The SEC cleared IDT to spin off its Straight Path Communications subsidiary, IDT said Monday. Straight Path Communications has extensive holdings of spectrum licenses in the 28 and 38 GHz bands, as well as patents relating to the Internet and other communications over computer networks, IDT said. Following the spinoff, Straight Path Communications’ management will be “dedicated to realizing value from these intangible assets,” IDT said. The spinoff will be effective at 11:59 p.m. EDT on July 31 (http://bit.ly/1dCOU81).

Boeing and Panasonic Avionics partnered to offer eXConnect, a satellite-based in-flight broadband service. The service will be sold to government customers in and outside the U.S., said Boeing in a Tuesday news release (http://bit.ly/15CjOu5). It said the companies are working on a framework that allows Boeing to offer eXConnect and sell aeronautical terminals to the government market. The service will augment other Boeing command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, “providing customers with seamless situational awareness,” said Boeing.

Level 3 and Comcast resolved the interconnect dispute that began in November 2010 on “mutually satisfactory terms,” the two said in a joint Tuesday news release (http://bit.ly/12T4eZk): “Details will not be released.” The cable ISP and Internet backbone company “worked together collaboratively to reach a new, mutually satisfactory interconnect agreement that strengthens our partnership and we look forward to working together in the future,” said a Comcast spokeswoman in a separate statement. Level 3 accused Comcast in 2010 of erecting a “toll booth” by charging for the transmission of over-the-top content to Comcast broadband customers (CD Dec 1/10 p6). Level 3 said then that the demand came just days after it said it would be the main carrier for Netflix. Comcast and allies, in turn, said Level 3 was misleading the public, equating a peering dispute to a net neutrality dispute. A Level 3 spokesman declined to comment further. As paid peering agreements multiply between last-mile ISPs and companies like Level 3 that handle delivery of content to the broadband-service providers, some expect more disagreements (CD June 21 p1).

Requiring device interoperability in the lower 700 MHz band will promote some policy goals for the FCC, representatives of Vulcan Wireless said in a meeting with FCC General Counsel Sean Lev and other FCC officials. “Restoring interoperability will ensure a common platform for the three Lower 700 MHz blocks, facilitating greater service deployment, competition, spectrum efficiency, and innovation in the band,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/17izyUJ). “Moreover, the aggressive competition that interoperability will unleash will improve consumer service, reduce consumer switching costs, lower consumer prices, and enhance consumer choice. Interoperability will create a larger and more diverse device ecosystem while increased economies of scale drive down costs for all wireless carriers. Requiring services offered in the Lower 700 MHz band to interoperate does not favor one group of licensees over another, but puts consumers’ interests first, including those consumers living in more rural areas. In addition, interoperability will encourage more efficient use of spectrum, helping to ease the dire shortage of spectrum.” In a separate letter to the FCC, Vincent McBride, managing member of McBride Spectrum Partners, also urged an interoperability mandate. McBride bought the Pittsburgh 700 MHz A-block licenses in the 2008 700 MHz spectrum auction (http://bit.ly/12GQUWF). “AT&T has created an absolute barrier to entry for small businesses just the opposite of congressional intent to ensure that small business had an opportunity to compete in the mobile industry,” McBride said. “Hypothetically this non interoperability in the lower 700 MHz band may have been premeditated and deliberately designed to lock -out the competition from offering nationwide roaming."

Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter said acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn took an important next step in circulating a rulemaking seeking broad comment on the future use of the 1695-1710, 1755-1780 and 2155-2180 MHz bands (CD July 16 p4). He called it “an important step forward toward a real dialogue over the future of federal government spectrum holdings including repurposing additional federal bands for commercial wireless use and unleashing further investment in a market that cannot stand still as consumer demands for data explodes. … The time to act is now to reallocate 1755-1780. As data-hungry mobile devices fly off the shelves, we must also move toward a serious conversation about federal spectrum use that includes reallocation, sharing and incentives as well as move forward on incentive auctions."

Dish Network opened its third-party application programming interface (API) to developers. Trusted partners can access many of the same second-screen APIs that Dish uses for its own Dish Explorer mobile app on its Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR, Dish said in a press release (http://bit.ly/13MHGzA). With the Dish APIs, developers “can offer new ways for customers to discover shows that are available on the program guide, recorded to the DVR and accessible on demand,” it said. Their apps also can control the Hopper “by changing channels, setting recordings and playing back DVR and on-demand shows,” it said. Thuuz Sports incorporated Dish’s APIs into its app, it said.

