Crown Castle International announced IPO of 12 million shares of common stock at $26.25 per share to raise $315 million. Company said offering was expected to close Jan. 17. Crown Castle said it planned to use proceeds for “general corporate purposes” such as capital spending and for acquiring shared communications infrastructure.

FCC Chmn. Kennard made it official Fri.: He’s leaving Commission Jan. 19 “with great pride in the accomplishments of the Commission” and “deep gratitude” for opportunity to serve, he said in resignation letter sent to President Clinton Fri. Kennard said that for “next few months” he will be senior fellow of Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program in Washington. He also will be first chairman of program’s new advisory board. However, his immediate plans are to “get some rest and spend some time with my 10-month-old,” he told reporters after news conference on AOL-Time Warner vote. He said he hadn’t decided what he would do after Aspen Institute. Asked if he wanted to stay in telecom policy, he responded: “Sure, I love it.” Asked to name his top 3 accomplishments, he listed (1) implementation of Telecom Act, (2) e-rate, (3) expanding telecom service to disabled community, native Americans, small and minority businesses. Ex- FCC Chmn. Reed Hundt said Kennard “has done more to include minorities and disadvantaged groups in the communications revolution than all previous FCC chairs combined.” NARUC Gen. Counsel Brad Ramsay said he “will hate to see him go” because Kennard made effort to include state regulators in development of issues. “He always made time to come to NARUC and discuss things one-on-one,” he said. Announcement of new chairman isn’t expected until after President-elect George Bush is sworn in Jan. 20.

GSM Assn. reached agreement with TDMA wireless group Universal Wireless Communications Consortium (UWCC) to include TDMA interoperability with GSM as component of GSM Global Roaming Forum. Point of forum is to foster interoperability of GSM and non-GSM technologies with goal of intrastandard roaming among carriers. Groups said GSM and TDMA interoperability, through GSM/ANSI-136 Interoperability, has been under discussion since 1999. Agreement between 2 wireless groups brought development work under purview of roaming forum. Forum develops technical requirements for terminals, networking and commercial standards for services, billing and financial settlements.

FCC declined Fri. to preempt Mo. law (HB 620) that prohibits political subdivisions such as municipalities from providing telecom services or facilities, concluding that term “entity” in Sec. 253(a) of Communications Act wasn’t intended to include political subdivisions of state but rather appeared to prohibit restrictions on market entry that apply to independent entities subject to state regulation. Acting on preemption petition filed by Mo. Assn. of Municipal Utilities, City Utilities of Springfield and others, Commission said that if municipally owned utility sought to provide telecom service or facility as independent corporate entity that was separate from state, “we could reach a different result under Section 252(a).” Mo. municipalities argued that even if Commission were correct in concluding that Congress didn’t clearly intend to include municipalities that didn’t own and operate electric utilities within scope of Sec. 253, Congress did clearly intend term “any entity” to apply to power companies owned by municipalities. As it found in Texas Preemption Order, FCC said, “any entity” was not intended to include political subdivisions of state. Commission urged states to refrain from enacting absolute prohibitions on ability of municipal entities to provide telecom service. Municipally owned utilities have potential to become major competitors in telecom industry, it said, and their entry could further goal of Act to bring benefits of competition to all Americans, particularly those living in small or rural communities. As for concerns of taxpayer protection from economic risks of entry and possible regulatory bias that municipalities’ entry raise, Commission said such issues could be dealt with successfully through measures that were much less restrictive than outright ban on entry. For instance, there could be nondiscrimination requirements that require municipal entity to operate in manner that’s separate from municipality, “thereby permitting consumers to reap the benefits of increased competition.” FCC also rejected municipalities’ contention that even if municipally owned utilities were political subdivisions of state, legislative history of Sec. 253 (a) demonstrated that Congress clearly intended “any entity” to cover municipal electric utilities. “Other than indicating that municipal energy utilities may make their facilities available to carriers, the legislative history that the petitioners cite does not distinguish between publicly owned and privately owned utilities,” Commission said. In joint statement, FCC Chmn. Kennard and Comr. Tristani said they voted reluctantly to preempt petition because they believed “HB- 620 effectively eliminates municipally owned utilities as a promising class of local communications competitors in Missouri.” Commission was constrained in authority to preempt by decision by U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., City of Abilene, and U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Gregory v. Ashcroft, they said. Referring to letters from many members of Congress that said it was intent of Congress when it enacted Sec. 253 to enable any entity, regardless of form of ownership or control, to enter telecom market, they urged Congress to consider amending language in section to clearly address municipally owned entities. In separate statement, Comr. Ness urges states to adopt less restrictive measures, such as separation or nondiscriminatory requirements, to protect utility ratepayers or address any perceived unfair competitive advantage.

