The National Science Foundation is giving $10 million “in new awards to develop and scale next-generation Internet applications and technologies through the US Ignite program, supporting access to the gigabit-enabled networks and services that bring data and analytics to decision-makers in real time,” the White House said Monday in a fact sheet on its Smart Cities initiative. Four new cities joined US Ignite’s Smart Gigabit Communities network: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Adelaide, Australia; Salisbury, North Carolina; and Washington, D.C. “Four additional companies are joining the Administration’s NSF-led Advanced Wireless Research Initiative, collectively committing over $8 million in in-kind contributions to help support the design, deployment, and operation of four city-scale advanced wireless testing platforms,” the White House added: Anritsu, Crown Castle, Ericsson and FiberTower. Some $4 million of NSF money also would go toward “new Cyber-Physical Systems awards focused on Smart & Connected Communities, which would “help establish the technological foundation for smart cities and the Internet of Things, which enables connection of physical devices at enormous scale to the digital world through sensors and other IT infrastructure,” the administration said. The White House also said NTIA “is releasing a new toolkit to help communities leverage private-sector resources and expertise to advance smart cities” and that the National Institute of Standards and Technology “and its collaborators are announcing a new international coalition dedicated to developing an Internet of Things-Enabled Smart City Framework, with an initial release planned for next summer.”

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's regulatory policy “seeks to reduce the current regulatory burden by a minimum of 10% or $200 billion annually,” two advisers said in a white paper the campaign released Monday before the first presidential debate. Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, and private equity investor Wilbur Ross wrote the paper and are listed as senior policy advisers to Trump. “Many new rules never are adequately quantified -- or quantified at all,” the paper said of current regulations, citing the “woefully understaffed” White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. They cite the planned moratorium on new regulations a Trump administration intends to impose and the list of regulations ready for scrapping that all federal agencies would be mandated to produce. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “has promised to continue Obama’s regulatory agenda,” the Trump campaign white paper said. It didn’t mention telecom policy specifically. The Clinton campaign slammed Trump’s economic policy ideas Monday, saying in a news release “economists and business leaders across the political spectrum agree that his economic plan would plunge our country back into recession.”

The FCC Wireline Bureau granted the application of Nice Systems and inContact to transfer domestic licenses under Section 214 of the Communications Act, subject to executive branch conditions, said a public notice Thursday in docket 16-177. DOJ said "Team Telecom" agencies wouldn't object to Nice's planned buy of inContact if the FCC conditions license transfers on the applicants' compliance with commitments they made in a letter of agreement. The commitments "will help ensure that those agencies with responsibility for enforcing the law, protecting the national security, and preserving public safety can proceed appropriately to satisfy those responsibilities," said a petition Wednesday from the DOJ/FBI backed by the Homeland Security and Defense departments. The Nice/inContact letter, which was attached to the petition, said they will comply with all lawful electronic surveillance requirements, plus recordkeeping, nondisclosure, point-of-contact and other duties.

A Democratic administration of Hillary Clinton would likely involve more media ownership regulation and spectrum auction bidding credits, said Akin Gump in a report on the 2016 presidential election released Thursday. It summarized the elements of her telecom and tech agenda, detailed last year and this summer, and discussed by a Clinton aide at the Democratic National Convention. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “has said very little” on telecom, Akin Gump noted, relying on speculation about traditional GOP positions on such issues when addressing his administration predictions. The firm speculated Trump could seek to privatize government-held spectrum but also be less likely to allow reallocation of spectrum used for national security. Trump “may push the FCC to take action that would force equipment manufacturers to cooperate with national security efforts, either through individual enforcement actions or via rulemakings of general applicability,” it said.

The FCC during the Obama administration rewrote competition law by using a "gatekeeper theory" to justify net neutrality regulation instead of using "market power" analysis, said Fred Campbell, Tech Knowledge director, in a blog post Wednesday. "The FCC’s gatekeeper theory posits that even an internet service provider (ISP) without market power has the incentive and ability to 'force edge providers to pay inefficiently high fees because that [ISP] is typically an edge provider's only option for reaching a particular end user,'" he wrote, quoting from a 2010 net neutrality order. He said the commission found the consumer cost of switching from one ISP to another is too high to permit competition to properly discipline the market: "In antitrust terms, net neutrality categorizes vertical relationships (e.g., exclusive contracts) between ISPs and edge providers as harmful per se. This per se ban on vertical relationships is inconsistent with longstanding FCC precedent, congressional findings embodied in communications legislation, antitrust law, and relevant court decisions."

AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens questioned the logic behind the FCC’s move to take on business data services (BDS) rules, during a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch investor conference Wednesday. The FCC’s “own study” based on 2013 data shows “somewhere around 85 percent of the buildings, or the vast majority of the buildings in the United States, had more than two business data services providers where we operate,” Stephens said: “We think that number is about 85 percent and when you include cable and other alternative providers it's even higher. So the facts and specifically the facts developed by the FCC in 2013 don't support their premise” that rules are needed. Stephens said AT&T will be a leader on 5G.

Comments are due by Oct. 4 on TerreStar's request for a temporary waiver of the substantial service requirement for its commercial wireless licenses in the 1.4 GHz band, with replies in docket 16-290 due Oct. 14, the Wireless Bureau said in a public notice Wednesday. It said TerreStar wants the 36-month waiver, through April 23, 2020, while it puts in place wireless medical telemetry service operations in the 1.4 GHz band through spectrum leasing arrangements with healthcare providers and facilities and wireless medical telemetry equipment makers.

People Power introduced a software stack for telecom IoT projects, said a Monday announcement: It includes an open-source software development kit and open application programming interfaces, a mobile and web app framework for iOS, Android and Web, and a cloud analytics service that connects to social networks. People Power worked with Stanford ChangeLabs and consumer behavior experts to develop the IoT Suite.

PwC and iconectiv scheduled back-to-back webcasts Sept. 21 on the local number portability administrator transition from Neustar to iconectiv and related processes. The 3 p.m. webcast by PwC, the transition oversight manager, will be its latest LNPA outreach and education event, and the 4 p.m. iconectiv (Telcordia) webcast will be its first since finalizing its contract to be the next administrator, said company emails (interested parties can register here and here). Iconectiv said it will provide an overview of the "onboarding" process and the details of registering with new number portability administration centers.

Intel and TPG agreed to form a jointly owned, independent cybersecurity company with the McAfee name, the companies said in a Wednesday news release. McAfee is an Intel subsidiary, but after the proposed $4.2 billion deal, TPG will own 51 percent of McAfee and Intel the rest, they said. TPG agreed to make a $1.1 billion equity investment. Intel Security general manager Chris Young will be CEO of the new McAfee, the companies said. The transaction is expected to close in Q2, subject to regulatory approvals and closing conditions, they said.