Adam Bender

T-Mobile doesn’t share customer data with affiliates or third parties, said a spokeswoman responding to the recent Verizon Wireless controversy over Customer Proprietary Network Information sharing. Verizon is sending customers CPNI notices explaining that it may share customer usage data with “affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries” unless customers opt out within 30 days (CD Oct 15 p8).

Verizon Wireless is only following FCC rules by using an opt-out rather than opt-in system for Customer Proprietary Network Information sharing, a spokesman said Monday. Verizon took heat last week after sending subscribers a Customer Proprietary Network Information notice explaining it could share customer usage data with “affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries,” unless customers opted out within 30 days (CD Oct 15 p8). FCC rules “prescribe specifically that opt-out is the way to share information with telecommunications affiliates [and] to market telecom services,” the spokesman said. Opt-in, preferred by privacy groups, is required only on sharing customer data for non-telecom services and with businesses outside Verizon, he said. “There’s no selling of consumer information to third party advertisers” at Verizon Wireless, he said. Verizon is working to ensure that all customers are notified and opt-out is “as easy as possible,” the spokesman said, alluding to other carriers’ trouble with CPNI notification. In early 2007, consumer groups attacked Sprint when the carrier forced customers to send opt-out requests by mail. In 2006, AT&T faced an FCC investigation after running out of bill inserts on privacy policy and then using the CPNI of nearly 11,000 customers who were not sent opt-out instructions. Verizon Wireless sent notices to customers in September and early October, the spokesman said. Verizon Wireless included an insert in the bills of account holders sent paper bills and separately mailed a first-class notice to those billed electronically, he said. An AT&T spokesman wouldn’t comment on Verizon’s program but concurred that the FCC, not individual carriers, decides how CPNI may be used. “FCC regulations are very explicit about how CPNI is to be handled,” he said. “AT&T is scrupulous in following those regulations.” Meanwhile, Alltel said Monday it doesn’t have a CPNI sharing program like Verizon’s. “We are not doing anything like this and have no plans to do so,” a spokesman said.

Unless customers opt out within 30 days, Verizon Wireless will share billing and service use data with advertisers, the carrier wrote customers in a notice about Customer Proprietary Network Information. Failure to respond will be taken as “permission to share this information among our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries,” the notice said.

“There’s no time pressure” on the FCC to address an International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO) request to change Intelsat’s original licenses to reflect its obligations to maintain lifeline connectivity to developing countries, said David Gross, U.S. State Department coordinator for international communications and information policy. Gross and Richard Russell, the head of the U.S. delegation to the coming World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva, spoke Thursday at a meeting of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. Russell briefed the committee on the conference; Gross reported on State’s discussions with Vietnam and Mexico.

Vonage wants the Federal Circuit U.S. Appeals Court to rehear its case against Verizon, it said Wednesday. The VoIP company filed a motion for review by the original three-judge panel or the full panel of Federal Circuit judges sitting en banc, it said. On Sept. 26, the Federal Circuit upheld Vonage infringement on two patents, sending a third back to the Alexandria, Va. U.S. District Court (CD Sept 27 p4). The appeals court also vacated an award of $58 million in damages and 5.5 percent royalty. “This move represents the next logical step for Vonage in managing this litigation and continuing to move our business forward,” said Sharon O'Leary, Vonage chief legal officer. “We recently settled our case with Sprint and continue to explore all legal options available to put the Verizon litigation to rest.” A Verizon spokesman declined to comment. “It’s what the court says on this one that matters,” he said.

Broadband mapping and E-911 bills were approved Wednesday by the House Telecom Subcommittee. The committee agreed, with few dissents to amendments, to the mapping bill and E-911 (HR-3403) measure. An amendment to the broadband mapping bill would remove a requirement that broadband service be at least 2 Mbps. It also would remove an industry obligation to report the price and actual speed of broadband. Instead, consumer surveys will be conducted. So duplicate grants won’t go to competing interests for mapmaking in the same state, authority to make statewide maps will go to one body in each state, chosen by the state government. The data will use a nine-digit ZIP code level of detail. There’s also a privacy provision to “adequately protect” personal information. The subcommittee also passed an amendment to an E-911 bill that would promote deployment of IP-enabled 911 and E-911 services. The amendment clarifies that current FCC regulations for VoIP and 911 would “remain in full force effect” and that VoIP providers can access 911 data from any entity. VoIP providers also would get the same rights to interconnection rates, terms and conditions as wireless carriers. States that impose 911 fees couldn’t take more money from VoIP providers than any other provider.

