The FCC should hold multiple mock auctions in advance of the incentive auction, and hold them early enough to allow stakeholders to suggest changes, CTIA said Monday in a letter to Incentive Auction Task Force heads Gary Epstein and Howard Symons. “The most logical approach would be to conduct multiple mock auctions in the time leading up to the actual incentive auction” to let auction participants become familiar with auction software and the data they will receive, CTIA said. “A single mock auction will not provide interested stakeholders the opportunity to fully understand the novel incentive auction process.” The association instead wants three mock auctions, one held two months out from the auction start, one a month away, and one a week before the incentive auction begins. The mock auctions should include extended phases so the parties involved can become familiar with them, and the FCC should release examples of items such as bidding reports ahead of the mock auctions, CTIA said. The agency should release “example data” that would include “broadcast station impairments including broadcaster call sign, cell grid impairment data, impairment levels for particular forward auction license blocks (Category 1 and Category 2 information), information about international border impairments (at the cell grid level for both Canadian and Mexican impairments), and all other impairment data that the FCC intends to provide bidders,” CTIA said. “Mock auctions are a form of a soft-launch with actual users that provide feedback that would allow the FCC and auction bidders to uncover any needed adjustments prior to actual auction start,” said the letter to be posted in docket 12-268.

The FCC will have working email during its upcoming six-day IT outage over Labor Day weekend (see 1508200049), an FCC spokesman told us. Though some media had reported that the commission’s email would be down while the system is being upgraded, the spokesman told us that wouldn't be the case because the email recently was transitioned to the cloud. The FCC’s office voicemail will be down, but individual staff BlackBerry phones will still have operating voicemail, the spokesman said.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn again pointed to Telecom Act Section 257 on diversity, this time in a blog post Friday after the Office of Communications Business Opportunities fourth supplier diversity conference held the day before (see 1508200034) and where she appeared. The section tasks the FCC with identifying and removing barriers of entry for small businesses in the provision of parts and services to communications companies. Clyburn said both of the conference's panels "were inspiring and enlightening," and lauded A Unity System CEO Tonee Bell for his presentation to other small-business suppliers. Bell's company manufactures computers and smartwatches and recently landed a contract to supply his devices to Walmart, he said Thursday.

Blacked-out Washington state ABC affiliates KVEW Kennewick and KXLY-TV Spokane are back on Dish Network during the wildfire emergency in that state, Dish said Thursday. The stations were among four owned by Morgan Murphy Media that have been blacked out on Dish since Aug. 13 while the two companies are at loggerheads in retransmission consent talks (see 1508180065). In a statement, Warren Schlichting, Dish senior vice president-programming, said, "Now is the time to set aside business and give Dish customers access to local news and information as Washington battles fires in many parts of the state."

Cable companies accounted for most of Q2 M&A value in the entertainment, media and communications industries, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said in a report Wednesday. Charter Communications' planned buy of Time Warner Cable accounted for the most dollar volume of a single deal, said PwC, and was one of six cable and telecom Q2 megadeals -- defined as transactions worth $1 billion or more. Liberty Broadband's investment in Charter, Verizon's acquisition of AOL, Altice's planned buy of most of Cequel Communications (also known as Suddenlink), Lightower Fiber and Fibertech Networks' combination, and Crown Castle International's buy of Sunesys were the other five megadeals. In total, the communications sector had 27 mergers or acquisitions, which is 11 more deals than in Q1. The cable industry had one more transaction in Q2 than in Q1, but with roughly $63 billion in deals, had nearly $52 billion more than in Q1, said PwC. The broadcast sector, as defined by PwC, had one less merger or acquisition in Q2, but the deal dollar volume rose, PwC said.

A federal court slightly delayed briefing in Neustar's challenge to an FCC order giving Telcordia conditional rights to the next local number portability administrator (LNPA) contract (Neustar v. FCC, No. 15-1080). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Wednesday granted the joint motion of the Department of Justice, FCC and Neustar (the LNPA incumbent) to push back briefing due dates by a week or two to accommodate "competing work demands" (see 1508130042): Neustar's brief is now due Sept. 21; the FCC/DOJ's response Oct. 28; intervenors' brief supporting the FCC (CTIA, Telcordia and USTelecom) Nov. 12, Neustar's reply Nov. 25 and final briefs incorporating an appendix Dec. 17. Oral argument is usually held at least 45 days after briefing closes. Meanwhile, the FCC is moving ahead with efforts to transition the LNPA functions from Neustar to a Telcordia entity, subject to conditions and contract approval. Recognizing the need for certain communications between the LNPA entities, other telecom industry stakeholders and commission officials to carry out transition tasks seamlessly, the Wireline Bureau Tuesday exempted certain presentations from the agency's ex parte rules for disclosing FCC meetings and contacts, though it reminded parties that the agency can rely only on information placed on the record in making decisions.

