The Wi-Fi Alliance filed in support of NCTA arguments that the FCC should override objections from Globalstar and allow the use of the 5.1 GHz U-NII-1 band for Wi-Fi (CD Jan 24 p13). “As the NCTA Ex Parte correctly pointed out -- and as the Commission recognized in initiating its proceeding -- demand for Wi-Fi connectivity is rapidly expanding,” the alliance said (http://bit.ly/1n8Onj4). “The U-NII-1 band is ideal for swiftly making additional channels available to meet the skyrocketing demand, including outdoor use, for Wi-Fi technologies, particularly because the band is part of a larger contiguous block of unlicensed spectrum capable of supporting the new generation IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and also for the next generation High Efficiency WLAN ... technology presently under study by IEEE 802.11."

Several industry heavyweights signed onto the White House’s best practices for recruiting and hiring the long-term unemployed, said a fact sheet the administration released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1k3M8QR). Companies include Apple, AT&T, CBS, Comcast NBCUniversal, Dell, Disney, eBay, Frontier Communications, Motorola Solutions, Qualcomm, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, 21st Century Fox and LinkedIn. The best practices amount to a commitment to ensuring job advertisements and reviewing procedures don’t discriminate against the unemployed. Recruiting practices should cast a wide net and be reviewed to make that happen, the best practices said. It also called for best practices to be shared. Time Warner Cable has updated its equal employment opportunity statement “to make it clear that job applicants will not be disadvantaged based on their current employment status,” said CEO Rob Marcus in a statement. “Time Warner Cable is pleased to reaffirm our long-held practice of providing equal employment opportunities to the long-term unemployed."

Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son and CEO Dan Hesse met with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Monday about Sprint’s possible buy of T-Mobile but did not hear much reason for optimism the deal would be easily approved from Wheeler, FCC officials said. Wheeler pledged to keep an open mind but also said he remained skeptical, consistent with signals emanating from the Justice Department. Last week, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, head of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, said in a speech in New York that T-Mobile has “spearheaded increased competition in wireless services” in the U.S. (CD Jan 31 p14). The Department of Defense has also stressed the importance of maintaining four national competitors in the market. A Sprint spokesman declined to comment. Son is also the CEO of Softbank, which wrapped up a $21.6 billion acquisition of a majority of Sprint last summer.

The FCC’s H-block auction continued Monday, with 174 licenses having provisionally winning bids (PWBs) after round 36 and PWBs totaling $1.08 billion. That amount is still well below Dish Network’s December commitment to bid $1.564 billion in the auction. The highest bid is for the license for New York City and surrounding areas at $217 million, which is below the minimum required bid of $238.6 million in the next bidding round. “The H-Block auction has seen more selective, but slowing, activity over the last several rounds,” said New Street Research in a Monday research report. “Aggregate auction prices are now at $0.33/MHz-POP, 35 percent below DISH’s reserve bid of $0.50/MHz-POP; however, select urban markets are showing accelerating price increases and bids that are above prices paid in Auction 66” the AWS-1 auction. New Street said all signs are still that Dish will buy spectrum covering the entire U.S. when the auction concludes. “In recent rounds, certain urban markets, such as Las Vegas and Minneapolis, have seen 4-5x bids per round as the rest of the licenses,” the firm said. “It is possible that the competition is attempting to drive up prices in major markets, before switching bids to the markets they really want in later rounds; however, bid increases are slowing on an aggregate basis, and are still well below the reserve bid. As such, it appears that DISH’s bid is best positioned to win a national footprint with a bid that is likely at or close to the reserve bid.”

President Barack Obama reiterated his support for net neutrality Friday. “It’s something that I've cared deeply about ever since I ran for office,” Obama said during a Google Plus Hangout. “My campaign was empowered by a free and open Internet and the ability for citizens all across this country to engage and create and find new ways and new tools to mobilize themselves. A lot of that couldn’t be done if there were a lot of commercial barriers and roadblocks. I've been a strong supporter of net neutrality.” As is FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Obama added. He was responding to a question about the mid-January U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling that struck down the FCC’s net neutrality rules. But the FCC and Wheeler are “looking at all the options at their disposal,” potential appeals and potential rulemaking, “in order to continue to vindicate the notion of a free and open Internet.” Obama can’t “meddle in the decisionmaking” of the FCC now that his FCC nominees are in place, he added. The Obama administration will continue to support net neutrality principles despite a “lot of technical issues” being worked through, he said. The “good news” in the court ruling is that the court affirmed the FCC can “regulate this space,” he said. He mentioned the potential for “other tools that would stand up to court scrutiny.”

The FCC’s meeting room was unusually cold Thursday, cold enough that Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said from the podium she “literally” could not feel her own feet. “It’s cold in here,” said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “That’s not a metaphor for anything. But it is cold in here."

