Sinclair launched a new division that will invest in “emerging digital technologies and digital content companies,” said the broadcaster in a news release Thursday. It said Sinclair Digital Ventures will “focus on companies with products or services that support and expand Sinclair’s digital capabilities and non-linear footprint.”

Participation in Virgin Mobile's broadband Lifeline pilot project was “considerably less” than the company had planned, with only hundreds of customers in any given month instead of the 2,500 anticipated, the company said in a letter to the FCC posted Wednesday in docket 11-42. Requiring a contribution, either upfront or in the form of a monthly recurring charge, even if relatively small, “is a significant barrier to participation,” said the company. “Any broadband Lifeline program should be designed with the extremely cash-constrained consumer in mind.” About 70 percent of Virgin Mobile’s Assurance Wireless Lifeline subscribers report having no access to the Internet at home or elsewhere, and “may not have hardware available to access the internet using broadband service,” the company said. The pilot was part of the agency’s Lifeline broadband pilot program to collect data on how the Lifeline program can be structured to increase broadband adoption among low-income Americans. Virgin Mobile said it offered four options to 104,000 Massachusetts customers and 150,000 Ohio customers. The company said it offered the choice of an initial device fee of $10 or $50, and an activation fee of either $20 upfront with no recurring monthly fees or no upfront charge with a $20 monthly fee.

FCC net neutrality rules pose a potential threat to LTE broadcast, which lets wireless carriers multicast over their networks, said Daniel Lyons, a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy, in a blog post Wednesday. The traditional way carriers transmit video, as an individual copy of requested content to each consuming device, “makes little sense when multiple people are consuming the same content at the same time, as many do during the Super Bowl or other live sporting events,” Lyons said. LTE broadcast uses a portion of the network to transmit one copy of the content to multiple devices. The net neutrality order doesn’t directly address LTE broadcast, Lyons said. But it could potentially violate the order’s paid prioritization ban, he said. “Because carriers must reserve a portion of cell capacity to engage in LTE broadcasting, a creative lawyer might argue that LTE broadcast allows a carrier to use ‘resource reservation’ to ‘directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic’ in violation of the Commission’s prohibition, if done ‘in exchange for consideration’ or ‘to benefit an affiliated entity,’” he said. LTE broadcast would also be a strong candidate for a waiver of the ban, as allowed by the order, Lyons said. “It is also possible that the FCC would consider LTE broadcast a non-BIAS [broadband Internet access] service that is exempt from the Open Internet rules, like the cable company’s facilities-based VoIP service or IP television,” he said. “One can describe LTE broadcast as an ‘application-level’ service that shares capacity with the carrier’s broadband service but does not itself offer access to large portions of the Internet.”

Protecting its market power from erosion by online video is Comcast’s incentive to hold back content and throttle online video distributors (OVDs), said Netflix in an ex parte filing posted online in docket 14-57 Thursday. Though Comcast has argued it wouldn’t have incentive to foreclose OVDs, Netflix disagreed. Comcast’s theory that foreclosing OVDs isn’t desirable because it wouldn’t provide the cable giant with new market power relies on the assumption that Comcast doesn’t fear losing market power to OVDs, Netflix said. “OVD substitution of traditional Comcast services is both real and recognized by Comcast itself as potentially undermining its position in the market,” Netflix said. Comcast’s internal documents, released as part of the merger review, also show concern about the market threat of OVD, Netflix said in a heavily redacted section of the filing. Comcast didn't comment.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC should make more spectrum available for Wi-Fi, in a speech Monday at the South by Southwest conference. Rosenworcel started by noting that, defying likely expectations, she wasn’t going to talk about net neutrality. “No matter where you stand, I think we can all agree that this issue does not lack attention,” she said according to prepared remarks. Instead, Rosenworcel focused on Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum: “We have to find more places in our airwaves for unlicensed services like Wi-Fi. We are using more Wi-Fi than ever before, and this use is only going to grow.” Rosenworcel said the FCC should pay attention as work continues on LTE-unlicensed. “The standards development process for LTE-U is ongoing, and we need to be mindful of its impact on unlicensed spectrum use,” she said. Congress also should rethink how it values spectrum, Rosenworcel said. The Congressional Budget Office assigns value to spectrum when it's licensed and sold at auction, she said: “So bills that direct the FCC to sell licensed spectrum get high grades, while legislation that creates more spectrum for Wi-Fi gets low marks. This accounting method is outdated. Because it fails to take into account the more than $140 billion in economic activity unlicensed spectrum creates each year. That economic activity can grow -- if we find a new way to put Wi-Fi on the books.” The FCC was also right to make clear that it won't tolerate blocking of Wi-Fi, she said. Marriott International was fined $600,000 by the FCC in October for blocking personal Wi-Fi networks at its Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville (see 1410060066). The hotel chain announced in January it would no longer block guests from using their personal Wi-Fi devices at any of its hotels (see 1501150064). “We got a little noisy on this one in Washington,” Rosenworcel said. “That’s a victory for hotel guests and a gain for Wi-Fi connectivity. I hope it is also a lesson for other premises operators. Because blocking Wi-Fi connections while simultaneously charging high fees to connect is a bad idea.”

