The unexpected retirement of Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., leaves an opening for the top minority post on the Senate Commerce Committee that Republican observers said could be filled by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. DeMint was the third-most senior Republican in the committee after the retiring Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and Olympia Snowe (Maine). The two-term Republican senator from South Carolina announced his retirement Thursday morning to become the president of the Heritage Foundation beginning in January. “I'm leaving the Senate now, but I'm not leaving the fight,” DeMint said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bn47jp). Republican Gov. Nikki Haley is to name DeMint’s successor for the remaining two years of his term.

The Internet is getting closer to delivering highly personalized user experiences, and the FTC wants to learn more about the technologies used to track and target users, Commissioner Julie Brill said. She opened the agency’s Thursday workshop on data collection practices. At the session, other participants asked that the agency focus on use of such consumer data and not its collection. “We need to find out more about how to differentiate the data collection capabilities of different technologies, or even whether differentiation is appropriate,” Brill told the audience of technology lawyers, Internet association employees, public interest group staff and other stakeholders.

The FCC’s long-awaited special access order is more explicit than version first circulated by Chairman Julius Genachowski regarding which data the Wireline Bureau should request from the industry, agency and industry officials told us. The “must vote” date had been pushed back to Wednesday (CD Dec 3 p3). A vote hadn’t been finalized at our deadline, an agency official said. One factor is that Commissioner Robert McDowell is out of the country, an FCC official said. McDowell and Genachowski traveled this week to the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. (See separate report in this issue below on WCIT.)

The close to 2,000 delegates at the World Conference on International Telecom dug into the hard work to find compromises on some of the controversial issues at WCIT on the future International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). A core issue at the meeting in Dubai is how the future ITRs deal with pricing and accounting, participants and observers said. If the U.S. has it its way, the relevant article in the 1988 ITRs could disappear.

Netflix won’t raise subscription rates to pay for the multi-year Disney distribution deal announced Wednesday, said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos at the UBS conference Wednesday in New York. Sarandos said the company’s focus is on “how great a product can you build for that low subscription price,” while “remaining profitable.”

Questions remain about the U.S. federal broadband stimulus program, now approaching its final year and totaling just under $4 billion in awards. Municipal stakeholders praised the broader investment in November (CD Nov 13 p7). NTIA recently posted scores of third-quarter reports belonging to the 228 Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grantees. These documents and a recent Office of Inspector General report show concerns about oversight and the closeout process of these three-year grants as well as consider the fate of seven public safety network grantees, which NTIA suspended in May over FirstNet compatibility concerns.

AT&T is raising its expectations for full-year smartphone sales after what AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said has been a record-setting first two months of Q4. The carrier sold 6.4 million smartphones during October and November, already making Q4 AT&T’s second best quarter for smartphone sales; quarterly figures typically improve even more during December, de la Vega said Wednesday during an investor conference. The carrier now forecasts it will sell 26 million smartphones for the year, 1 million more than previously expected, de la Vega said. “Excitement is at an all-time high,” he said. “I feel very good about momentum going into December.” The growth in smartphone sales came as a result of an improved supply of Apple’s iPhones, as well as Android-powered models like the LG Optimus G and HTC One X, de la Vega said. The carrier is also “really excited” about the prospects for Windows Phone models like the HTC 8X and the Nokia Lumia 920, he said.

Small carriers are making a last push to try to get the FCC to address interoperability in the lower 700 MHz band before the end of the year. Rather than mandating interoperability per se, a main focus of the small carriers has been on getting the FCC to require the restoration of a single band class for the lower 700 MHz band, carrier officials said in interviews Wednesday.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Profits are to be had in the growing market for securing networked devices, executives said at the Amphion Forum Wednesday. Providing companies with simple security solutions for an ever-increasing array of devices could prove to be hugely profitable, said Bev Crair, general manager of Intel’s Intelligent Systems Framework Division. “There is a huge market opportunity here if we can make this simple,” she said. “If we can come up with simple, effective ways … to define what it means to be secured, connected and managed … there is money to be made here for all of us."

The 15th round of Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations is more secretive than previous rounds, said a joint statement from a group of stakeholders attending the talks (http://bit.ly/YxifyU). Unlike previous rounds, the most recent of which took place in Leesburg, Va., in September (CD Sept. 11 p8), stakeholders are allowed on the premises during negotiations only on one of the ten days, said the group. It includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Knowledge Ecology International and Consumers International. The negotiations are at the SkyCity Convention Centre in Auckland, New Zealand.