SILICON VALLEY -- Regulators will hold mobile app developers to the promises they make to consumers, including in their privacy policies, government officials said at the App Developer Privacy Summit here Wednesday. Federal and state governments rely on such privacy policies for enforcement actions, they said. Even though consumers don’t often read them, law enforcement agencies look to them to make sure companies aren’t being deceptive.

Every political group in the European Parliament looks set to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, members of the House’s International Trade (INTA) Committee said during a debate Wednesday in Brussels. “It’s clear to me ACTA will be rejected by Parliament,” said INTA Chairman Vital Moreira, of Portugal and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Lawmakers should make it a “dead letter,” said David Martin, of the U.K. and S&D, who’s writing the response for the lead committee vetting the pact. The European Commission continued to defend the treaty and to try to counter ongoing criticisms, but it will now probably have to decide what its next steps are if Parliament nixes ACTA.

Sprint Nextel reported a Q1 net loss of $863 million, up from a loss of $439 million in the year-ago period. Despite subscriber growth on the Sprint network, which includes CDMA, WiMAX and LTE, the carrier lost 455,000 postpaid customers on a net basis on its Nextel network iDEN from Q4, leading to a total postpaid subscriber loss of 192,000. The carrier’s prepaid brands, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, will gain access to WiMAX in Q2, executives said during an earnings call Wednesday.

"Americans overwhelmingly oppose the revelation of contact information (phone number, email address, and home address) to merchants” when purchases are made with mobile payments, a survey for University of California-Berkeley researchers found. Even more oppose tracking of shoppers’ movements by mobile phones, according to a paper posted late Tuesday to the Social Science Research Network (http://xrl.us/bm446u).

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is “doubtful” he will remove his holds on FCC nominees this week but suggested to us that he may reconsider after the Senate returns from its upcoming recess May 7. He had complained that the commission didn’t provide all the documents about LightSquared he requested in the agency’s initial delivery to the House Commerce Committee. Grassley is blocking votes on FCC nominees Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel until he gets those documents.

Eighteen out of 24 major federal agencies reported inadequate information security controls for financial reporting for fiscal 2011 and inspectors general at 22 of these agencies cited information security as a major management challenge for their agency, the House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management was told Tuesday. Assessments of information security controls in 2011 showed that most major agencies had weaknesses in most major categories of information system controls, Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the GAO, told a committee hearing on cybersecurity and the need for urgent action.

Lawmakers should rewrite the 1996 Telecom Act to address the impact that online entities have had on the video marketplace, said Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday. But Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., remained a cautious advocate for a rewrite of the law.

AT&T is looking for small spectrum acquisitions, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said during an earnings call Tuesday. Partly helped by growth in wireless and U-verse, the company’s Q1 income rose to $3.58 billion from $3.4 billion a year earlier.

Smaller public interest groups face new challenges in legal representation before the FCC and in court on communications issues because of the closing of the largest law practice devoted to representing nonprofits (CD April 4 p2). Industry lawyers and nonprofit officials said the immediate future of Washington representation for public interest groups without in-house lawyers isn’t bright on issues that will arise where counsel isn’t in place. Our review of the work done by other lawyers for public interest groups found nothing is making up for all of the loss of legal advice provided by the Media Access Project, closing its office May 1.

LOS ANGELES -- The soaring popularity of gaming on smartphones and tablets, as well as the rapidly increasing processing power of those devices, were cited by game company executives attending the L.A. Games Conference on Tuesday as the current key industry trends. Smartphones and tablets are “really the future” of the industry, said Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing for the Americas at Gameloft.