Consumer Watchdog asked NASA Inspector General Paul Martin to end a special deal with Google to test unmanned drones over private land. That agency's decision to grant the company a waiver to test drones gives Google an unfair advantage over competitors, and the benefits to taxpayers are unclear, said a CW letter Tuesday to Martin. “NASA should suspend this special arrangement with Google immediately ... pending an explanation about how this technology benefits taxpayers and the federal government itself,” Consumer Advocate Liza Tucker wrote. This isn't the first time Google has abused taxpayer dollars to advance commercial technology, Tucker said. In its letter to Martin, Consumer Watchdog asked the NASA official to also investigate whether a special relationship between Google and NASA officials led to the “unusual arrangement,” which was kept secret until Google recently filed for a Federal Aviation Administration waiver to operate unmanned aircraft. Google and NASA have tested drones over private land in the U.S. throughout the past year, said a CW news release. Its letter said other U.S. companies like Amazon have been testing drones at sites outside the U.S., including Canada, due to “frustration with gaining U.S. permission to test its technology.” In the next six months, Google and NASA want to test in Merced, California, to see if cellphone signals can be used to control and land drones, it said. NASA and Google didn’t comment.

Large cable companies added 511,757 broadband subscribers and telcos lost 151,478 in Q2, continuing cable gains that have accounted for 95 percent of the roughly 3 million net (wireline) high-speed Internet additions over the last year, Leichtman Research Group said Tuesday in a news release. LRG said the cable net gain was 38 percent higher than in Q2 2014 while the telco net loss was higher than in any previous quarter, four of the past six of which have been losses. The 10 cable companies and seven telcos reviewed have about 94 percent of the market; at the end of Q2 2015, cable had 53.5 million subscribers and telcos had 35.4 million (a 60-40 cable-telco wireline market split), said LRG. Leading cable last quarter was Time Warner Cable, which added 189,000 subscribers, followed by Comcast's 179,000 adds, Charter Communications' 86,000, Cablevision's 14,000, Mediacom's 10,000 and Cable One's 457, while Bright House Networks and Cox Communications were estimated by LRG to have added 45,000 between them. WideOpenWest lost 8,900 subscribers and Suddenlink lost 2,800, Leichtman said. Comcast had 22.5 million broadband subscribers at quarter's end followed by TWC's 12.8 million, Charter's 5.3 million, Cablevision's 2.8 million, Suddenlink's 1.2 million and Mediacom's 1.1 million, with BHN and Cox estimated to have 6.6 million between them. AT&T and Verizon added 313,000 U-verse and FiOS high-speed Internet subscribers, respectively, in Q2 2015, while losing 474,000 net DSL subscribers combined, said LRG. It said U-verse and FiOS customers now are 56 percent of telco broadband subscribers, up from 42 percent two years ago. Overall, AT&T lost 136,000 net broadband subscribers, followed by Verizon's 25,000 in losses, Windstream's 11,600, CenturyLink's 9,000 and FairPoint's 1,278, while Frontier Communications added 29,000, and Cincinnati Bell added 2,400, said the industry research firm. AT&T had almost 16 million landline broadband subscribers at quarter's end, followed by Verizon's 9.2 million, CenturyLink's 6.1 million, Frontier's 2.4 million, Windstream's 1.1 million, FairPoint's 317,100 and Cincinnati Bell's 275,100.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Monday making the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program a permanent part of the federal government within the General Services Administration, a White House news release said. The program brings executives, entrepreneurs, technologists and other innovators into government and teams them with federal employees to improve federal programs, it said. “My hope is this continues to encourage a culture of public service among our innovators, and tech entrepreneurs, so that we can keep building a government that’s as modern, as innovative, and as engaging as our incredible tech sector is,” Obama said.

Correction: Consumer complaints didn't appear to appreciably rise in Idaho during the transition of wireline systems from Qwest to CenturyLink and from Verizon to Frontier Communications (see 1508140023).