Puerto Rico Telephone Co., also known as Claro, agreed to pay $650,000 to settle claims the company had failed over a multi-year period to meet requirements to offer hearing-aid compatible handsets. The FCC publicized the order Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1cO5JAW).

The next U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator will have a lot on his or her plate, stakeholders told us in interviews this week. The government’s first IPEC, Victoria Espinel, stepped down Friday (CD Aug 14 p8). Speculating this early in the process about who will replace her is “tremendously difficult,” said Casey Rae, interim executive director of the Future of Music Coalition. But whoever does will face an array of copyright and IP protection issues as early as this fall, several in the industry said.

A draft FCC NPRM on the UHF discount proposes grandfathering existing companies but applying a new nationwide ownership limit calculation to any deals pending between the rulemaking’s issuance and when an order is adopted, FCC officials told us Tuesday. Deals pending now with Tribune’s buying Local TV and Sinclair’s buying Allbritton’s TV stations could put those companies close to or over the 39 percent nationwide ownership cap on U.S. viewers reached by a broadcaster, said market research firm BIA/Kelsey. Tribune/Local TV would be at 42.7 percent, while Sinclair would be just under the cap at 38.2 percent, said BIA/Kelsey. If the rule is approved in the form proposed in the NPRM (CD Aug 6 p1), it could affect Tribune/Local TV and others coming down the pike, said SNL Kagan analyst Robin Flynn. “This sounds like changing the rules in midstream."

AT&T’s buy of Leap Wireless will be good for consumers and put into play spectrum Leap owns but can’t use, said the companies’ public interest statement on the transaction, posted by the FCC Tuesday in docket 13-193. The two also filed dozens of pages of supporting testimony on the deal from AT&T and Leap executives.

Major cities in California have seen a significant decrease in the number of wireless 911 calls with Phase II location information to public safety answering points (PSAP), CalNENA President Danita Crombach wrote the FCC (http://bit.ly/16fN2Dy). The Public Safety Network on the association’s behalf collected data from Bakersfield, Pasadena, San Francisco, San Joe and Ventura County to determine how often carriers managed to get Phase II location information, and they included this information in the report to the FCC (http://bit.ly/1eHfFIU). Phase I data includes only the location of the cell site with a phone number, but the geographic area can be huge, Crombach wrote Monday. In San Francisco, “as many as 80 percent of mobile calls are coming as Phase I only and the rest are Phase II,” said Lisa Hoffmann, San Francisco Department of Emergency Management deputy director, in an interview Tuesday.

A special committee looking at allegations of wrongdoing at FirstNet leveled by board member Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald put off until September the release of its first report. Meanwhile, NTIA said that funding has been cleared so that Broadband Technology Opportunities Program monies can flow to the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System. LA-RICS is one of the regional systems building a network in advance of FirstNet.

The FCC took the “first step” toward comprehensive overhaul of its full-time employee (FTE) fee system, said an order released Monday (http://bit.ly/16GB8PD). In a series of “interim measures,” the commission revised its calculation of the number of FTEs working on the regulation of interstate telecommunications service providers (ITSPs), and the number of direct FTEs in the International Bureau. Fees won’t go up more than 7.5 percent as a result of the agency’s FTE reallocations, it said. The agency is also changing how certain broadcast licensees that simulcast in analog and digital pay their regulatory fees. The agency declined to act on some big proposals, including combining the ITSP and wireless categories.

The White House followed up on President Barack Obama’s Friday press conference remarks on surveillance overhaul (CD Aug 12 p5) with executive action intended to promote transparency. Obama released a memorandum (http://1.usa.gov/15w5IZl) Monday for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, calling for the creation of what he called a Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, as he said he would Friday. “Recent years have brought unprecedented and rapid advancements in communications technologies, particularly with respect to global telecommunications,” Obama said. “These technological advances have brought with them both great opportunities and significant risks for our Intelligence Community: opportunity in the form of enhanced technical capabilities that can more precisely and readily identify threats to our security, and risks in the form of insider and cyber threats."

Industry interest is high in an NPRM on circulation that would end the UHF discount for broadcast ownership, but attempts to lobby the FCC on one side or the other haven’t yet begun, said agency and industry officials. Although the eighth floor has received many phone calls for information about the item, there hasn’t been any substantive advocacy, said an FCC official. If the discount is revoked, large broadcasters such as Sinclair could find themselves close to the 39 percent national ownership cap, and a pending purchase by Tribune of Local Broadcasting would leave the new company at 44 percent, public interest groups have said (CD July 2 p2). Large companies that could be affected by the deal are likely waiting for an NPRM to be issued with specific language, said a longtime industry official who lobbies the FCC. The status of existing broadcast operations and pending transactions is one of the questions asked in the NPRM (CD Aug 6 p1). Companies may be “keeping their powder dry” until they have something to respond to, said the lobbyist.

Acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn’s affirmation she might consider FCC involvement in the retransmission dispute between Time Warner Cable and CBS could add pressure to the parties to reach a resolution that would restore the broadcaster’s stations to the operator’s lineup, said some consumer advocates and broadcast attorneys in interviews Monday. Clyburn and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel expressed their concern for the affected customers after Friday’s FCC monthly meeting (CD Aug 12 p1). The statement from Clyburn counters the stance that previous chairmen have taken on the commission’s authority to act, said consumer groups that want retrans rules changed. NAB opposed further government involvement in the retrans consent process.