Jimm Phillips

A federal three-judge panel should vacate an FCC ruling that barred Northern Valley Communications from requiring long-distance phone companies to pay an access charge on calls to an end-user that receives Northern Valley’s services for free, the competitive LEC argued Monday before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The telco had been levying an access charge on telcos providing long-distance service for calls delivered to its customers. Northern Valley was one of many telcos the FCC said had engaged in “traffic pumping schemes,” in this case because it serves conference-calling companies that naturally generate high incoming call volumes. Although the FCC originally allowed Northern Valley to levy the access charge tariff, the agency said in a brief it eventually rescinded its approval in 2011 over changes to the tariff’s wording (http://xrl.us/bnx5qr).

The upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) will give the U.S. an opportunity to deepen its ties with Europe, officials and experts said Friday during an event at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies. The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) has largely been in agreement with the U.S. on important and controversial issues set to be discussed at WCIT, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation. For example, in October CEPT rejected the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association’s (ETNO) controversial “sender-party-pays” proposal for Internet traffic compensation that could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission (CD Oct 24 p5).

A new set of proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) outlines the U.S.’s vision for addressing issues that originally prompted other nations and trade groups to propose what the U.S. viewed as objectionable revisions. The proposals, which were to be submitted Wednesday to the ITU in advance of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), update the original set of proposals the U.S. submitted in early August (CD Aug 6 p2). Delegates will convene at WCIT in Dubai starting Dec. 3 to consider the proposed revisions. Proposed revisions to the ITRs must be submitted to the ITU by Friday.

The proposed T-Mobile USA/MetroPCS merger will create a combined carrier with more spectrum and a wider network, MetroPCS CEO Roger Linquist said Tuesday during an investor call. If the deal clears and closes as expected next year, MetroPCS shareholders will get $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the merged carrier (CD Oct 4 p1). “We have spent the last couple of years looking to add spectrum to our current holdings,” Linquist said. “Combining our spectrum with T-Mobile’s spectrum portfolio is a significant strategic benefit in this transaction. In our current coverage areas, we have an average of 22 MHz of spectrum. Following this transaction, MetroPCS’s major metropolitan areas will have an average of 83 MHz of spectrum, almost a four-fold improvement."

Sprint Nextel remains committed to its unlimited data plans, despite Verizon Wireless’s and AT&T’s claims that they benefitted from the rollout of their plans during Q3, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said Thursday during an investor conference call. “There are some temporary advantages that Verizon has due to its network, but we do not see making any changes to our rate plans,” Hesse said. “We're seeing absolutely nothing in any of our channels that indicates that the new rate plans that Verizon has is either helping or hurting -- to their credit, I don’t think it’s hurting them. Because of their LTE footprint advantage right now, they're … blasting right through, what we believe, are complex rate plans.” However, the carrier did announce new tiered-data plans for tablets Wednesday. The plans start at $14.99 for 300 MB and go up to $79.99 for 12GB, Sprint Nextel said. The carrier has long marketed its “Simply Unlimited” data plans, which began to see competition during the quarter from competing unlimited data plans from T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS (CD Aug 23 p5).

Public safety officials said Wednesday they hope an upcoming test being done by the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) will give them factual, documented evidence of the current limits of technology they use to determine the location of people using mobile phones dial 911. The testbed, set to be used next month at locations around San Francisco, will examine how those technologies perform in a variety of locations in urban, suburban and rural areas, said Patrick Donovan, an attorney adviser for the policy division of the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. CSRIC will draft a report based on those tests in March, including recommendations to help improve the accuracy of indoor location tracking. CSRIC began developing the test bed after it realized data on indoor location accuracy was limited, Donovan said.

The final shape of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association’s (ETNO) proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) remains unclear as the deadline to submit proposed revisions to the ITRs looms. ETNO is reportedly considering withdrawing its controversial “sender-party-pays” proposal, which the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) rejected Monday in a draft report (CD Oct 23 p13). CEPT rejected the proposal because it fell outside of the scope of the ITRs and dealt with specific commerce and technology issues (CD Oct 22 p7).

Other smaller carriers will eventually be purchased or merged with the “Big Four” U.S. carriers, now that T-Mobile and MetroPCS are combining, analysts said. MetroPCS stockholders will get $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the merged company (CD Oct 4 p1), and Japanese carrier SoftBank said Monday it will buy 70 percent of Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion (CD Oct 16 p1). Leap Wireless backs consolidation, the company told us. Also Friday, T-Mobile and MetroPCS made the case for their deal in a filing applying for FCC approval. (See separate report above.)

The U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) includes representatives from top U.S. technology companies, including AT&T, Apple, Facebook and Verizon, according to a list of 95 members of the delegation released at delegation leader Terry Kramer’s request (http://xrl.us/bnup6h). Delegates to WCIT, which is set to begin Dec. 3 in Dubai, will decide how to revise the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which have not been updated since they were first adopted in 1988.

So-called patent trolls and the patent wars are high-profile indicators of problems in the way the U.S. handles its own technology patent process and resulting litigation, industry experts said Tuesday. While the experts said at an Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus event that such problems exist, they did not agree about how severe those problems are.