The Office of Personnel Management partially reported on two of the seven requirements of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, but it didn’t report agency information for the five remaining requirements, said the GAO in a report released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/17IdUgX). Insufficient time had elapsed for all requirements of the act to be fully implemented because agencies faced challenges in measuring outcomes for some nonparticipation goals, said OPM. It didn’t take adequate steps to establish a completion date for agencies to produce reliable data from employee time and attendance tracking systems.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a request for information for a publication on improving coordination between Computer Security Incident Response Teams and reducing delays when reacting to computer security incidents, NIST said Friday (http://1.usa.gov/17plM3a). NIST wants information on best practices, impediments to information sharing and response, successful technical standards and technologies and viewpoints on incident coordinator objectives. NIST requests all comments by July 29.

Trade groups and companies that favor spectrum aggregation limits in the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum met with Louis Peraertz, aide to acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Almond, chief of staff at the Wireless Bureau, to press their case. “This group of public interest organizations, trade associations, and competitive carriers discussed the attached slides [http://bit.ly/1aUXQXU], which explain the importance of promoting competition and preventing excessive spectrum aggregation in the upcoming 600 MHz incentive auction,” said a Friday ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/17Iax9F). “Adopting a spectrum aggregation limit for this auction will promote investment and innovation, encourage auction participation, enhance consumer choice, and create the potential for higher auction revenue.” Among the groups represented were the Competitive Carriers Association, Rural Telecommunications Group, NTCA, New America Foundation and the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Carriers represented included Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and C Spire Wireless. Dish Network also had a representative at the meeting.

The “Industrial Logic” of Charter Communications buying the larger Time Warner Cable “Is Sound,” wrote a Citigroup analyst at the start of a report to investors Friday. “The cable industry is 50 years old, but is still woefully fragmented. Escalating programming costs, the rising importance of heavy user interface investments (think Comcast’s X1 platform) and the need to develop an industry-wide ad platform all augur for further consolidation.” Spokespeople for Charter and Time Warner Cable had no comment on the report. Charter’s market value is less than half that of Time Warner Cable’s, wrote the analyst, Jason Bazinet. Liberty Media’s investment in Charter, that operator’s “pending turn-around, the industry’s lack of scale,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge’s “managerial acumen and historically low interest rates” all “suggest” the “industry is poised to consolidate,” wrote Bazinet. “The only question is this: which firm will Charter acquire?"

A Time Warner Cable app will launch later this summer on the Xbox 360 as part of a deal with Microsoft, a TWC spokeswoman said Friday. The app will allow TWC subscribers who are also paying Xbox Live Gold members to watch up to 300 live TV channels on the videogame console, it said in a news release. The app will be available for free download at the Xbox Live Marketplace, it said. TWC has been working with Microsoft on the deal “for a long time,” and it’s “going to build on this momentum by adding features like VOD,” the spokeswoman said. TWC will also “explore” the Xbox One that Microsoft plans to ship in November, she said. The new console “has a lot of potential” and TWC is “always working to expand” the app, she said.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved Google’s launch of a white spaces TV band database in a Friday order (http://bit.ly/12ryAF5). The Google database is the third approved by OET. Databases provided by Spectrum Bridge and Telcordia Technologies previously received the commission’s blessing. A 45-day public trial of the Google database ended April 17. Some 16,000 “unique users” visited its trial site, generating more than 36,000 page views, Google said at the time. More than 30 percent of visits were from outside the U.S.

The record so far demonstrates that FCC proposals to subject wireless carriers to a regulatory fee for interstate telecommunications service providers (ITSPs) and to reallocate some full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) are “ill-advised and, if not rejected outright, at the very least should be subject to further scrutiny and greater transparency,” CTIA said in reply comments on a May NPRM on regulatory fee reform (CD June 24 p5). “Commenters have expressed grave concerns and have identified significant flaws in the proposal to include wireless regulatees in the ITSP regulatory fee category,” CTIA said (http://bit.ly/153bJki). “In particular, industry growth is not a basis for setting regulatory fees under Section 9 of the Communications Act. Moreover, as CTIA demonstrated in its initial comments, claims that wireline regulatees are paying more than their fair share of regulatory fees fail to account for the fact that wireless regulatees contribute more to the Commission’s overall budget than ITSPs or any other group of regulatees.” CTIA said the NPRM’s proposal “to reallocate the FTEs in certain core bureaus creates a tremendous amount of complexity and uncertainty regarding the calculation of regulatory fees across all bureaus.”

