($3.3 million), Kansas ($1.8 million), Kentucky ($1.8 million), Maryland ($1.9 million), Nebraska ($1.5 million), New Jersey ($2.7 million), North Carolina ($3.2 million), Oregon ($2.1 million), South Dakota ($1.2 million), Vermont ($710,941) and Wyoming ($1.3 million). All recipients must provide a matching contribution of at least 20 percent and NTIA said additional grants will be awarded on a rolling basis.

Time Warner Cable subscribers in markets blacked out from watching CBS channels in the cable operator’s retransmission dispute with the network can pick up free indoor TV antennas at TWC retail stores “while supplies last,” TWC said in a blog post Friday. The one-antenna-per-household offer is available to TWC subscribers in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wis., New York and southern California, it said. Subscribers also can visit TWC retail stores for a $20 voucher redeemable toward buying an “in-stock” indoor antenna at Best Buy stores in those markets, TWC said. The advisory lists 89 Best Buy stores in those markets that will accept the vouchers, including 43 Best Buy outlets with TWC store-within-a-store locations. Best Buy representatives didn’t immediately say whether TWC’s offer has caused an increase in demand at the Best Buy stores affected and whether supplies are sufficient at those stores to meet any surge in demand. Nor did TWC representatives comment on the response to the offer at TWC retail stores. “All blacked-out broadcast stations remain available over the air, and most households can receive the signals if they have the right equipment,” including an antenna and a TV set with a digital tuner or a DTV converter box purchased during the government’s coupon subsidy program, TWC said. TWC cautions that it’s “not responsible for the installation or performance of any antennas,” and advises customers to visit the FCC’s website to be sure their homes can receive “a good enough quality signal to make an antenna worthwhile.”

Arianespace completed its launch buildup for an Aug. 29 mission to launch the Eutelsat 25B/Es'hail 1 and GSAT-7 satellites. “With both satellites now installed, Ariane 5 is ready for the final pre-flight preparations,” Arianespace said in a press release. Eutelsat 25B/Es'hail 1 will be deployed about 27 minutes after liftoff and GSAT-7 will be deployed 34 minutes after liftoff, it said. The satellites will be launched on an Ariane-5 rocket, Arianespace said. Eutelsat 25B/Es'hail 1 will be used to deliver TV broadcasting and government services in Ku band and Ka band, and GSAT-7 will provide relay capacity in UHF and the S-, C- and Ku bands, it said.

The Austin city council passed a resolution with guidelines for free Google Fiber coverage for up to 100 public and non-profit facilities Thursday (http://bit.ly/1d9cGxI). Through a Community Connections program, City Hall, the Central Library and other facilities would get broadband Internet services through Google Fiber’s network free of charge until 2023. Some of the considerations for the program include enhancing participation in the entity’s service, promoting digital inclusion, serving the underserved, benefiting the community and helping the entity financially. The city council wants the sites to be as geographically dispersed as possible, serve diverse populations and diverse sectors. Site applications will be available on the city’s web page on Monday with applications due Sept. 30 and decisions made Nov. 21.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on an AT&T petition asking for a waiver of commission rules for a test in south Florida of power spectral density (PSD) as an alternative to effective radiated power for determining base station power limits. AT&T requested the waiver in July (http://bit.ly/154X4It). AT&T proposes a PSD limit of 250 watts/MHz in non-rural areas and 500 watts/MHz in rural areas and offered a study it says shows that shifting to PSD-based power limits for the cellular service in the markets wouldn’t cause harmful interference. “Offering cellular carriers the option to use a PSD measure for calculating cellular base station power limits would eliminate unintended penalties on the deployment of advanced digital broadband modulation schemes such as Long Term Evolution ... in the cellular bands,” AT&T said in the petition. “Grant of the requested relief would be in the public interest because: (i) the waiver would remove disparities between radio services that limit cellular carriers’ ability to deploy the most efficient and advanced modulation techniques; and (ii) the waiver would promote the deployment of mobile broadband services consistent with the policy goals enumerated in the National Broadband Plan.” AT&T said the bureau sought comment last year on its earlier petition for expedited rulemaking raising the same issue. “No carrier commenting on AT&T’s proposed rule change opposed the proposed revision to the power limits rule,” AT&T said. “Verizon Wireless, while agreeing with AT&T’s proposal, argued that even higher PSD limits should be adopted by the Commission.” Comments are due Sept. 23, replies Oct. 8 (http://bit.ly/16nLl16).

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded to a lower court a complaint by a woman who didn’t want a financial services company to use an automated telephone dialing system to call her cellphone after she revoked her previous express consent. Ashley Gager filed a complaint against Dell Financial Services alleging the company had violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. “Gager contends that the District Court improperly dismissed her complaint for failure to state a claim on the theory that she could not revoke her consent once it was given,” the court said (http://1.usa.gov/17NwLSZ). “We agree with Gager. Therefore ... we will reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” In 2007, Gager applied for a line of credit from Dell to buy computer equipment. “The credit application required that she provide her home phone number,” the court said. “Gager listed her cellular phone number in that place on the application. In doing so, however, she neither stated that the number was for a cellular phone, nor did she indicate that Dell should not use an automated telephone dialing system to call her at the number she provided.”

The Universal Service Administrative Co. provided rate floor information for carriers that are below the local urban rate floor benchmark of $14 (http://bit.ly/19AkTWJ). The total annualized rate floor reduction for carriers that receive high-cost model support is about $4.4 million, and the total number of study areas with rate floor reductions is 276, USAC said.

New players in the smartphone operating system market will capture 18 percent of market share by 2018 -- evidence of coming fragmentation, said Juniper Research Thursday in a report. The new players, including Asha, Sailfish and emerging HTML5-based OS players, will take away important niche areas from the “current global OS elite,” Juniper said. At this point, Apple and Samsung look to remain the top smartphone manufacturers through 2018, with the two shipping almost 800 million smartphones that year -- 17 percent more smartphones total that year than all vendors shipped total in 2012, Juniper said. Apple is set to experience sustained growth in emerging markets. Juniper notes that expected Apple announcements about new products will be the start of a more concerted diversification effort for the company, bringing it closer to Samsung’s tactic of “catering to diverse set of markets utilising different models which will maintain the current global dichotomy” (http://bit.ly/15ZOvbd).

The FCC must act swiftly in its pending rulemaking on call completion issues, the National Exchange Carrier Association, Western Telecommunications Alliance and NTCA told FCC officials Tuesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/176G8xd). The groups urged enforcement action against carriers that fail to connect calls to rural consumers. The groups cited “troubling and life-threatening examples of call failure, including a surgeon who did not receive a call that was needed to perform emergency surgery.” The groups pushed for adoption of record retention rules and safe harbors after four quarters of comparable call completion performance between a carrier’s rural and non-rural areas.

The FCC is stepping up efforts to get more carriers to offer consumers wireless handsets that can lawfully be unlocked, acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn said Thursday. “While wireless carriers should be able to enforce their valid customer contracts, the unlocking provisions need to be grounded in common sense and practical application,” Clyburn said in a written statement. “Consumers, who satisfy the reasonable terms of their contracts, should not be subject to civil and criminal penalties if they want to take their device to a new carrier.” Clyburn backed “an industry-wide cellphone unlocking solution that best serves the public interest.”