July 2013

SoftBank plans to invest $16 billion in capital improvements at Sprint in the next two years, CEO Masayoshi Son said. That $16 billion investment will more than double the pace of current capital growth, and most will go to base stations for Sprint's LTE network, Son said.

After the next two years, the pace of investment will slow to about $6 billion a year. Sprint has about 90 cities on LTE today, well behind AT&T and LTE market leader Verizon. Son also said that SoftBank and Sprint will open a joint hardware and software research center in Silicon Valley, employing up to 1,000 workers. Son will be the chairman of Sprint's new board of directors, while Ronald Fisher, head of U.S. Softbank operations, will be deputy chairman. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and three other Sprint directors will stay on and will be joined by Michael Mullen, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Son said he's seen "considerable possibility for cutting costs" at Sprint, with up to $3 billion in annual savings by combining SoftBank's Japan purchases of base stations and smartphones with those of Sprint in the US.

Ordinarily, it takes years of litigation in lower courts before an issue can reach the nation’s highest court. But the Electronic Privacy Information Center has gone straight to the top, arguing in a court filing that the unusual structure of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gives victims of the National Security Agency’s program no other choice than to ask the Supreme Court to step in.

The Supreme Court has the power to issue an order called a “writ of mandamus” to deal with lower courts that overstep their legal authority. This type of order is only supposed to be used in “exceptional circumstances.” But EPIC argues that the NSA’s phone records program is exactly the kind of situation that merits the Supreme Court’s intervention. The phone records program is based on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which is supposed to be used to obtain business records related to a terrorist investigation. The government argues that Verizon’s entire phone records database is relevant to counterterrorism efforts and can therefore be obtained with a single court order. EPIC says such a broad order is inconsistent with Congress’s intent. Much of EPIC’s request is focused on persuading the Supreme Court that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s call records order is exceptional.

House Republicans will again try to force the Federal Communications Commission to justify new regulations and speed up its decision making. It would also decentralize power over the FCC agenda. The Federal Communications Commission Process Reform Act of 2013, which closely mirrors legislation that failed to pass both Houses in the last session, would require the FCC to provide at least 60 days of comment on any proposed rulemaking.

It also would require that the rulemaking 1) be rooted in a prior notice of rulemaking or notice of inquiry, petition for rulemaking, 2) be at the direction of the courts, or 3) provide some reason why an initial inquiry was not necessary or that the new rule or amendment would not impose additional burdens on the industry of the consumer. The bill would also establish deadlines for FCC action and requirements for reporting to Congress. Any new regulation that "may have an economically significant impact" -- at least $100,000,000 -- would have to be justified via an analysis of the market failure, consumer harm, regulatory burden or failure of the public institutions it was meant to redress, as well as a cost-benefit analysis and a determination that the market is not sufficient to resolve the issues without regulation.

It would also require FCC commissioners be given sufficient time to review an FCC decision before having to vote on it and the public be given at least 60 days in which to comment on any proposed new regulation. The chairman's office would no longer exercise exclusive control over the agenda by allowing a bipartisan majority of commissioners to enlist FCC bureaus to draft their own rule proposals and put them on the agenda for a vote. The bill would also allow more than two commissioners to meet in private so long as at least one commissioner from each party and an attorney from the Office of General Counsel are present and no vote or any other agency action is taken.

White space networks haven't spread in quite the way some of its visionaries envisioned a few years ago, but the method of providing wireless Internet access over unused TV spectrum is slowly gaining a foothold.

Companies like Microsoft and Google are using white spaces to bring the Web to underserved parts of the world, and a couple of commercial networks have been launched in the US. Now, white spaces may be about to gain traction in colleges and libraries. West Virginia University announced today that it is going to "use vacant broadcast TV channels to provide the campus and nearby areas with wireless broadband Internet services." The initial rollout will provide free public Wi-Fi—yes, it really exists!—on a public transit tram system. West Virginia is setting its network up in conjunction with AIR.U, a consortium of colleges and universities aiming to deploy white space networks on campuses and surrounding areas. Similarly to AIR.U, there is a new consortium devoted to bringing white space networks to libraries throughout the country. It's called Gigabit Libraries Network, and it will select qualifying libraries to "receive a trial system including a single white space Base Station and three remote library Wi-Fi hotspots, all wirelessly connected to the base station. Each remote would be sited at a convenient public location to provide patrons a basic level of no-fee library Wi-Fi broadband access."