Two women are fighting for presidency of the Alabama Public Service Commission, but telecom isn’t playing a big role in the campaigns and coverage -- reflective of the state’s changes in PSC oversight, a candidate said, and similar to other state commission campaigns this year. Telecommunications is “all but deregulated” in Alabama and the commission handles “very few” such issues, Republican Commissioner Twinkle Cavanaugh told us. She’s running statewide against PSC President Lucy Baxley, the only Democrat to hold statewide office. The PSC telecom division has dropped from 30 employees in 2005, before deregulation, to 14 now and will be 12 by January, Cavanaugh said. “That’s been our goal -- to trim that division down.” Telecom “has not been an issue in the campaign cycle at all,” she said, describing similar low interest in such issues during her PSC runs in 2008 and 2010.

RICHMOND, Va. -- Judges asked whether court orders issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) should be made public, during oral argument at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on U.S. v. Jacob Appelbaum et al. Should ECPA -- a law designed to protect privacy -- be used to justify publicizing information about individuals’ online communications, asked Judge Samuel Wilson. Because the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are arguing that the public should have access to the court orders, not just the subjects of the investigation, it’s possible they're trying to use ECPA in a way that narrows privacy protections, he said. If that’s the result of the argument presented by the ACLU and EFF, he said “then they might as well not have called this a privacy act.” The threat to privacy is serious, he said, because there are often “very, very private things” in these documents, which can be “embarrassing [and] humiliating” to the people involved.

The telecom industry needs a forward-looking regulatory framework that incentivizes investment and puts telecom providers on an equal footing, professors and former government officials said Friday on a webinar sponsored by the Digital Policy Institute at Ball State University. Panelists questioned recent FCC actions that they said are ungrounded in existing law, and what they see as regulatory uncertainty they say discourages investment.

LAS VEGAS -- Three telcos are embracing over-the-top video and/or TV apps to lure new subscribers and keep existing video customers from cutting the subscription cord. In three separate keynotes at the TelcoTV show last week, executives of AT&T, Verizon and Windstream spelled out their strategies to use streaming video services and on-screen apps to sustain their video subscription growth. They stressed the need to offer consumers more customized, easy-to-use services to keep them glued to the home TV set and satisfied. “Driving the customer engagement is what this is all about,” said Maria Dillard, AT&T vice president of U-verse and video products.

Comcast’s cable business lost fewer video subscribers during Q3 than stock analysts expected. The company, in a quarterly report Friday, cited a net loss of 117,000 video subscribers, and net gains of 287,000 broadband subscribers and 123,000 phone customers. Comcast executives attributed the better-than-expected video results to its strategy rather than any macroeconomic trends. “I think we've got a really nice balance between rate and volume,” said Neil Smit, president of Comcast’s cable division, during a teleconference Friday. The company raised video rates, but only slightly, while adding new services and beginning to deploy its cloud-based set-top box, the X1. Already in four markets, the X1 will be introduced in two new “major markets” within weeks, Smit said.

Three state commissioners from largely rural states questioned whether the U.S. can ever provide universal access to broadband service. It’s like the notion of energy independence, Idaho Public Utilities Commissioner Paul Kjellander said Thursday during a National Regulatory Research Institute panel on state USF funds (http://xrl.us/bnv2ow). “But we're never going to get it,” he said. “It’s too expensive. ... Some divides just can’t be bridged.”

The imminent FCC special access data request (CD Oct 23 p3) is neither imminent nor a request. The order that’s been circulating on the eighth floor doesn’t explicitly ask telecom providers for data on the state of competition in the special access marketplace, FCC officials told us Thursday. Rather, they said it gives delegated authority to the Wireline Bureau staff, providing guidance on what the data collection should say. It’s up to the bureau to actually pose the data questions, commission officials said. A bureau spokesman declined comment.

Sprint Nextel remains committed to its unlimited data plans, despite Verizon Wireless’s and AT&T’s claims that they benefitted from the rollout of their plans during Q3, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said Thursday during an investor conference call. “There are some temporary advantages that Verizon has due to its network, but we do not see making any changes to our rate plans,” Hesse said. “We're seeing absolutely nothing in any of our channels that indicates that the new rate plans that Verizon has is either helping or hurting -- to their credit, I don’t think it’s hurting them. Because of their LTE footprint advantage right now, they're … blasting right through, what we believe, are complex rate plans.” However, the carrier did announce new tiered-data plans for tablets Wednesday. The plans start at $14.99 for 300 MB and go up to $79.99 for 12GB, Sprint Nextel said. The carrier has long marketed its “Simply Unlimited” data plans, which began to see competition during the quarter from competing unlimited data plans from T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS (CD Aug 23 p5).

NAB has major concerns about proposals in an FCC notice of proposed rulemaking on an incentive auction of broadcast spectrum, which include a “forced” relocation of broadcast TV channels when stations remain on the air, NAB Executive Vice President Jane Mago said late Wednesday at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference. Mago also questioned how many broadcasters will ultimately opt to take part in the auction.

Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., reaffirmed during a speech Thursday at a Media Institute event his support to stem the tide of online piracy of intellectual property. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman told us that unfavorable results for his party in the presidential and congressional elections could imperil his efforts to update laws like the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Leahy’s speech touted the Internet as a medium that has both enhanced and transformed the First Amendment right to free speech, but said the Web must be balanced with another constitutional right, the protection of intellectual property.