The Communications Workers of America and NAACP called on the FCC to reject bids made by two designated entities controlled by Dish Network in the AWS-3 auction. The groups sent a letter to commissioners Thursday questioning how Dish, a company with a $34.6 billion market capitalization and $14.6 billion in annual revenue, could qualify for bidding credits designed to help small businesses buy spectrum licenses. The two DEs, Northstar Wireless and SNR Wireless, were the winning bidders for $13.3 billion worth of licenses for $10 billion (see 1501300051). “While the AWS-3 auction was an enormous success, DISH's unusual bidding tactics coupled with its abuse of the designated entity rules are creating a cloud over the auction,” the groups said. “We expect that the FCC will reject DISH's attempt to qualify as a small business eligible for $3.25 billion in taxpayer subsidies.” The letter was filed Thursday in docket 12-268. At Dish, "we respectfully disagree with the criticism of the Designated Entity program, and we are confident that we fully complied with the DE rules in the AWS-3 auction, which were unanimously approved by the full Commission," a Dish spokesman emailed us Friday. "The DE program has been successful in providing much smaller entities the ability to access stronger capital structures, which has facilitated their meaningful participation in an auction process from which they would otherwise be precluded. Our approach -- publicly disclosed ahead of the auction -- was based on DE investment structures that have been approved by the FCC in past wireless spectrum auctions, including structures used by AT&T and Verizon."

Comcast’s Xfinity Wireless gateway is still the industry’s fastest device at more than 700 Mbps, said Allion USA in an analysis released last week. The analysis shows that Comcast delivers speeds that are more than seven times greater than the speeds offered by the AT&T gateway and almost 20 percent faster than the most current Verizon gateway, Comcast said in a news release Tuesday. The analysis said the Xfinity and Verizon Wireless gateways had 3x3 antennas and the ability to leverage both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, compared with the AT&T’s 1x1 antenna system and single band.

Auctions for commercial bidders to receive exclusive use of spectrum "may become a thing of the past," said Defense Spectrum Organization Director Stuart Timerman at the 2015 Military Radar Summit, the Defense Information Systems Agency said in a news release Thursday. "The need for spectrum in the development of current and future military capabilities makes it nearly impossible" for these auctions to continue, he said. The Department of Defense, FCC, NTIA and industry have to work together to analyze and test spectrum sharing proposals, Timerman said. The National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network established last year, includes federal, academic and commercial test facilities for simulations of spectrum sharing (see 1502050032), he said. Department of Defense systems will have "indefinite sharing" access for spectrum acquired in the AWS-3 auction and federal agencies that have to relocate or share spectrum will recover costs from auction proceeds, according to the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act, he said. Spectrum access systems (SAS) can help the government and commercial users with spectrum sharing by providing a database of processing utilization, Timerman said. SAS developed by commercial companies provide information about systems that are operated on which frequencies, he said. "This visibility can provide insight into what types of interference users may get and even provide the option of shutting down a system to avoid interference."

Dish Network is unlikely to build its own wireless network despite a rash of spectrum buys, said T-Mobile Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter Thursday at a Morgan Stanley financial conference. Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen “has done a masterful job” of creating a mid-band spectrum portfolio important to carrying data traffic, he said. “What Charlie ends up doing, gosh, I wish I could answer that.” Ergen has said recently that Dish would be in no hurry to monetize its spectrum holdings (see 1502230038). T-Mobile would be a “very interesting” party to work with Dish on deploying its spectrum, Carter said. Carter also said T-Mobile followed a “very disciplined” strategy in the AWS-3 auction since it's already well positioned in the mid-band spectrum offered in that auction. “We went into the AWS-3 auction with the best mid-band portfolio in the U.S. and we came out of it with the best mid-band portfolio,” he said. Carter hinted T-Mobile may go much bigger in the TV incentive auction and the 600 MHz spectrum that will be for sale. “Our priority is to perfect our low-band footprint” and put T-Mobile on a level playing field with the other three national carriers, he said. T-Mobile has “years of runway” to expand its network with its current spectrum holding, he said.

Amped Wireless announced a high-power plug-in Wi-Fi range extender said to boost Wi-Fi coverage by up to 10,000 feet, depending on operating environment. The REC33A ($159) is said to eliminate dead spots and improve Wi-Fi connections at speeds not previously achievable by a plug-in range extender. Powering the extender are a dozen amplifiers, an external high-gain dual antenna and a gigabit wired port to deliver speeds up to 450 Mbps in the 2.4GHz band and 1300 Mbps in the 5 GHz band, said the company.