This has been the “year of progress” for deployment of femtocells, low-power, wireless mini-base stations that provide short-range communications indoors, Femto Forum Chairman Simon Saunders said in an interview. The number of commercial services has probably tripled in the past year, with 17 running worldwide, he said. The technology is so useful that the forum is looking for ways to embed it in businesses, public spaces and, eventually outdoors for LTE services, he said. The momentum is expected to accelerate next year as multiple uses for femtocells launch, said Aditya Kaul, ABI Research practice director, mobile networks.

SAN FRANCISCO -- U.S. wireless carriers must change industry economics created by upward-spiraling data use and large subsidies on handsets that customers are upgrading often, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said Tuesday. “Something has to give,” he said at the Open Mobile Summit. This is a “very challenging” problem throughout the industry, as shown by the share-price histories of AT&T and Verizon Wireless, considered the most successful carriers, Hesse said.

A rare en banc review of an appeals court decision that could force EchoStar to shut down millions of set-top boxes renewed arguments over to what extent EchoStar had violated a TiVo patent and a court injunction. The oral argument before nine judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Tuesday raised questions on the standard for a contempt ruling against EchoStar for continued infringement of TiVo’s DVR patent. Previously, a district court judge found EchoStar to be in contempt because EchoStar used DVRs the judge said violate an injunction against future infringement. EchoStar has said it redesigned the DVRs in good faith to avoid infringement and a new trial should determine whether the work-around violates the patent.

GENEVA -- Costs and questions about the need for new service provider identities are key concerns for industry and government participants at an ITU-T study group debating use cases and a draft recommendation on a proposed system. Global telecom network operators are meeting through Nov. 18 to consider a proposal for a new “identifier” which all operators must obtain to have their traffic routed, an executive following the work said. Most parties seem unconvinced that a wholly new identifier and the associated administrative overhead are needed, he said. The idea of a more global approach for operator or network identifiers has been knocking around ITU-T for years.

The urgency to solve privacy and security problems, the rise of mobile broadband use that leads to capacity crunches, and the emergence of digital media all call for the government to step up its efforts to better protect consumers, encourage investment and ensure the diversity of content, officials said at the Global Forum at George Washington University Monday.

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee is poised to take up, before the group’s charter expires in January, a controversial proposal to force federal agencies to account for the spectrum they use, paying a “fee” to NTIA for spectrum use. That proposal was hotly debated at a CSMAC meeting Monday.

The NTIA needs more money to police its broadband stimulus program, but the agency also must do a better job of monitoring the billions it has given out, the Commerce Department’s inspector general said. After handing out almost $4 billion in broadband grants, NTIA finds itself “responsible for overseeing a diverse portfolio of awards that will present several new challenges,” including months-long environmental assessments and grantees in government, nonprofit and for-profit groups, co-ops and Native American tribes, the IG said.

African-Americans and Hispanics are still less likely to use broadband Internet in their homes even when they attain the same education and income levels as whites, a government report said. Nearly 87 percent of urban and nearly 76 percent of rural, college-educated white families used broadband in their homes in 2009. But for black families with the same education, the percentages were about 77 percent in cities and 56 percent in the countryside; for college-educated Hispanics, the percentages were almost 78 percent in cities and about 69 percent in the country, the Commerce Department said in a report released Monday.

The government failed consumers by not intervening in retransmission consent disputes, including the recent battle between Fox and Cablevision, Mediacom CEO Rocco Commisso told investors Monday. The FCC is tasked by the Cable Act with protecting consumers against unnecessary cable rate hikes, and it hasn’t, he said. “Shame on those who have the responsibility and are not willing to do anything about it,” he said. “It’s amazing to me, that the FCC in particular, who has been entrusted with having the responsibility to protect the consumers, goes out to look for authority to address theoretical issues on net neutrality, but always seems to find no authority to take care of consumers when it comes to retransmission consent,” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- LightSquared’s satellite coverage will reach residents of remote areas that aren’t economical to serve with terrestrial networks, solving one of the main problems that gave rise to the National Broadband Plan, CEO Sanjiv Ahuja said Monday. And the company’s wholesale-only business will provide an alternative to the wireless industry’s “vertically integrated model” of carriers that, according to a presentation slide, has meant “inflated prices” and a “poor user experience,” he said at the Open Mobile Summit.