Fierce

Charlotte (NC) Chief Information Officier Jeff Stovall said concerns about sustainability of the city's planned public-safety network ultimately led to a suspension of negotiations that could have enabled Charlotte to lease 700 MHz spectrum from the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).

Charlotte was one of seven National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program (BTOP) public-safety entities whose funding was halted during spring 2012 by NTIA due to concerns the BTOP projects might be incompatible with the national public-safety broadband network (NPSBN) being planned by FirstNet.

The only way BTOPs could get their programs going again was if they completed a spectrum manager lease agreement (SMLA) with FirstNet to access its 700 MHz spectrum and had their rollout plan approved by NTIA.

Stovall said several changes during the funding freeze period -- including stricter building codes and a lowering of cellular service rate by commercial mobile network operators -- impacted the business plan for the Charlotte public-safety network, potentially leading to funding shortfalls for both deployment and operations.

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said he remains open to a partnership with T-Mobile US or another wireless carrier.

He also said that Sprint's decision to abandon merger talks with T-Mobile increases Dish's options for entering the wireless market. Ergen also reiterated that it is "relatively unlikely" that Dish will try to build out its spectrum by itself or just sell its spectrum.

T-Mobile US said it added 1.47 million total net new subscribers in the second quarter, including 908,000 branded postpaid net adds.

While T-Mobile didn't report quite as many postpaid net adds in the period as Verizon Wireless, it did have more total new subscriber additions and it showed strong growth in phone subscriber additions.

T-Mobile also said it now expects to add between 3 million and 3.5 million branded postpaid net subscribers in 2014, up from its previous estimate between 2.8 million and 3.3 million. T-Mobile has added 2.23 million branded postpaid customers so far.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere concluded: "The company is not in need of doing something [in terms of a deal] to be successful in the short to medium term."

AT&T has made it official: San Antonio is the next stop on its 1 Gigabit fiber to the home (FTTH) network journey, the latest in a string of locations in Texas where the telecommunications company said it will bring the service.

AT&T will deploy additional fiber and necessary last mile network electronics to its existing network in San Antonio. City leaders lauded the deal as an example of large telecommunications companies and local communities working together to drive new service capabilities.

Neustar, the telecommunications data service provider, is strongly protesting a recommendation that Ericsson's Telcordia unit be named as the winner of a major telephone-numbers management contract.

The contract, which Neustar has had with the US government since 1997, makes up nearly half of Neustar's revenue. At issue is which vendor is going to be the US government's neutral and tested local number portability administrator (LNPA), which helps phone subscribers keep their numbers when switching carriers.

Neustar argued that Ericsson has a vested interest in the success of its US carrier customers and that as a network vendor it cannot be viewed as neutral, and neither can SunGard, Ericsson's subcontractor for data center services, because it has connections to interconnected VoIP and telecom service providers.

Verizon Wireless hit back hard against the Find Me 911 Coalition, arguing to the Federal Communications Commission that the group was spreading "misleading" information about how often Verizon provides the most precise location information needed for dispatchers and first responders to find callers.

Verizon told the FCC that it "does not take lightly such allegations and undertook an internal review of its own performance data in response to the claims."

T-Mobile US said 92 percent of MetroPCS' customers on its legacy code division multiple access (CDMA) network in Boston, Hartford (CT) and Las Vegas moved onto T-Mobile's network after T-Mobile shut off MetroPCS CDMA service in those markets.

The carrier next plans to shut down MetroPCS' CDMA network in Philadelphia by late 2014.

Interest in dark fiber has reemerged in telecom due to the escalating demands for business services and by wireless operators that need bigger backhaul pipes to keep up with the insatiable demand for wireless data.

Just how big is the dark fiber opportunity? According to Atlantic-ACM US Long Haul Wholesale Carrier Report Card, 27 percent of the participating wholesale buyers reported purchasing dark fiber, and 57 percent of those already buying anticipate increased spends on dark fiber in 2015.

The three largest US-based telecommunications companies -- AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink -- have chosen to sell an array of fiber-based Ethernet or wavelength services. Fedor Smith, president of Atlantic ACM, wrote that their concern is that they would give an advantage to a nearby competitor.

The Federal Communications Commission has a lot of work ahead if it hopes to create consensus around its plans for a Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) at 3.5 GHz, as specific parts of its proposed rulemaking have come under attack from multiple corners.

Wireless industry players that sent in comments were largely supportive of efforts to engage spectrum-sharing techniques to open the band for use by both government and commercial users. The spectrum-sharing concept provided a rare point of general agreement, however, with many details of the FCC's proposal drawing considerable debate.

The FCC intends to apply spectrum sharing to 3550-3650 MHz spectrum and is also pondering extending the service to 3700 MHz, providing a total of 150 MHz of spectrum for the CBRS.

Verizon's ongoing copper-to-fiber migration in the District of Columbia is now the subject of a Public Service Commission (PSC) investigation on how it will affect local consumers and businesses.

The PSC plans to hold a two-day evidentiary hearing related to the use of Verizon's existing copper network plant to deliver telecom services and its plans to transition customers' services, including traditional POTS voice, from copper facilities to fiber facilities. In its order, the PSC said it "applauds the introduction of new technologies for telecommunications in both the regulated market and in the competitive unregulated market.