Verizon Wireless co-owner Vodafone criticized a decision by the U.K. Office of Communications to allow a U.K. mobile carrier co-owned by T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom (DT) to operate what will be that country’s first 4G LTE service. Ofcom approved an application by Everything Everywhere (EE), co-owned by DT and France Telecom, to use its 1800 MHz spectrum in the U.K. to operate the service. Ofcom-issued licenses will allow EE to start the service as soon as Sept. 11, the regulator said in a written statement.
AT&T announced Friday that only subscribers on the new “Mobile Share” shared data plan will be able to use the popular iPhone FaceTime app on the carrier’s mobile network, which prompted renewed charges Monday that restrictions on the app’s use violated FCC rules. All iPhones are currently only able to use the app via Wi-Fi, but will be able to use it on mobile networks on the new iOS6 system set to debut this fall. Last month, speculation centered on whether AT&T would charge users a fee to use the app on its mobile network, prompting public interest groups to charge that such a move would violate the FCC’s Open Internet rules (CD July 19 p11). News that mobile use of the app would be restricted to “Mobile Share” subscribers renewed those charges. “The FCC’s rules prohibit such blatantly anti-competitive conduct by wireless companies,” Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said in a statement. “Such behavior would be a problem no matter what Internet platform you choose. It would be unimaginable on your home broadband connection. Apple’s FaceTime comes pre-installed on a Macbook Pro, too, but no home broadband provider would dream of blocking the app there unless you'd signed up for a more expensive data plan.” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said AT&T does not believe their decision to limit mobile use of FaceTime violates FCC rules. “FaceTime is available to all of our customers today over Wi-Fi and we're now expanding its availability even further as an added benefit of our new Mobile Share data plans,” he said.
Members of the Communications Workers of America formally accepted contracts with two AT&T divisions and are considering “tentative” contracts with three others, CWA announced Friday. AT&T wireline employees represented by CWA have voted to accept three-year contracts with AT&T Midwest and AT&T Corp., AT&T said. The CWA reached a tentative agreement on the contracts July 21, the carrier said. The AT&T Midwest agreement covers more than 13,000 employees in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. The AT&T Corp. agreement covers 5,700 employees across the country, AT&T said.
AT&T’s expected buildout of its 4G LTE network may spark another wave of data usage growth -- and the carrier stands to benefit from that investment, said Chief Financial Officer John Stephens. “We expect that when the LTE buildout is complete for us next year, and devices catch up with our buildout, that we're going to see another step up,” he said at an Oppenheimer investor conference in Boston Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnkue5): “Will it grow at the same rate it’s grown in the past five years? Possibly.” Overall mobile data consumption in the U.S. will reach 2 exabytes this year, said Chetan Sharma Consulting, a wireless consulting firm (http://xrl.us/bnkt4z).
ISPs participating in the FCC’s Broadband Measurement Group will study and report back on how often broadband subscribers continue to use legacy equipment after they have upgraded to a faster broadband service, an agency official told us. ISP representatives had raised concerns about the issue when the group met Wednesday to plan out the next speed test report (CD Aug 9 p4). The representatives claimed legacy equipment could cause a subscriber’s broadband connection to run slower than it normally would, and could thus affect speed test results. The ISPs plan to report back on the issue at the next meeting, and will discuss policies for addressing the problem, the agency official said. The group will discuss the issue and will determine what steps they will need to take to respond to those concerns, the official said.
Last week’s Asia-Pacific Telecommunity meeting did not end with a formal set of proposals for the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), potentially damaging the region’s influence in the lead-up to the conference, said David Gross, former State Department international communications and information coordinator. But the general consensus coming out of the meeting bodes well for the U.S. position on whether the conference, led by the ITU, should adopt controversial proposals to change how the Internet is regulated, he said. Gross said he attended the Asia-Pacific meeting in Bangkok as chair of the Ad Hoc World Conference on International Telecommunications Working Group, which represents 15 major multinational telecom and Internet companies.
As the FCC’s Broadband Measurement Group met Wednesday to plan the production of their next annual broadband speed measurement report, the commission made clear the group will produce the next report under the same data collection process that was used the first two times. “We have some disputes, some issues, between the people here in terms of the process and the policies,” said Walter Johnston, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division. “We're not going to let that get in the way of the next report,” he said.
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s gold medal win Sunday in the 100-meter final has become a highlight moment of the London Olympics. It’s one that Comcast and NBCUniversal officials used to demonstrate the power of NHK’s Super Hi-Vision ultra-HD technology during a demonstration at Comcast’s Washington headquarters Monday night. Reporters crowded around an 85-inch LCD screen as video showed Bolt and his rivals lined up to start the race. The technology that was shown is in early stages of development and takes many gigabytes to be sent from London to the U.S., executives at Comcast’s NBCUniversal said at the demo.
The U.S. formally opposed attempts to wrest control of the Internet away from its current governing organizations in favor of the United Nations’ ITU, the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) said in documents filed Friday. The Dec. 3-4 meeting in Dubai will focus on revising the ITU’s treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), last revised in 1988. The U.S. State Department released the documents to the public after the filing (http://xrl.us/bnjbef).
Proposed rules by the NTIA on a technical panel and dispute resolution boards mandated by Congress to speed the conversion of federal spectrum to commercial use, and spectrum sharing “will bring needed clarity” to the process, but need to do more to ensure the transition occurs as Congress intended, T-Mobile said in comments at the agency. The rules the NTIA proposed in mid-July would define terminology for the transition regulations, lay out how the transition’s technical panel would work and establish resolution boards to solve transition-related disputes (http://xrl.us/bni6f6). NTIA posted the comments Thursday, a day after the submission deadline. The changes on which NTIA sought comment were part of spectrum bill enacted in February.