Jimm Phillips

Progress toward combining T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS remains very positive, executives from both carriers said Tuesday during a presentation at a Citigroup investor conference. T-Mobile CEO John Legere said he believes the entire process is progressing ahead of schedule and that he’s “anxious that we will become the new company relatively soon."

Verizon Wireless and AT&T say they had a record-breaking Q4, with both releasing some information on their performance ahead of official quarterly earnings announcements set for later this month. Verizon Communications, which owns a majority of Verizon Wireless, will release its full Q4 earnings Jan. 22; AT&T plans to release its full results Jan. 24.

The U.S. decision not to sign the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) means controversial changes to the treaty-level document will have no effect on U.S. law or the telecom sector’s work within the U.S. -- but the treaty’s effect on U.S. businesses’ dealings internationally remain far less clear, industry experts and insiders say. The U.S. was among 55 ITU member nations to not immediately sign onto the revised ITRs last month after they were adopted at the conclusion of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. Another 89 nations signed the treaty (CD Dec 17 p1). Non-signatory nations will continue to follow the original ITRs enacted in 1988, Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to WCIT, told us. The original ITRs are “antiquated, but they're very high level, they don’t get into any Internet issues,” he said. The revised ITRs will take effect Jan. 1, 2015.

The results of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) show the West must find ways to enable developing-world participation in the current multistakeholder Internet governance model, said Philip Verveer, U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy and a member of the U.S. WCIT delegation, at an Internet Governance Forum event Friday.

The revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that emerged last week from the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) may have contained “poison pills” on the Internet and other controversial issues, but that does not mean the U.S. should stop advocating for its vision on such issues, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation, Wednesday during an Internet Society event. “There’s a bigger discussion here about the benefits of the Internet that will carry the day I believe fundamentally,” he said in his first public comments since WCIT concluded Friday. “It is a long game that has to be played. We need to see the commercial benefits, the human benefits, et cetera."

Sprint Nextel’s successful bid to buy full ownership of Clearwire is unlikely to face a tough time winning regulatory approval, industry legal experts told us. Sprint, which already owned 51 percent of Clearwire, said Monday that Clearwire’s other shareholders had unanimously agreed to sell Sprint their 49 percent stake for $2.2 billion. That deal represented an improvement from the $2.1 billion Sprint offered last week (CD Dec 14 p15).

Most of the eligible delegations at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) signed on to the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) Friday in Dubai during a ceremony to close out the conference, but a significant number of nations outright refused to endorse the controversial treaty or were still consulting with their national governments. Of the 144 nations with signing rights in the ITU, 89 signed onto the ITRs Friday. An additional 55 “may sign later,” the ITU said, but that figure includes the U.S., Australia, Canada, the U.K. and others that have outright committed to not sign the document (http://xrl.us/bn6iov). The figure also includes the nations consulting with their governments, including the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy and Poland. The EU condemned the attachment of a non-binding Internet governance resolution to the ITRs (see separate item in this issue). That resolution was one of several provisions included in the revised ITRs that prompted the U.S. decision not to sign (CD Dec 14 p1).

The U.S. will not sign on to the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) adopted at Thursday’s session of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said U.S. delegation head Terry Kramer Thursday. Delegations from Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark and the United Kingdom also immediately said their nations would not sign the treaty-level document. Delegations from Costa Rica, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Sweden and Poland also expressed concerns about the revised ITRs, but wanted to consult with their national governments before deciding whether to sign. Egypt’s delegation also said it was concerned about the revised ITRs, but its position on signing the document was not immediately clear from its statement following the document’s adoption. Nations that already support the amended ITRs are expected to sign the treaty Friday in Dubai. The amended treaty will take effect Jan. 1, 2015.

It’s time for government agencies to “think very seriously” about patent assertion entities’ (PAEs) activities and how they impact society, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said Monday during a joint FTC/Department of Justice workshop. The agencies held the workshop as part of an ongoing effort to determine the effect of PAEs and determine whether the government needs to employ new methods to minimize what they see as harm caused by PAEs. High-quality intellectual property rights are crucial to U.S. innovation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) chief economist said. PAE-generated lawsuits are eating up a growing chunk of some technology companies’ legal budgets, several high-tech executives said, as a PAE executive said the model helps some patent developers get paid.

A United Arab Emirates-led proposal for a “new” version of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) threw a further wrench into talks Friday at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, even as debate over existing proposals had led to little progress. The UAE said during a plenary meeting that its proposal was borne out of its own frustrations over the lack of progress at the conference toward revising the existing ITRs, which have not been revised since 1988. WCIT began Dec. 3 and runs through this Friday. Discussions during the conference have thus far remained stuck on whether to change the scope of the treaty-level document from applying only to “recognized” operating agencies to applying to all operating agencies. The U.S. opposes any change in scope because it would make the ITRs apply to Internet providers, which would in turn allow the ITRs to stray into Internet governance issues (CD Dec 7 p18).