federal

Verizon Wireless faces one last regulatory hurdle in its bid to buy cable spectrum in a deal valued at $3.9 billion: the Federal Communications Commission.

Earlier this week, Verizon and the cable companies involved in the deal won approval from the Department of Justice. But the approval didn't come without strings. Verizon and the cable companies were required to scale back certain parts of their commercial agreements in an effort to satisfy anticompetitive concerns that the DOJ and the FCC had with the deal.

Verizon has also already agreed to sell some spectrum to competitor T-Mobile USA in … Read more

Verizon Wireless and a consortium of cable operators, which includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Communications, today won approval from U.S. regulators to go through with their $3.9 billion deal to exchange wireless spectrum.

The Department of Justice announced it has negotiated a settlement with Verizon Wireless and the cable companies. And FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he supports the deal and will recommend approval with certain conditions in place. The full FCC has yet to vote on the deal. Once that's completed, the sale of the spectrum will be allowed to proceed.

Genachowski said … Read more

Following their amazing performances in the Olympics, many of the world's top athletes now have a lot more Facebook fans.

With the summer games coming to a finale yesterday, their influence on Facebook was examined in a report released today by Wildfire, Google's new social media marketing business.

Gold medal Olympic gymnast Gabrielle Douglas now boasts more than 590,000 Facebook fans, a surge of 3,944 percent since before the games. The page for fellow gymnast Marcel Nguyen holds more than 197,000 fans, an increase of 2,451 percent.

Athletes such as Steve Lewis, Camille Muffat, … Read more

The Senate could soon decide whether consumers will have to shell out taxes on more of their online purchases.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is scheduled to hold a hearing today to examine the current policy that exempts many online retailers from collecting sales tax. The present ruling is based on a 1992 Supreme Court decision, which found that businesses without a physical presence in a state are not required to collect state sales tax.

But up for debate this afternoon is the Marketplace Fairness Act (PDF), which would reverse the Supreme Court decision. Senators … Read more

WASHINGTON--The federal government is slinking away from a promise by President Obama to free up badly-needed radio spectrum for mobile users and the already over-taxed networks that serve them.

Just months after the publication of the National Broadband Plan in early 2010, the president issued a memorandum ordering the FCC and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration to "make available a total of 500 MHz of Federal and nonfederal spectrum over the next 10 years" for mobile users.

The goal was to clear unused or underutilized spectrum the FCC could then auction off for use … Read more

Skype has come under fire this past week for allegedly letting the U.S. government use its service to spy on its users. The online call service company is now saying that's simply not true.

"Some media stories recently have suggested Skype may be acting improperly or based on ulterior motives against our users' interests," Skype Chief Development and Operations Officer Mark Gillett wrote in a blog post today. "Nothing could be more contrary to the Skype philosophy."

Skype serves 250 million active users a month and supported 115 billion minutes of calls in the … Read more

The U.S. Justice Department is holding up Verizon Wireless's $3.9 billion bid to buy wireless spectrum from a consortium of cable operators, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Federal Communications Commission, which also has to sign off on the deal, is ready to approve the deal, sources have said. Verizon announced in December that it planned to buy about 20 MHz of Advanced Wireless Services wireless spectrum from a group of cable companies that includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House.

The deal is the largest spectrum transfer the FCC has ever considered … Read more

Bring out the constitutional scholars: Verizon says the Federal Communications Commission's Net neutrality rules violate the right to free speech.

In a nutshell, Verizon argues that the FCC has overstepped its authority with its Net neutrality rules, going so far as to argue that the rules are unconstitutional -- Verizon sees the transmission of data across its network as "speech." As if that's not enough, the carrier argues that the rules are "arbitrary and capricious." In other words, Verizon doesn't believe the rules are necessary given that there hasn't been a big … Read more

AT&T is looking to put some of its unused spectrum to work in a move that could reshuffle the wireless spectrum deck.

On Friday, the carrier filed a joint proposal to the Federal Communications Commission with satellite radio provider Sirius. In the filing, the two companies proposed a solution to some longstanding interference concerns between AT&T's unused WCS spectrum, which is in the 2.3 GHz band and Sirius's satellite radio service. As part of this new proposal, AT&T agreed to give up about 10MHz of this Wireless Communication Services or WCS … Read more