Mayors of five major California cities asked Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to veto small-cells legislation that seeks to promote 5G deployment by pre-empting local authority on wireless siting (see 1709150030). The letter was signed by the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Bakersfield, Oakland and San Jose. “This bill subsidizes the private sector with below-market rates for the usage of public assets paid for by city residents,” the mayors said. “Telecom carriers are estimated to make a 30-40 percent profit margin. Additionally, small cell deployment will lower costs by 12-57 percent for these carriers. The public should not further subsidize these businesses at the expense of fair compensation to the public.”

CBS and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers reached an early contract renewal agreement covering 3,500 technicians, the broadcaster said in a news release Wednesday. The IBEW represents CBS workers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami and Atlanta, the announcement said. The contract was ratified by the affected workforce and will be effective Feb. 1 and goes through April 30, 2021, it said. The current contract was scheduled to end Jan. 31 and the new deal includes pay increases, increased benefit contributions and “a path forward for new media,” said the company.

The FCC Disability Advisory Committee meets Oct. 16, said a public notice Tuesday. The meeting will include reports and recommendations on accelerating integration of real-time text by public safety answering points, the challenges of supporting compatibility of RTT with refreshable Braille displays, IP captioned telephone service quality metrics, and activities of the Video Programming Subcommittee, the PN said.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla, urged cable, phone and internet companies to provide rebates for service interruptions and a 60-day waiver from late fees for victims of Hurricane Irma. He made the request in a letter Thursday to the CEOs of AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Enterprises, Frontier Communications, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. “I’ve been heartened by the many stories of Floridians helping Floridians as I crisscross the state to survey the damage," wrote the Commerce Committee ranking member. "I ask that you follow their example and do all you can to ease the burden on those suffering from the storm.” Charter said its crews "are working around the clock to restore service" and sought to ease concerns. "We recognize the extraordinary impact Irma has had on the lives of many Floridians and are committed to working with customers to provide appropriate credits," it said. "Customers who have suffered damage to their homes will not be charged for any equipment damaged or lost during the storm, and we have also suspended collections in impacted areas." The FCC reported Thursday public safety answering points affected by Irma dropped from 29 to 21 in Florida and from five to one in Georgia, with two still affected in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The number of cellsites out of service was 1.2 percent in Alabama (up from 0.6 percent), 13.4 percent in Florida (down from 18 percent), 2.2 percent in Georgia (down from 5.3 percent), 6.3 percent in Puerto Rico (down from 10 percent) and 54 percent in the USVI (down from 55 percent). At least 8.26 million cable and wireline subscribers (up from 8.19 million) were without service in affected areas of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. There are 2,188 non-mobile switching centers out (up from 1,040) in those three states. One fewer TV station is off-air, at nine now, and radio stations "out of service" fell to 30 from 39. Florida's Public Service Commission Wednesday asked residents to "be patient" as "electric utilities work to restore power." SiriusXM "never dealt with two Category 4 hurricanes within a week, which has just been devastating for the country," so it's too early to gauge how “material” the impact to the company will be from Harvey and Irma, CEO Jim Meyer told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Wednesday. Harvey destroyed a “huge number” of cars in Texas, and “I suspect we're going to see the same thing in Florida” from Irma, “and so there will be a transition of the fleet,” he said.

Comcast and Dish Network losing subscribers is good for streaming services like CBS All Access, CBS CEO Les Moonves told investors Thursday. Cord-cutters end up migrating to streaming offerings like All Access, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker emailed investors earlier in the day. MVPD consolidation hasn’t “impacted” retransmission consent fees, Moonves told a Goldman Sachs conference. He believes Sinclair's buy of Tribune will be approved, and CBS will look at expansion opportunities in American Football Conference markets such as Houston and Cleveland. Moonves believes CBS’ TV business is “strong,” a spokesperson confirmed. CBS will renew its NFL rights in 2022, and Moonves expects Amazon and Google to bid on the digital rights, Ryvicker wrote.

ProSource will hold its 2018 Summit at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville March 3-6, said the buying group Wednesday. It scheduled its 2018 spring meeting at the La Cantera Resort & Spa, San Antonio, April 16-20.

FirstNet will mean first responders will be able to communicate even in disasters as big as Hurricane Irma, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Irma knocked out about 25 percent of AT&T cellsites in Florida, he said. “Virtually all of that is because of lack of power,” Stephenson said. “We can't get people in to fuel generators, because the roads are not open. So, think about a hardened network, where you don't have this kind of situation occur, even in the most significant disasters like we are seeing with Irma.” AT&T historically hasn't been a big player in public safety communications, he said: “We view this as a nice opportunity for us to take share in terms of the selling services into the municipalities to police forces, the fire stations, the fire departments, and [emergency medical services] around the country.” AT&T and FirstNet expect competition, but competitors must be “interoperable” at all levels with the new network and their devices must be able to use the FirstNet band, he said. Stephenson said 5G will mean faster connections, but latency is just as important. “We’ve got to get the latency out of the entire network,” he said. “Think about autonomous cars, where you have live maps and maps that are being updated in the cloud, you cannot have a centralized cloud infrastructure hundreds of miles away and have autonomous cars.”

Huawei joined the Z-Wave Alliance’s board, said the alliance Tuesday. It joins principal members ADT, Alarm.com, Fibaro, Ingersoll-Rand, Jasco Products, Leedarson, LG Uplus, Nortek Security & Control, SmartThings and Sigma Designs.

Concern that a few, large tech companies will dominate the market is leading some to want to "rewrite" antitrust enforcement considerations from a consumer protection focus to other various goals, which may disregard people's welfare, said acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen in remarks prepared for a Georgetown University antitrust symposium Tuesday. Regulators don't have a "crystal ball" to figure out how and where these new technologies should develop and be used, she said: "Second-guessing" the market without showing harm to consumers substitutes consumer preferences with regulatory ones. Ohlhausen said the idea that top tech companies could widen their market advantages in the future is "uncertain" since many understand they have a "tenuous" hold on their current position. She suggested regulators need more "empirical evidence" on how markets lose "their dynamism, innovation, and creativity" before trying to restructure them. Ohlhausen rebuffed arguments that technological advancements that disrupt current business models are considered "pernicious." She said enforcers should address behaviors that undermine the competitive process and governments should remove barriers to market entry and competition. Ohlhausen discussed "predatory pricing" and network effects, saying the current framework is "sufficiently flexible" to address such issues. "Antitrust enforcement should always turn on the specific facts of each individual case and the likelihood of actual consumer harm," she said: Regulators should bring cases where consumer interest is harmed and refine tools that show likely harm.

CTA’s new requirement for head shots to be printed on the front of CES badges (1709070060) will have a future LinkedIn show-networking component in addition to its immediate use as an enhanced CES security measure, said Karen Chupka, CTA senior vice president-events and conferences. In registering for CES, “one of the ways that you can upload your photo is through your LinkedIn profile,” said Chupka. “What we’re looking to do is also create an opportunity for networking, based on your LinkedIn network,” she said. CTA will try to build that into the CES show app “going forward,” she said. “This is stuff that we’re trying to build out, but the idea is that if your registration is now linked to your LinkedIn network, you would then have the ability to turn on or basically activate a switch within our app. If you walked into a conference session, and some of your connections from LinkedIn were in that room, it would pop that up as long as they gave consent that they could be seen in that way.” Chupka cautioned that “some of this is early.” She’s not sure “how much we’ll be able to activate some of that” for CES 2018, she said. “But those are some cooler features that we could start putting into place” at future shows by tying CES registrations into LinkedIn accounts, she said.