Stakeholders are fighting out the proper effective competition rulings and subsequent telecom regulation that should take hold in New Mexico. The state regulators are looking at how best to move from a long phase 1 of proceedings to a second phase. The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission has considered a September 2011 request from CenturyLink to rule for effective competition, prompting a protracted back-and-forth among stakeholders for years (CD Aug 30 p5). These stakeholders issued new filings at the end of last week, with the Department of Defense and other executive-branch agencies still opposed to the deregulation the telco sought. The latest filings focus on a 143-page phase-1 recommended decision (http://bit.ly/18pZSOq) the PRC hearing examiner introduced in February, looking at how best to move forward.

They will have had six months to make the changes necessary to comply with the new rule, the agency said. That six-month interval reflects the fact that “the Commission took into account the costs and burdens of complying with the Rule” and it was “analyzing the public comments and adopting the final amendments,” the letter said. Additionally, the six-month period between issuance and implementation of the updated rule mirrors that of the interval between issuance and implementation of the original rule, the commission wrote.

Monday was day 154 of the commission’s unofficial 180-day shot clock for review of SoftBank/Sprint. Following the schedule, the commission would be on target to make a decision in early June, as Clyburn’s tenure as chairman likely gets under way. But, industry officials said Monday confirmation of Tom Wheeler as chairman appears unlikely before late summer, and that could mean the deal could be all but wrapped up and waiting for FCC action for several months if the agency waits for Wheeler. In April, Dish made a counteroffer for Sprint worth $25.5 billion (CD April 16 p1) . Last year, Sprint accepted an offer from SoftBank, a $20.1 billion bid for 70 percent ownership.

If you're going to file a class action lawsuit alleging an ISP’s ads are exaggerating its broadband speed, you'd better make sure the record contains the deceptive ad you're suing over. That’s the takeaway of Fink v. Time Warner Cable, decided Monday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Plaintiffs brought this lawsuit, and purported to do so based upon the specific text of a specific advertisement,” read the decision of the unanimous three-judge panel (http://1.usa.gov/16OhEfa). “They should not need discovery to tell them exactly what that advertisement said."

Antenna industry officials said the FCC freeze on modifications to stations is hurting their business just as the approaching spectrum repacking seems likely to increase demand for their products. “When something like that is done at the FCC that impedes broadcasters, it affects manufacturers,” said Alex Perchevitch, president of Jampro Antennas. He and other industry executives, along with the NAB, said the April 5 freeze (CD April 8 p5) on station modifications was partly to blame for the April 19 announcement that Dielectric Communications, one of the largest broadcast antenna manufacturers, will go out of business. “The government’s just destroyed the biggest antenna company, and now they want to have a repacking that will put a terrible demand on manufacturing,” said one antenna industry executive. “That’s the dumbest thing I've ever seen."

As the last scheduled face-to-face meeting before that July deadline, “this is an important face-to-face,” said working group co-Chair Peter Swire. Though the July deadline can be pushed back, stakeholders “are treating the ‘Last Call’ deadline seriously,” he said. “We'll know by Wednesday” whether the process will produce a DNT mechanism, TechFreedom President Berin Szoka said. Szoka is an invited expert to the W3C process. He’s optimistic, Szoka said: “If we can’t move forward from this, there is no other way out."

NAB, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and high-technology companies wrote the FCC Friday urging the agency to limit the size of the duplex gap and guard bands built into the new band plan for the 600 MHz band, made necessary by an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum. The duplex gap and guard bands were one of the most contentious topics at an all-day workshop on the band plan at the commission Friday.

T-Mobile sought in 2009 to address a gap in its coverage in Howard County, Md., by installing a monopole at the back of a Glenwood church. After three public hearings, the county denied T-Mobile’s conditional use petition, concerned that “T-Mobile had not engaged in formal negotiations” with a local public high school to locate the facility there, according to the opinion. The board denied the petition on the grounds that T-Mobile didn’t demonstrate the proposed ingress and egress to the site would provide “safe access with adequate sight distance,” and that the company hadn’t made a “diligent effort” to site the facility on government property.

With T-Mobile’s acquisition of MetroPCS complete, T-Mobile now must decide whether it will continue the 2011 MetroPCS challenge to the FCC’s December 2010 net neutrality rules. MetroPCS and Verizon Wireless filed separate challenges to the order, which have been joined into a single case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

T-Mobile US emerged from last week’s merger of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS having achieved its main goal in that deal -- gaining access to additional spectrum to expand its LTE network and other services to make it more competitive against Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel. The merger, which closed Tuesday, increased T-Mobile’s average spectrum holdings in the top 25 U.S. markets from 63 MHz to 76 MHz (CD May 2 p9). The addition of MetroPCS’s spectrum, along with other recent spectrum deals, means T-Mobile is in a good position to meet its burgeoning spectrum requirements in the near-term. But industry experts told us the carrier is highly likely to be an active participant in upcoming auctions for additional spectrum, if the FCC implements acceptably pro-competitive rules.