A consistent user experience, retransmission rights and a monetization model are hurdles standing in the way of broad deployment of TV Everywhere, said panelists at the TV of Tomorrow Conference in New York. Untethering the TV from the TV viewing experience to give consumers what they want to watch, when they want to watch it and where they happen to be “has to work for everybody involved,” said Matt Strauss, Comcast general manager-video services. Rights, monetization and audience measurement “all have to be in place for effective execution,” and those pieces are starting to come together, Strauss said. There’s a critical mass of available programming and devices necessary for it to work, he said.

Rural ILECs urged the Pennsylvania House Consumer Affairs Committee to eliminate carrier-of-last-resort (COLR) obligations and revise the state Universal Service Fund, at a hearing Thursday. CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream were among the companies whose executives testified on House Bill 1608 at the hearing, sponsored by Rep. Warren Kampf (R). The committee also heard testimony from AT&T, AARP and the 60 Plus Association. This hearing was the continuation of one last month (CD Nov 22 p14) where Verizon, two Pennsylvania public utility commissioners and the state’s consumer advocate testified.

TiVo will upgrade its Premiere DVRs to its Roamio software in February, moving to a standardized platform across all hardware, Mark Risis, vice president-interactive advertising, told us at the Television of Tomorrow (TVOT) conference in New York.

Copyright stakeholders disagreed over statutory damages for digital copyright infringement and the validity of secondary markets concerning the first-sale doctrine for digital goods, at a Commerce Department public meeting Tuesday. Some said statutory damages are exorbitant and discourage innovation online, while others see damages as a necessary tool for copyright holders. Another panel debated the merits of secondary markets for used online goods. Some said online secondary markets are no different from used-book stores and that consumers have a right to sell digital goods they legally purchase. Publishing rights holders see online secondary markets as a potential threat to their industry, especially if their artists aren’t compensated in the process. The meeting was to discuss stakeholder responses to the Commerce Department’s copyright green paper, released earlier this year (CD Nov 29 p11).

"Do Not Track” does not mean turning off all tracking, but tracking “across multiple distinct contexts,” according to the final definition of “tracking” that the World Wide Web Consortium-backed DNT working group revealed Wednesday. The group’s chairs also released the definition for “party,” opting for a definition that differentiated between “first party” and “third party,” instead of one based on the concept of a whether a “contract” existed between entities for data collection.

Intelligence officials may be receptive to new alternative proposals to current surveillance practices if industry or other stakeholders bring them to the table, officials told Congress Wednesday. They outlined certain concerns with more aggressive pieces of legislation that would end major surveillance practices, but appeared receptive to implementing some updates. Eight major tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, outlined their own surveillance principles earlier this week, prompting the discussion.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s staff was negotiating with the wireless industry Wednesday over a possible deal to allow cellphone unlocking, but they hadn’t agreed on acceptable terms as of the afternoon, said agency and industry officials in interviews. Wheeler was hoping to reach agreement in time to disclose it at the FCC’s monthly meeting Thursday, a commission official said. The meeting was already set to include a presentation from staff about efforts to promote cellphone unlocking. An FCC spokesman declined to comment, referring us to Wheeler’s earlier statements on the issue. Wheeler has been pushing wireless carriers to voluntarily allow unlocking through the CTIA Consumer Code -- something that industry observers have seen as being likely to take place in the face of possible government regulation (CD Nov 18 p1).

An FCC Media Bureau letter pointing out problems with some sharing arrangements involved in Sinclair’s deal to buy Allbritton probably doesn’t represent a policy shift in the commission’s stance on mergers and acquisitions, said industry attorneys and an analyst in interviews. But public interest officials said questions about Sinclair’s financial arrangements that were raised in the letter (CD Dec 9 p5) --after they were pointed out by Free Press and others -- might point to a stricter stance on ownership rules. “Asking about financial relationships is significant,” said public interest attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who consults for Free Press. The FCC’s stance though could be “deal-specific,” he said.

The Telecom Act preempts some local land use regulations, but a California city’s decision to require voter approval on construction projects that cost more than $100,000 -- affecting T-Mobile’s request to build an antenna in a city-owned park -- was not a typical land use regulation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/18mi7Yc). The decision follows a similar ruling in another appeals court regarding Sprint, the court said.

A draft rulemaking aimed at lifting the ban on cellphone calls on in-flight airplanes focuses on licensing airlines to use the spectrum, FCC officials said in interviews. Rules that prohibit certain uses on planes will be modified and the NPRM will put new rules into effect, an official said. Some rules would need to be in place for safety reasons, the official said. The NPRM is set for a vote at the FCC monthly meeting Thursday (CD Nov 27 p1).