A new "overlay" area code, 640, was assigned in New Jersey to the 609 area code for the state's central and southeastern regions, including Atlantic City, Hammonton, Princeton and Trenton, announced Neustar, the North American Numbering Plan administrator. "Neustar forecasts that numbering resources in the 609 area code will be exhausted by the third quarter of 2018," said a company news release Tuesday. "The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has directed all local exchange service providers to activate the new area code to ensure the availability of numbering resources in a manner that is most efficient and least confusing for consumers, while minimizing possible disruption to consumers and businesses."

The FCC fined Advantage Telecommunications $1 million after deciding the Florida-based long-distance company violated rules against "slamming" (changing consumers' phone service without authorization) and "cramming" (charging for unauthorized fees). The commission received more than 150 complaints against Advantage from consumers, other agencies and the Better Business Bureau, said an FCC news release Tuesday. It said the vast majority of affected customers were small businesses. "Slamming and cramming are deceptive business practices that result in consumers paying for services they never requested and then expending great time and personal effort to return to their preferred carriers," said a commission forfeiture order, which called the practices "even more egregious" because they were "coupled with deceptive marketing and billing." The commission found "Advantage’s telemarketers engaged in deceptive marketing practices by pretending to be calling on behalf of consumers’ existing long distance carriers and misrepresenting the true nature of sales calls," said the order. "We also find that Advantage violated the Commission’s truth-in-billing rules by failing to clearly and plainly describe charges on consumers’ telephone bills." Commissioner Michael O'Rielly partially concurred and partially dissented. Advantage didn't comment.

Pointing to federal decisions to commercialize spectrum that are "often tied up in a years-long federal bureaucratic process," Ligado CEO Doug Smith in a Forbes column posted Friday said such decisions should be made "in a reasonable time frame." "If we are serious about sustaining U.S. technological leadership, government must make decisions like this in a reasonable time frame so that industry stakeholders can continue investing in both our infrastructure and our country," he said, saying approvals are "sometimes ... caught in a bureaucratic morass." Ligado repeatedly pushed for FCC approval of its proposed LTE system and for issuance of an NPRM regarding allocating 1675-1680 MHz for shared commercial use (for example, see 1701300066, 1703200032 and 1701300066). The FCC didn't comment Monday.

USTelecom backed a Sprint petition to lift a payphone call tracking audit duty and asked that the relief be extended to all covered carriers. "Given the continuing decline in the number of payphone calls over the past decade, this audit requirement has become unnecessary and unduly burdensome," said a filing Friday in docket 96-128. Sprint said requiring providers to certify there have been no material changes to carriers' payphone audit compliance essentially requires them to complete an audit every year, which the company said should be waived in light of the costs and industry trends (see 1704070067). "Given that for years USTelecom’s member companies have consistently shown compliance with the compensation rules, despite the declining nature of the payphone regime, coupled with the exorbitant cost of an annual audit, they agree that a waiver of the audit requirement is not only justified but also in the public interest," USTelecom wrote. It also said it supports Cincinnati Bell's comments in a telecom biennial review proceeding, "which echo the need for deregulatory measures with respect to the payphone compensation rules."

Mobile internet and voice services continue to grow but the fixed service picture is mixed, said two FCC reports released Friday. The reports issued by the Wireline Bureau's Industry Analysis and Technology Division examine the status of internet access and voice telephone services as of June 30, based on Form 477 data collected from industry parties. There were 369 million U.S. internet connections, an increase of 8 percent from June 30, 2015, said the internet access report. It said mobile internet connections were up by 10 percent to 265 million and fixed internet connections were up 4 percent to 104 million. There were 59 million fixed connections with speeds of at least 25 Mbps (18 million of which provided at least 100 Mbps), up from 50 million, it said. The number of mobile voice subscriptions increased from 326.6 million to 337.8 million, said the voice telephone services report. Interconnected voice subscriptions grew from 56.7 million to 60.3 million, and retail switched access lines dropped from 68.1 million to 62.3 million, it said.

Dish Network's buying of reserved spectrum in the broadcast incentive auction doesn't unduly limit the company's options, said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in a note to investors Wednesday. Reserve spectrum comes with six-year limits on assignment, transfer or lease of licenses, but Dish has options for some kind of deal with incumbent operators like Verizon or T-Mobile, Wells Fargo said. It said the reserve requirement wouldn't come into play in a total company transaction since the FCC usually looks at total spectrum holdings, not the origin of the spectrum unless the seller is a designated entity. Wells Fargo also said a deal could be structured so the reserved spectrum sits in a holding company unused for six years.

Dish Network's spectrum holdings could be "too much of a good thing," reducing its strategic options, Macquarie analyst Amy Yong said in a note to investors Tuesday. Macquarie said in a merger or acquisition, Dish's spectrum holdings -- including the $6.2 billion worth gained in the broadcast incentive auction (see 1704130056) -- could carry some baggage, as near-term carrier spectrum supply and demand is balanced, with AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint seemingly having ample spectrum assets. A Dish/carrier merger "would likely generate regulatory uncertainty," it said. Meanwhile, 5G is using fiber and densification, and much AT&T and Verizon focus has been on fiber and millimeter wave spectrum, not on the 600 MHz auction, it said.

An FCC draft order would modernize the fee payment system used by carriers filing for relief from any new Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requirements, an agency spokesman told us Monday. The item amending Part 1 of the FCC's rules was on the agency's circulation list, which was updated Friday.

The phone network needs to be modernized to help consumers block unwanted calls while facilitating legitimate calls, said Gus Hurwitz, an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar. Until the "outdated" Telephone Consumer Protection Act is updated, the FCC needs to apply the law in a more effective way because its "largely laudable" efforts have been "too limited," Hurwitz said in a blog post Friday. The agency efforts "place too much emphasis on those making these calls and too little on how the architecture of the phone network makes these calls possible," he wrote. "They simultaneously are only incomplete solutions to stopping the problem of 'bad calls' and also unduly burden 'good calls,' subjecting companies with legitimate need to call consumers that want to play by the rules in making those calls to substantial liability for simple and honest mistakes. A better approach would be to update the telephone network from its current 1980s protocols to give consumers greater control over who can call them." Caller ID technology was "bolted on top of the 1980s architecture -- but because they were add-on technologies, they were designed in a way that allows callers to hide or lie about their information," he wrote, citing the increasing dominance of mobile phones as another complication for TCPA enforcement.

AT&T blocked its billionth unwanted robocall using a program that detects unwanted calls through network data analysis. AT&T’s fraud management team and big data scientists created the system, it said in a Thursday news release. “It examines more than 1.5 billion calls each day for patterns that indicate robocallers. It then drills down on suspicious activity that may be illegal or forbidden. One example is multiple short-duration calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call list.” The company said it's averaging 12 million blocked calls every weekday.