In early 2011 MetroPCS joined Verizon in suing the FCC to overturn the agency’s already fairly-flimsy network neutrality rules. With MetroPCS and T-Mobile now merged, T-Mobile announced late last week that it would be withdrawing the lawsuit against the FCC they acquired as part of the deal. Groups like Public Knowledge quickly issued statements applauding the move, and urging Verizon to do the same (not likely). “While they’re not perfect, they reassure Internet companies that [...]

While there has been some twitching from the corpse of LightSquared in DC, it has been fairly clear to everyone that the company has been dead for quite some time. Now insiders tell Bloomberg that Charlie Ergen made a $2 billion “stalking horse” bid to acquire LightSquared’s assets and spectrum. One problem with such a deal — the FCC still hasn’t given their approval for use of the interference-prone spectrum, the core reason that LightSquared [...]

Sprint raised its acquisition offer for Clearwire today, offering $3.40 per share for the 50% of Clearwire Sprint currently doesn’t own. The new offer, which temporarily delayed a Clearwire shareholder offer on the deal, values Clearwire’s total value at around $10.7 billion. The higher bid comes as Dish has been trying to acquire Sprint itself and thwart a rival offer from Japanese carrier SoftBank. Dish Corporation’s Charlie Ergen has consistently offered that Dish’s offer is [...]

After taking heat from consumer groups last year for blocking Facetime video chat, AT&T made waves last week by deciding to block the new cross-platform and device video chat functionality in Google Hangouts from running over their speedy new LTE network. As they did during the Facetime debacle, AT&T made the obscure claim that they can block any application that comes pre-loaded on a device, even if technically Hangouts doesn’t come pre-loaded (AT&T’s just choosing [...]

Bloomberg reports that freshly-nominated FCC boss Tom Wheeler has dumped around $500,000 to $1 million in AT&T and Verizon stock ahead of his assignment at the FCC. The stock was dumped, according to the report, “to resolve possible conflicts of interest before taking office.” Wheeler also dumped significantly smaller stock holdings in 78 other companies including Google, Apple and Comcast (the full disclosure form is here). Dumping the stock doesn’t do much to quell concerns [...]

There were about 90 million U.S. fixed broadband accounts in service in June 2012, and 153 million mobile broadband accounts, according to the latest report from the Federal Communications Commission. The study shows that both mobile and fixed networks are evolving towards faster speeds, but also shows how much more nuanced the subject of broadband access has become. Where once the issue was fixed connections to places, we now confront a mix of fixed connections [...]

While there has been some twitching from the corpse of LightSquared in DC, it has been fairly clear to everyone that the company has been dead for quite some time. Now insiders tell Bloomberg that Charlie Ergen made a $2 billion “stalking horse” bid to acquire LightSquared’s assets and spectrum. One problem with such a deal — the FCC still hasn’t given their approval for use of the interference-prone spectrum, the core reason that LightSquared [...]

Sprint raised its acquisition offer for Clearwire today, offering $3.40 per share for the 50% of Clearwire Sprint currently doesn’t own. The new offer, which temporarily delayed a Clearwire shareholder offer on the deal, values Clearwire’s total value at around $10.7 billion. The higher bid comes as Dish has been trying to acquire Sprint itself and thwart a rival offer from Japanese carrier SoftBank. Dish Corporation’s Charlie Ergen has consistently offered that Dish’s offer is [...]

For large telcos making capital investments, the “80/20″ rule holds, a study suggests. Some 80 percent of the attention goes to decisions that produce less than 20 percent of operating results.  Conversely, decisions that drive 80 percent to 90 percent of operating results tend to get 10 percent to 20 percent of attention, when capital investment choices are to be made. Firms that earn more from their capex expenditures typically have proposals justified on the [...]

While there has been some twitching from the corpse of LightSquared in DC, it has been fairly clear to everyone that the company has been dead for quite some time. Now insiders tell Bloomberg that Charlie Ergen made a $2 billion “stalking horse” bid to acquire LightSquared’s assets and spectrum. One problem with such a deal — the FCC still hasn’t given their approval for use of the interference-prone spectrum, the core reason that LightSquared [...]