Helped by solid wireless growth, Verizon posted Q3 profit of $3.5 billion, up 31 percent year-over-year. The revamp on Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation would benefit some of the company’s business, but it’s still too early to tell the impact on each business unit, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said Friday. Meanwhile, union workers at Verizon joined the Occupy Wall Street protest Friday over “Verizon’s corporate greed,” a move that Verizon called “misdirected outreach."
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is pressing other FCC members to look more closely at the appropriate size of a proposed Mobility Fund as the agency completes its Universal Service Fund proceeding, her wireless aide, Louis Peraertz, told a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Thursday. Elsewhere, aides to the four commissioners mostly talked about spectrum, with several conceding that spectrum sharing will be the trend of the future.
Telecom and consumer and states’ rights advocates were making final efforts to blunt the impact of the pending Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system reforms on their interests. The FCC extended the open lobbying period to the close of business Friday. More than one critic accused FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski of being unnecessarily opaque with his intentions. “I think a lot of things are still in flux,” Free Press Political Adviser Joel Kelsey said Thursday. “The details are moving targets.” The proposed USF order is on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting.
A nascent proposal for TV stations to act as broadband content delivery mechanisms (CD Oct 14 p14) for Internet Protocol traffic drew skepticism on technical and policy grounds from some industries whose support may be necessary for the proposal to succeed. Wireless companies, who want the FCC to voluntarily auction some broadcaster spectrum to free up frequencies for mobile broadband, declined to back the parts of the plan unveiled Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmgm8e) by the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband. An engineer who has worked for carriers and TV stations and a lawyer for full-power TV broadcasters told us the plan may face economic and equipment hurdles. Proponents said the economic analysis they paid for to show their plan would raise more money for the U.S. than an auction will be complete in a week, and standards for carriers to send traffic broadcasters’ way don’t fully exist.
AT&T’s Q3 net income fell 70 percent year-over-year to $3.62 billion, as the company faced a slowdown in subscriber growth. But the company expects a “blockbuster” Q4 in smartphone sales, helped by the launch of new iPhone 4S and new LTE smartphones, said Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, on a conference call Thursday.
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge pounded a city attorney Thursday with First Amendment objections to a San Francisco ordinance requiring cellphone retailers to provide government-written disclosures about handset radiation, health questions and ways to minimize exposure. “It’s possible UFOs are going to come down,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup told Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria, challenging him as to whether the city could require a disclosure that “if you're concerned about UFOs, here are the steps you can take.”
EU lawmakers appear to be taking a tougher stance in favor of net neutrality than rights advocates originally feared, said European Digital Rights and La Quadrature du Net Thursday. The European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) approved a resolution that, as amended, has more positive than negative aspects, they said. The main concern is that it backs the European Commission’s proposal to “wait and see” if there actually are net neutrality problems before regulating, they said. A plenary vote on the text is expected next month.
House Communications Subcommittee leaders are at odds over the right approach to unlicensed spectrum as the subcommittee continues negotiations on spectrum legislation, without a clear picture of when a markup will happen. Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., pushed Wednesday for more unlicensed spectrum to be released. But Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., questioned giving spectrum away for free. Unlicensed spectrum is “one of the most important issues in the continued negotiations over spectrum” in the committee and the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a Democratic House staffer said.
International harmonization of spectrum is critical, but difficult to achieve, and the U.S. so far has only a “mixed record” aligning its allocations with those in the rest of the world, said FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp Wednesday in a keynote speech at The Americas Spectrum Management Conference. Knapp cited in particular spectrum allocated to PCS, a different use than in most of the world. Knapp also said the outlook for widespread use of TV white spaces spectrum remains positive.
A draft policy allowing cellphone service shutdowns on BART only over “extraordinary” risks of injury, damage to the San Francisco regional rail system, or “substantial” disruption of service will be taken up by the governing board Oct. 27, its president said Wednesday. The board could vote on the policy then, but changes resulting from suggestions in public comments at the meeting or otherwise could put the decision off to the next meeting, scheduled for Nov. 17, President Bob Franklin told us. He said Bay Area Rapid Transit heard Monday from the FCC that it hasn’t decided whether to put out for public comment a petition challenging a July shutdown ordered to forestall a political demonstration in a downtown San Francisco station.