Sprint began implementing a “workforce reduction plan” Jan. 16 in a bid to cut costs, it said in an 8-K filing Thursday with the SEC. The carrier plans to disclose about $165 million in severance and other costs related to the job cuts as part of its Feb. 11 Q4 earnings report (http://1.usa.gov/1l6Ccrm).

T-Mobile charged that a Nov. 13 paper by Mobile Future on spectrum aggregation limits in the TV incentive auction distorts the record. T-Mobile supports limits on how much spectrum any carrier can buy in the auction, a position opposed by Mobile Future. “Mobile Future treats vastly different types of spectrum as if they were of equal value,” T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/KVMKJE). “The analysis attempts to draw parallels between AT&T’s and Verizon’s dominance of Auction 73, where they won 71.66 percent of the total MHz/POPs auctioned, to Clearwire’s acquisitions of 2.5 GHz spectrum in Auction 86. This analogy overlooks important differences between the large blocks of unencumbered ‘beachfront’ 700 MHz spectrum and the patchwork of 2.5 GHz spectrum licenses, which requires many more sites to provide the same coverage and provides significantly weaker indoor penetration capabilities.” Mobile Future also does not offer a complete view of wireless markets in 2014, T-Mobile said: “Mobile Future’s focus on the changing control of various licenses during the last ten years should not distract from today’s market reality: AT&T and Verizon have gained control of the vast majority of the most valuable wireless spectrum.” Mobile Future fired back. “While the facts in Mobile Future’s paper might be inconvenient for T-Mobile and its parent Deutsche Telekom, there is nothing in their filing that actually refutes them,” Mobile Future said in response. “The study carefully documents the successful history of the Commission’s auction and secondary market reforms and the wide range of beneficiaries of those policies, most especially the American people and the mobile innovators working so hard to meet their wireless needs. T-Mobile has actively participated in the secondary market and also in some spectrum auctions, while staying home for others. That is their right, but those business and network decisions are not the government’s job to make or to fix. Rather than pivoting to seek government advantage, T-Mobile would do better to focus on competing in a free and open market where they seem to be doing quite well without the government’s help."

NTCH urged the FCC to reverse last month’s grant of Dish Network’s request for flexible use (CD Dec 23 p1) of its AWS-4 spectrum and for a one-year extension of terrestrial network buildout requirements. The waiver of the buildout deadline “was inconsistent with long and consistent FCC precedent regarding the grounds for providing construction build-out relief,” NTCH said in docket 13-225 (http://bit.ly/19QUQyn). By granting Dish the right to make its uplink/downlink election up to 30 months from the date of the waiver order, the commission gave Dish a huge advantage in the auction by allowing it to unilaterally increase the value of the adjacent H block by the election it makes, said the small wireless carrier. The Wireless Bureau “clearly would not have taken the actions absent Dish’s commitment to pay the H block cash,” NTCH said referring to Dish’s agreement to bid nearly $1.6 billion in the auction should the FCC approve its waiver. “The question of first impression here is whether the commission itself may engage in conduct which it would be unlawful for one of its employees to engage in.” The waiver gives Dish an unfair advantage in the H-block auction, which began Wednesday, said NTCH. “The integrity of the auction is necessarily distorted from the start by the imbalance in the fairness of the bidding process.” Dish and the bureau had no comment. Observers of early bidding rounds expect Dish to buy most of the spectrum (CD Jan 23 p4).

Verizon Wireless is determined to “provide a wide range” of hearing-aid compatible handsets for its subscribers, company representatives told FCC staff during a recent call, said an ex parte filing. “As the Commission considers HAC requirements for third-party application providers, we stated that it is important that the FCC remain consistent with its prior interpretations of the Twenty First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) that confine the obligations of providers and device manufacturers to the services they directly provide to consumers,” Verizon said (http://bit.ly/1hPjNdM).