The FCC is working on a new set of principles to help guide companies as the agency prepares to regulate net neutrality disputes on a case-by-case basis, Chairman Tom Wheeler confirmed in a Q-and-A session with reporters after Thursday’s commission meeting (see related stories in this issue). The FCC will “preserve and protect the open Internet,” Wheeler said. In a “relatively short time,” the agency will be “stepping out to put some more flesh around those basic principles,” he said. In response to a question about how the FCC would address due process concerns by providing potential guidance to ISPs, he said: “We will have some specifics coming out on this shortly” that will address those issues. Wheeler said again (CD Jan 29 p1) that he planned to accept the “invitation” offered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to regulate Internet disputes. He declined to elaborate on whether the commission would rely on Section 706 of the Communications Act, or proceed with Title II reclassification that would let it impose common carrier obligations. The agency will use “all of the tools in the toolbox,” and will “be forthcoming with our plan and rationale therefore shortly,” Wheeler said. The plan would be “addressing the construct for how we go forward, and that will use all of the vehicles at the agency,” Wheeler said. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said at a Minority Media and Telecom Council event earlier this month (CD Jan 17 p5) that she would support Wheeler as he lays out the next steps on a “high-level” set of principles to provide guidance to companies and consumers. Free Press Thursday delivered to the FCC a petition with more than 1 million signatures urging the agency to restore net neutrality (http://bit.ly/1eAD52r). “To preserve the open Internet, the FCC must reclassify the transmission component of broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service,” the petition said. “One of the reasons that Internet has to stay open is that it enables people to organize and express themselves to the government” and “therefore enables the government to do a better job,” Wheeler said in response to a question about that petition. “If there are a million people, that’s boffo! We want to hear from those million people.”

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology asked for supplemental comment on a methodology for predicting potential interference between broadcast TV and licensed wireless services in the incentive auction. In response to the NPRM and the 600 MHz band plan supplemental public notice, some commenters raised concerns about co-channel and adjacent-channel interference between TV and wireless services in nearby markets as a result of accommodating market variation, OET said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1ffr6KP). “Some commenters proposed separation distances between the two services. The most common approach commenters propose is to use a pre-defined separation distance between TV and mobile service areas. Commenters proposed distances that varied significantly -- ranging from 100 kilometers to 500 kilometers -- and generally provided limited technical analysis in support of these proposals.” Comments are due Feb. 28. Thursday’s FCC meeting will hear an update on the incentive auction. (See separate report in this issue.)

The FCC’s spectrum auction update should go beyond dates and timelines and dig into the substantive issues on the auction, said NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1aFEKrW). The time is “ripe” for FCC staff to reveal its approach to “hotly contested topics” on the auction, Kaplan said. NAB would like the commission to announce early which broadcasters will receive protection in the repacking, relocation and protection procedures for translators and low-power TV, and the eligibility constraints placed on forward auction bidders. The commission should also announce that all changes to repacking software OET-69 will be dropped, and form an expert group to evaluate the repacking software, he said. The FCC should also release more information about its work in resolving spectrum issues along the Canadian and Mexican borders, Kaplan said. Such a release would “not merely list the number of meetings with Canada and Mexico; but rather, will detail how the staff intends to proceed if it has no agreement in place with one or both countries,” he said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told lawmakers he doesn’t expect to have such agreements, Kaplan said. “Assuming that it is even lawful to proceed with the auction without these agreements (and NAB believes it is not), how will a lack of meaningful coordination affect the auction and the amount of spectrum recovered across the country?” Kaplan asked. The update should also include updates from FCC staffers on their current thinking on the 600 MHz band plan and their plans for wireless microphones, and the FCC should release a public notice on co-channel interference, Kaplan said. Wheeler should also “publicly affirm” that the FCC won’t “take actions to harm broadcasters in unrelated proceedings to encourage participation in the auction,” Kaplan said. “If there was ever a time the Commission needed to develop trust with broadcasters, that time is now,” said the blog post.

Five technology companies dropped motions jointly filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court asking permission to release more data about FISC orders, said documents filed Monday with the FISC (http://1.usa.gov/M9TQub). The companies -- Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Yahoo -- received permission from the Justice Department Monday to release some information about how many national security orders they receive, and the number of customer accounts targeted with those orders (CD Jan 28 p10). The five companies said in a joint statement that they believe “the public has a right to know about the volume and type of national security requests we receive. We're pleased the Department of Justice has agreed that we and other providers can disclose this information.” The companies said they'll “continue to encourage Congress to take additional steps to address all of the reforms we believe are needed.” Privacy advocates welcomed the decision, in news releases after the administration’s announcement, but said the government could go further. “This is a victory for transparency and a critical step toward reining in excessive government surveillance,” said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project (http://bit.ly/MmGnQB). “Companies must be allowed to report basic information about what they're giving the government so that Americans can decide for themselves whether the NSA’s spying has gone too far.” The ACLU and four other consumer advocates -- the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, First Amendment Coalition and TechFreedom -- filed an amicus brief to the FISC in support of the tech companies’ motions. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka wants the government to go further, he said (http://bit.ly/1k2fgWe). He said the concessions “go just far enough” so President Barack Obama can point to examples of specific surveillance reform in Tuesday’s State of the Union address “without providing Americans the full transparency we need to have a rational debate about balancing national security with privacy.” Szoka pointed to the six-month delay for reporting data, the two-year delay for reporting FISC data and the requirements that the reporting be done in ranges of 1,000: “The transparency allowed by the agreement will paint only a picture of surveillance in the broadest of brush strokes.” Abdo agreed that “even more is needed” on transparency. “Congress should require the government to publish basic information about the full extent of its surveillance,” he said, “including the significant amount of spying that happens without the tech companies’ involvement."