Wireless traffic in the U.S. has almost doubled over the past year, the 4G Americas 3GPP trade association said Monday in a report. Meanwhile, aggregate global mobile data traffic is forecast to grow 11-13 times over the next five years, the group said. “This pressures the entire wireless industry to provide increased capacity and improved network performance,” said 4G Americas President Chris Pearson in a news release. “Many wireless carriers are meeting this challenge by a variety of means, not least of which has been the deployment of increasingly capable smart antenna solutions.” Base station antenna technology has progressed in response to evolving industry requirements for additional cellular frequency bands, along with the integration of additional functionality into single radome housing and antenna techniques meant to add additional capacity to mobile networks, said Alcatel-Lucent Chief Technology Officer Stephen Wilkus in the 4G Americas news release (http://bit.ly/18jXtaX).

The “true motivation” for blocking certain inmate calls is financial, Millicorp told FCC officials Friday: “to avoid the loss in revenue when an inmate call is placed to a local number rather than a long-distance number” (http://bit.ly/18heDT5). Inmate calling service (ICS) providers are using a “pretext” when they cite security arguments, Millicorp said. The company, which owns the VoIP calling service “ConsCallHome,” related several recent reports from its customers of call blocking incidents, including an allegation from one ICS provider that “Millicorp is a ‘fraud.'” There “remains a need for regulatory certainty regarding the permissible scope of call blocking activities,” Millcorp said. The company asked the commission to clarify to ICS providers that it is “not permissible to block inmate calls to Millicorp-assigned local telephone numbers merely because the telephone numbers have NPA-NXX codes that are local to the prison facilities but terminate to the customers’ geographically remote home addresses.” Millicorp also said it resolved its inmate call blocking dispute with Securus in an “amicable” manner, as directed by the FCC as a condition for approving a transfer of control of Securus’s operating subsidiaries from one holding company to another (CD April 30 p5).

AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn urged the FCC in a meeting Thursday with FCC Chief of Staff Michele Ellison and Sarah Whitesell, an aide to acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn not to move forward on 700 MHz interoperability rules. “During the meeting, we emphasized that a regulation forcing AT&T to offer its customers only LTE devices that incorporate Band 12 components that AT&T does not want, cannot use, and that would reduce the quality of AT&T’s LTE services, would harm consumers and competition and would have no public interest benefits,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/11RqwQh). “The Commission should instead focus on eliminating the interference concerns that have made Band 12 deployments impractical in much of the country.” Quinn questioned the legality of a mandate, according to the filing: “Such a mandate would cause substantial consumer harms, because it would force AT&T to include unnecessary components in all of its devices that would cause reduced coverage, lower average throughput, reduced battery life, and form factor compromises that AT&T’s competitors would not face. Indeed, the mandate would necessitate a redesign of all of AT&T’s LTE devices, which would likely result in fewer overall choices for AT&T’s customers.”

The FCC Public Safety Bureau denied several requests for waivers of its requirement that Emergency Alert System participants be able to receive Common Area Protocol (CAP) messages, the commission said in a public notice Monday (http://bit.ly/15z062m). Southern Communications Volunteers, Applegate Media, New Wave, Lakeview Cable, RB3, and Reach Broadband had requested waivers of the commission’s June 30, 2012 deadline for EAS participants to “have installed operational equipment that can receive and process EAS alerts” in CAP, and all have been denied, the PN said. SCV, New Wave, Lakeview, Reach, and Applegate all said they could not meet the deadline because of “vendor delay” preventing them from getting the needed equipment, the PN said. However, the Public Safety Bureau denied their waivers because their waiver requests “show that they chose to wait until very close to the deadline to order equipment, and thus any delay in receiving equipment was entirely attributable to each company’s business decisions,” the PN said. The Bureau also said by failing to order the equipment on time, the companies had let the public down. “The Commission implemented the June 30 deadline for CAP compliance in order to ensure that ‘Next Generation EAS’ would be transmitted in an efficient, rapid, and secure manner over a variety of formats” said the PN. “We find that the lack of due diligence shown by the Petitioners to obtain the required equipment in a timely fashion is inconsistent with the public interest.” However, New Wave and several of the other companies have additional CAP waiver requests before the FCC that cite other waiver justifications -- such as a lack of broadband internet access -- and this order does not affect those petitions, the PN said. “We're reviewing the order,” said Cinnamon Mueller attorney Scott Friedman, who represents New Wave, Reach Broadband and Lakeview Cable.