CTIA warned there could be legal issues with an FCC proposal that would require wireless carriers to submit data to the commission on cell site outages during and after disasters, which would be released to the public (CD Jan 22 p2). The proposal is “arbitrary and capricious” and “would unlawfully interfere with wireless carriers’ First Amendment rights,” CTIA said in a filing posted by the FCC Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1hjPBqp). CTIA’s objections were similar to those made by AT&T. “The proposal will mislead the public about wireless service availability, with consumers believing that the percentage of inoperable cell sites is equivalent to the proportion of a carrier’s service territory where service is unavailable when disasters occur,” CTIA said. “The proposal will not increase incentives to increase network resiliency. If anything, it will increase incentives for providers to restore inoperable cell sites as quickly as possible, even where that approach would undermine restoration of actual service.” Verizon Wireless also objected. “The proposed wireless outage reporting and disclosure rule would unnecessarily impose new obligations that provide no clear value to consumers, particularly given carriers’ own competition-driven efforts to give customers information about their wireless coverage, and could even penalize service providers for making important investments in diverse wireless networks and service restoration practices,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/KGVenP). T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/KHzck7) the information the FCC wants carriers to file “does not accurately reflect the available geographic coverage or resiliency of networks after a disaster."

A federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision that the Town of Greenburgh, N.Y., had unlawfully denied Crown Castle’s application to install a distributed antenna system (DAS) in public rights of way (http://1.usa.gov/1cWoAVt). The town’s decision was not supported by substantial evidence, therefore violating Section 332 of the Communications Act, the court said. The town had concluded Crown Castle failed to demonstrate a need for the facilities, because they were “either purely speculative or for the apparent benefit of a single client.” The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the town’s determination was not supported by substantial evidence. The town’s determination on “aesthetic intrusion” was also not supported by substantial evidence, the court said. The court “made several notable findings that are important for the DAS and wireless industries,” law firm Davis Wright said in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/LHum7b).

Most smartphone users are sharing their location through at least one app, said a study released Tuesday by location app Life360 and online research company VeraQuest (http://bit.ly/1juVr9K). More than 60 percent of smartphone owners use at least one location-sharing app on their phone and 36 percent use two or more, and 41 percent of adult smartphone owners are more willing to share their location today than they were five years ago, the research found. VeraQuest surveyed 1,169 teens and adults who own a smartphone, it said.

The Mobile EAS Coalition urged the FCC to consider a more holistic and integrated approach to improving emergency notification procedures as it looks to improve wireless network reliability. This includes encouraging the voluntary deployment of M-EAS by TV broadcasters “and voluntary inclusion of M-EAS receiving capability in the devices distributed by wireless carriers,” the coalition said in comments in docket 13-239 (http://bit.ly/19LDSkP). The coalition asked the commission to look beyond the potential to improve the wireless broadband infrastructure itself, “and create incentives to improve overall emergency communications to citizens,” it said. The FCC also should support the recommendations of the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council III and embrace the dual use opportunity presented by the M-EAS system, it said.

Sonos added fledgling subscription-based Beats Music to its roster of content services. Beats Music began streaming to subscribers Tuesday, claiming a library of 20 million licensed tracks from Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music, and announced partnerships earlier this month with AT&T Wireless and Target. The service is $9.99 a month after a one-week free trial. Users who signed up at Target get a one-month free trial. Users enter musical preferences when they sign up for the service and a personalized selection of albums and playlists is delivered four times a day to their accounts, Beats Music said. In addition to musical preferences, the service bases curated selections on time of day, activity and “additional cultural and contextual clues,” it said. Beats Music will be available to AT&T Wireless customers on an individual plan basis and with a multi-line account for up to five family members and 10 devices for $14.99 a month with the first 90 days free, the company said. Currently, Target is the only retail source for prepaid Beats Music gift cards, which will be available in denominations of $10, $25 or $50. Beats Music didn’t immediately respond to questions about additional partners, including wireless music system partners.

CTIA expressed concerns about a proposal by the Hearing Industries Association, which CTIA said would expand the breadth of the hearing-aid compatibility (HAC) rules to “universal regulatory coverage.” CTIA “has significant concerns with any requirement that all handsets offered in the United States meet HAC requirements,” the group told the FCC in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1gWwWkj). “Such a blanket approach faces significant legal challenges, as it appears to be inconsistent with Section 102 of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010."