Now that FCC finally has approved AOL’s takeover of Time Warner (TW) with additional regulatory conditions, cable operators, consumer groups, phone companies, state and local regulators, ISPs, broadcasters, DBS providers, cable overbuilders and others already are girding for next big fights over extending those regulations to rest of cable industry. Likely new battle fronts include 2 separate FCC proceedings on cable open access issue and interactive TV (ITV) rules, each of which covers part of leading conditions imposed on AOL-TW by FTC and FCC. Another new battle front could be expected bill in new Congress that would create comprehensive regulatory scheme for all broadband services, whether delivered by cable, telephone, satellite or wireless technologies. “It’s going to be more diffuse,” said Precursor Group CEO Scott Cleland. “The progress will still be made but it will be more difficult to track.”

Iowa Utilities Board gave Qwest permission to geographically rebalance its retail basic business rates to reflect cost, revenue and market shifts arising from recent board decision to geographically deaverage Qwest’s unbundled loop rates into 3 cost zones. Qwest is to file tariff with new basic business rates by end of Feb. Loop deaveraging plan adopted by board Jan. 10 will create spread exceeding $26 between lowest and highest loop cost zones. Qwest said loop deaveraging without retail rate rebalancing would create artificial wholesale-retail price disparities that would give CLECs opportunities for uneconomic arbitrage that would unfairly damage Qwest’s position in urban markets while simultaneously discouraging rural competition. Board said Qwest’s case was valid for basic business services, but it said Qwest carried argument too far when it attempted to apply same principle to residential and nonbasic business services. Retail residential rates are below lowest deaveraged loop rate, board said, making uneconomic arbitrage impossible, and company under its price cap plan already had broad pricing flexibility for optional and discretionary business services. Board limited rate rebalancing to single-line and multiline business basic exchange, business trunk services, payphone access lines, Centrex and business ISDN services. Rebalancing will reduce rates in low-cost urban areas and increase them in higher cost suburban and rural areas, but board also put 20% limit on rate increases for any particular service.

Ohio PUC ordered state’s 4 largest incumbent telcos to reduce their intrastate access charges to interstate levels set by FCC July 1 when it implemented CALLS Coalition’s access and universal service reform plan for large telcos. PUC directed Ameritech, Cincinnati Bell, Sprint and Verizon, which put interstate CALLS into effect July 1, to file new access tariffs by end of Jan. Agency ordered interexchange carriers to follow promptly with their plans for passing their access savings across the board to their customers. In past, Ohio set intrastate access charges by mirroring structure and rates of interstate access charges, but PUC in June 30 decision halted mirroring until it had chance to review impacts on state if access rate reductions required by CALLS plan were put into effect on intrastate basis. PUC concluded that resumption of interstate access mirroring rather than company-by-company PUC access charge reviews would be most sensible way to promote policy goals of lower interexchange rates, elimination of implicit subsidies, efficient competition and investment and regulatory certainty for telecom industry. For state’s smaller incumbents, PUC said it wouldn’t change anything until FCC decided on interstate access and universal service reforms pending for rural telcos. For CLECs, PUC said their access charges would remain capped at their present levels, with cuts permitted. Increases, however, will require full cost support.

NTL says its 4th quarter was record-breaking in subscriber additions, with 86,800 new customers joining during period. NTL also said “original” franchises had their 20th consecutive quarter of increased customer penetration, to 50.7%, and Teesside franchise continued to lead U.K. operations with 66.9% household penetration.

Sirius Radio said it conducted first test of satellite radio system from orbiting satellite to mobile car radios. Ford Telematics Dir. Russ Minick said “difference between Sirius and regular radio is really impressive.” Tweeter Home Entertainment Group Buyer Marc Spatz said listening to service live “exciting.” Testing includes end-to-end testing and integration of Sirius receiver, studio, broadcast, transaction management and customer service systems, as well as feedback from listeners on programming, company said.

FCC seemed to please no one with its compromise instant messaging (IM) conditions on its approval of AOL takeover of Time Warner (TW) last week (see separate story). Despite pleas of Democratic Comr. Tristani, agency chose not to require AOL-TW to provide immediate interoperability for competing IM providers, even when IM services were provided over TW’s cable platform. Instead, it mandated interoperability on hypothetical future IM services such as streaming video, which it labeled “advanced, IM- based high-speed services (AIHS).” AOL-TW also must file progress report with FCC every 180 days on steps it has taken toward IM interoperability. Competing IM providers immediately criticized conditions as ineffective, while many said FCC should have imposed no conditions at all.