Fibertech Networks constructed more than 850 miles of fiber recently in Connecticut, the company said Friday (http://bit.ly/11SFFLC). Its total is now upward of 3,500 miles throughout that state, it added, calling Connecticut “our Eastern region headquarters.” It opened a large regional office in Cheshire, Conn. “Fibertech’s service offering encompasses both dark fiber and optical broadband options to area businesses that have predominately used traditional carrier lines in the past,” it said. Fibertech cited Connecticut’s business growth and an increasing demand for broadband connectivity.

Cablevision completed the sale of “substantially all of the Clearview Cinemas theaters” to Bow Tie Cinemas, said Cablevision in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/17HXvJl). The buyer is getting 41 venues (CD April 30 p13).

BlackBerry on Friday reported smartphone and tablet sales for Q1 ended June 1 that were weaker than the year-ago quarter. Despite posting a narrower loss and improved revenue, BlackBerry shares closed 27.8 percent lower Friday at $10.46. Analysts had expected the struggling company to report a profit and somewhat higher shipments of smartphones using its new BlackBerry 10 operating system than the 2.7 million units that it reported. The company shipped 6.8 million smartphones in Q1, up from 6 million in Q4, said Chief Financial Officer Brian Bidulka on an earnings call. But shipments were down from 7.8 million in Q1 last year. About 40 percent of the smartphones shipped were BlackBerry 10 models, said Bidulka. BlackBerry also shipped about 100,000 PlayBook tablets in Q1, it said. That was down from about 260,000 in Q1 last year. BlackBerry didn’t say how many PlayBooks were sold to consumers. Although the company will “eventually” move all its smartphones to BlackBerry 10, it no longer plans to do that with the PlayBook, said CEO Thorsten Heins. The company spent a lot of time looking for solutions to move the tablet to BlackBerry 10, but was “not satisfied with the level of performance and user experience” on the device, he said. Therefore, it made a “difficult decision to stop these efforts and focus on our core hardware portfolio,” he said. BlackBerry 10 is “still in the early stages of its transition,” said Heins, pointing out the new operating system launched five months ago. The plan is to have no more than six new devices on the market at any time, he said. The BlackBerry Z10 is now available in 147 countries including the U.S. and has been an “effective launch product” for BlackBerry 10, he said. The BlackBerry Q10 is now available in 96 countries including the U.S. and is expected to expand into 50 more countries in Q2, he said. The BlackBerry Q5, a lower-end model targeted at emerging markets, shipped in Dubai and 106 carriers in 59 countries are expected to launch it in Q2, he said. Despite the focus on BlackBerry 10, the existing BlackBerry 7 customer base “remains an important market to us,” said Heins. “Many emerging markets continue to purchase” those phones, he said. Q1 revenue grew 9 percent to $3.1 billion from Q1 last year. BlackBerry’s loss narrowed to $84 million, or 16 cents a share, from $518 million, or 99 cents. Hardware revenue grew 33 percent from Q4 to about $2.2 billion and made up 71 percent of revenue, up from about 61 percent in Q4, said Bidulka. Twenty-six percent of revenue was from services and 3 percent was from software and other sales, the company said. Inventories grew by $284 million to $887 million from Q4, mainly to support the continued BlackBerry 10 launch, said Bidulka. Heins was “encouraged” that three of its four regions returned to revenue growth in Q1 as BlackBerry 10 continued to roll out, he said. Its largest region, Europe, Middle East and Africa, made up 43 percent of revenue and was up 9 percent from Q4, said Bidulka. North America made up 25 percent of revenue and was up 30 percent from Q4, while Asia Pacific made up 17 percent of revenue and was up 35 percent from Q4, he said. Latin America, however, represented 15 percent of revenue and was down 6 percent from Q4, he said. The new fiscal year will be a “year of investment” for BlackBerry that will include significant marketing efforts to back the ongoing BlackBerry 10 launch, said Heins. Over the next three quarters, it will be increasing investments to support the rollout of new products and services, he said. As a result, it expects an operating loss for Q2, he said. But Q2 results are “very difficult to estimate during this transition in what remains a highly competitive smartphone environment,” said Bidulka. A year ago, the company made a “tough decision” in delaying the BlackBerry 10 launch until early 2013, said Heins. BlackBerry is a “leaner, more efficient” company now, he said.