T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS believe some losses in Q3 resulted from their anticipated merger. T-Mobile said Thursday that the deal drove it into a net loss in Q3, while MetroPCS said it was losing prepaid customers to T-Mobile. No. 4 national carrier T-Mobile saw a net gain of 365,000 prepaid customers during Q3, which came at the expense of MetroPCS, MetroPCS Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said Thursday during an investor conference. T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom inked a deal in October to join MetroPCS with T-Mobile. The deal would give MetroPCS shareholders $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the combined carrier (CD Oct 4 p1). T-Mobile blamed its overall net loss of $7.8 billion for the quarter on the merger, saying Thursday in an earnings report that the figure included an $8.1 billion “goodwill” non-cash impairment charge related to the deal (http://xrl.us/bnyoqp). The carrier posted a $332 million net profit a year ago.

AT&T will no longer block use of the FaceTime video calling application on its network for at least some of its customers who haven’t subscribed to its “Mobile Share” data plan, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi said Thursday on the company’s blog. Public interest groups who had raised net neutrality questions about AT&T’s blocking of the application (CD Sept 19 p1) hailed the decision but said it doesn’t go far enough.

Carriers’ capital expenditures may be a boon for small firms and those owned by women, minorities and other disadvantaged groups, the heads of PCIA and USTelecom said Thursday. Building more towers and adding other equipment to meet subscribers’ demand for data applications gives such firms an opportunity, speakers at a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council event said. CEOs Walter McCormick of USTelecom and Jonathan Adelstein of PCIA cited AT&T’s plan disclosed Wednesday to spend $14 billion on wireless and wireline broadband capacity (CD Nov 8 p11).

State regulators will confront the telecom industry’s transformative change to Internet Protocol-based infrastructure at NARUC’s Baltimore meeting, which starts this weekend. They'll be reviewing two new research papers on the topic, as consumers increasingly turn away from the public switched telephone network of switched circuits. The first report questions how broadband voice service quality can be maintained and measured. The second takes a strong look at telecom reliability during natural disasters and the significance of backup power. Both reports from NARUC’s National Regulatory Research Institute have an eye toward the new technology.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is planning to restart a markup of amendments to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), possibly as soon as next week, Capitol Hill and industry officials said. At a panel in San Francisco late Wednesday, Jim Dempsey, vice president-public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the committee will take up the amendments next week. But a spokeswoman for the committee said it’s planning to finish marking up an ECPA amendment bill, but hasn’t set a schedule for the coming work period. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee has no plans to take up ECPA amendments in the lame duck session, a House aide said. Leahy put a September markup on hold after law enforcement agencies raised concerns (CD Oct 26 p5).

Nine data companies’ responses were inadequate to questions about their business practices, said a joint statement Thursday from Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, co-chairs of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, and other lawmakers. “The data brokers’ responses offer only a glimpse of the practices of an industry that has operated in the shadows for years,” the lawmakers said. They want more information about “how they analyze personal information to categorize and rate consumers.” The legislators said they'll “continue our efforts to learn more about this industry and will push for whatever steps are necessary to make sure Americans know how this industry operates and are granted control over their own information” (http://xrl.us/bnyohp).

The FCC Wireless Bureau will likely avoid forcing Dish Network to move its uplink up by 5 MHz to get a waiver to use spectrum for a terrestrial service, agency and industry officials said. The bureau could lean toward placing power limitations at the bottom of Dish’s uplink frequency, the officials said. The FCC plans to make a decision this year on a rulemaking that proposes to allow Dish access to AWS-4 spectrum to build a terrestrial network, they said. Earlier this year, it seemed likely that the bureau would recommend a vote on the forthcoming draft order to make Dish move its uplink up, which the company said would have caused so much interference from adjacent, higher-frequency operations that it would drastically reduce the use of the upper 5 MHz. Now, it seems the bureau instead will ask FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to circulate an order that doesn’t require the move but does mandate lower emissions, agency and industry officials told us.

Change is on the way at the FCC, with Chairman Julius Genachowski widely expected to step down some time next year after nearly four years in the job. Change won’t be nearly as sweeping as what would have followed a Mitt Romney victory and the likely reversal of several key Obama administration policy calls, starting with 2010 net neutrality rules, government and industry officials told us Wednesday.

ViaSat has garnered at least 150,000 subscribers to its Exede satellite broadband service and is moving forward with plans for a second-generation satellite, company executives said on an earnings call.

State and local advocates cautiously praised Tuesday election results and President Barack Obama’s victory. Local governments will face major considerations involving municipal broadband, USF reform and FirstNet, they told us in interviews. “We're pleased to see that team continue,” said Joanne Hovis, president of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors board. She referred to officials in the Department of Commerce, Agriculture and at the White House. She praised American Recovery and Reinvestment Act initiatives and focus on broadband as “really successful” and a “credit” to the administration. NATOA doesn’t foresee another recovery bill but is happy with the administration’s overall direction of national communications policy, she said.