OnStar announced prototype technology called Stolen Vehicle Slowdown that lets OnStar operators cut the engine power of a stolen vehicle involved in high-speed pursuit. To use the service, an OnStar user files a stolen vehicle report with law enforcement and asks OnStar for Stolen Vehicle Location Assistance. OnStar operators find the stolen vehicle with GPS and send the information to local law enforcement. Law enforcement officials at the scene confirm the location, make, model and color of the vehicle, check that conditions are safe and ask OnStar to start a slowdown. OnStar uses cellular technology to remotely slow the vehicle to a stop. OnStar works mainly with Verizon and is using existing wireless infrastructure for the cellular component of Slowdown, Huber said. “The RF covers where the RF covers,” but OnStar extends coverage by increasing its system’s power level beyond that of a handheld device, and by attaching an antenna that has “much better connectivity” than a cellphone, Huber said. OnStar can’t use the service without cooperation from the stolen car owner and public safety, Huber said. The “practical reality” of a police officer making a slowdown request without the OnStar subscriber’s permission is low, considering that there’s not much time to identify a car during a five-minute chase, Huber said. But customers uncomfortable with Slowdown may opt out of the service, he said. Slowdown is a GM-exclusive feature in the U.S. and Canada and will be included in the one-year OnStar subscription that customers get when they buy an eligible 2009 OnStar-equipped vehicle, OnStar said.

Sprint’s mobile handoff service uses femtocell technology rather than Wi-Fi because femtocell is more secure, Avi Bhatia, Sprint Nextel’s wireless voice services director, told us. Last month, Sprint launched Airwave, a femtocell service enabling handoffs between a home base station and a carrier wireless network. An Airwave customer connects a book-sized Samsung device to a wired broadband connection. The unit acts as a small cell site for a home. A similar T-Mobile service, HotSpot@Home, lets select phones link to Wi-Fi networks. The Sprint system uses licensed spectrum, making it “infinitely more difficult to break into” than Wi-Fi, which is “fairly open,” Bhatia said. Wi-Fi can be secured, but hackers still find it easier to monitor, he said. Airwave is available in Denver and Indianapolis, but Sprint will deploy in Nashville, Tenn., this year and nationwide in early 2008. Sprint began in Denver and Indianapolis because of their existing infrastructure and appealing demographics, Bhatia said.

MetroPCS subscriber results for the third quarter are “slightly disappointing,” but the carrier should experience a turnaround as money from its Los Angeles expansion comes in, analysts said Friday. MetroPCS prereleased Q3 net addition and churn results Thursday. MetroPCS added 114,000 subscribers, down from 197,623 a year earlier. MetroPCS signed 16.6 percent more customers, but a 0.2 percentage point rise in churn offset the gain. The numbers don’t take into account August’s Los Angeles launch because “marketing and distribution efforts will not fully ramp up” until the fourth quarter, MetroPCS said. The third quarter historically has been MetroPCS’s weakest. The carrier suffered mostly from “seasonal slowdown” in core and expansion markets, Stanford Group said. The fourth quarter should be better because the L.A. expansion is “tracking well,” the analyst firm said. The L.A. deployment and launches in New York, Philadelphia and Boston in late 2008 or early 2009 will be key to MetroPCS’s success, said Current Analysis’s William Ho. “Their future growth is clearly going to be in the expansion markets,” he said. MetroPCS usually does not pre-release quarterly results and “has no intention to pre-release results in future quarters,” MetroPCS said. However, the carrier is looking to be more transparent, given its bid to acquire Leap Wireless, a source close to the company said.

Judges pushed a TiVo lawyer well past his time limit, as they asked whether claim language could have prejudiced a jury against EchoStar in the Texarkana, Tex., U.S. District Court. But while hitting TiVo with the most questions in the Thursday oral argument, the Federal Circuit U.S. Appeals Court hinted a split decision was likely, focusing more on the term “separated” than two others disputed by EchoStar and floating questions about an affirm-in-part’s impact on verdict terms.