“The vast majority" of VoIP customers of Cablevision and Charter Communications don't buy batteries to back up the service when the power goes out, executives of the cable operators told FCC Public Safety Bureau officials, Charter said in an FCC filing. "Charter and Cablevision make significant efforts to educate their customers about the VoIP services they offer, including that such service will not work during a power outage without a backup battery." The filing was posted Tuesday in dockets including 14-174, which was related to an NPRM asking about "steps the Commission could take to safeguard continuity of communications throughout a power outage, including the possible adoption of new rules."
Katherine Race Brin was named FTC chief privacy officer, succeeding Peter Miller, Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said Wednesday. Brin's job will be "to ensure that the FTC complies with our privacy obligations,” Ramirez said. The CPO “coordinates efforts to implement and review the agency’s policies and procedures for safeguarding all sensitive information, and chairs its Privacy Steering Committee and the Breach Notification Response Team,” the agency said in a news release. Before becoming acting CPO, Brin was senior adviser to the director of the Consumer Protection Bureau, where she worked on legislative and policy matters involving privacy, security and technology, the FTC said. From 2007 to 2014, Brin was a staff attorney in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection and “played a key role in many of the FTC’s most significant privacy and data security cases,” the agency said.
LightSquared hasn't pursued any "significant site development activity" related to a two-way terrestrial mobile service in recent months, it told the FCC in a commission-required update dated April 30 and posted in docket 08-184 Monday. It said the development pause is because of the agency's 2012 public notice recommending a waiver to the company be vacated and LightSquared's ancillary terrestrial component authority be put on hold. "LightSquared has focused its efforts on resolving the underlying spectrum and deployment issues identified by the Commission," it said, noting that in September 2012, it proposed ways to deploy terrestrial broadband service to ensure operations are compatible with GPS receivers. The company said Qualcomm has integrated L-band LTE technology in its chipset road map and "developed an advanced satellite air interface technology" for satellite mode operation of mobile devices. LightSquared last month sought FCC OK of foreign ownership, as it's exiting bankruptcy (see 1504160047).
Netflix pressed concerns to the FCC about AT&T's planned buy of DirecTV and the deal's potential market fallout. The combined company would have "increased incentive and ability to harm online video distributors (OVDs) and other edge-based Internet content" that it sees as competitive threats to its broadband and video services, Netflix said in a Monday ex parte filing about a meeting Thursday. Netflix said the FCC should reject the deal "as currently proposed," without making recommendations for conditions. Many believe the deal is likely to be approved by the FCC and the Department of Justice (see 1504270065), and AT&T said it expects the transaction to be completed this quarter (see 1504220069). With the abandonment of Comcast/Time Warner Cable, Netflix said AT&T would become the largest multichannel video programming distributor and, after making further investments, the largest ISP. "These two dynamics create a powerful incentive for AT&T to protect its investment in DirecTV's bundled programming by using its ability to harm OVDs to prevent or delay cord-cutting and cord-shaving," Netflix said. Netflix said AT&T has shown it can damage OVDs by "leveraging its control over interconnection to degrade its own customers' access to Netflix's service." AT&T also seems interested in using data caps and usage-based pricing methods, which it could apply "discriminatorily" to favor its own services, Netflix said. If AT&T can exploit interconnection or data caps to slow OVD development and the shift away from traditional video/broadband bundles, it could preserve its market advantage, Netflix said. Netflix disputed AT&T's April 21 filing that said the telco lacks incentives to harm competitors. AT&T's planned $48 billion purchase of a DirecTV satellite-TV business that profits by selling programming bundles "will result in a powerful incentive to protect that model from a shift by consumers toward on-demand, over-the-top content," Netflix said. AT&T declined to comment. Its April 21 filing blamed network congestion on Netflix and its backbone provider Cogent, not on AT&T capacity limits. "Netflix insisted on funneling its traffic to AT&T through only a handful of peers, including Cogent, because, as Netflix has stated, these few providers offered the best bids in terms of price and service," AT&T said. "As one network analyst has explained, 'Netflix chose to create, and use paths that [it] knew were congested, simply because they were cheaper than using paths that were less congested.' This strategy apparently overwhelmed Netflix’s chosen low price providers, causing congestion and impacting service quality for its customers." The American Cable Association and the Writers Guild of America, West also expressed various concerns about, and recommended conditions for, AT&T/DirecTV (here and here).
FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly assured the WTA spring meeting Tuesday that he will make finishing “the remaining pieces” of USF reform, especially those related to the Connect America Fund for rate-of-return carriers, a top priority. “Everything else that the Commission may want to do with universal service -- make service more affordable for low-income consumers, wire schools and libraries, and connect rural health care facilities -- depends on having … infrastructure in place,” O’Rielly said in written remarks. “I have been dismayed by the haphazard approach that the Commission has taken to USF reforms, ratcheting up spending and expected broadband speeds while leaving millions of Americans unserved.” The FCC’s two E-rate orders expanded the program but offered little actual reform, O’Rielly said. The first order “just tacked on new spending for Wi-Fi within facilities regardless of whether they need the additional capacity or have adequate bandwidth to the building,” he said: The second “made it easier for entities to build their own fiber networks with no meaningful checks or limits to ensure that the funding will be targeted to truly unserved areas or used cost-effectively.” The FCC increased the E-rate cap by another $1.5 billion per year, he said. “At the time, there were assurances that we would not actually reach the new cap for several years,” he said. “But the window just closed, and I suspect that we may be very close to if not already at the new cap.” WTA members are already paying a price for so-called USF reform, he charged. “Without proper notice, the Commission decided that you will have to bid to provide service at rates to be determined at a later date as part of your Connect America Fund obligations,” he said. “Because that task was delegated to the [Wireline] Bureau, I won’t even get a chance to weigh in on their decisions.”
Public Knowledge and other consumer advocates filed in opposition to an April 27 request by Daniel Berninger, founder of the Voice Communications Exchange Committee, that the FCC stay its order imposing net neutrality rules and reclassifying broadband Internet access as a Title II telecom service under the Communications Act. A stay of the order would deny consumers open Internet guarantees and cause uncertainty for consumers and companies, the groups said. Berninger failed to show that his petition met any of the four factors considered in stay requests: likelihood of succeeding on the merits, suffering irreparable harm, harm to other parties, and public-interest considerations. “Mr. Berninger argues that protecting consumer access to the Open Internet should wait while telephone and cable companies fight these protections in the courts," said Harold Feld, Public Knowledge senior vice president, in a release that has a link to the opposition filing. "Mr. Berninger thinks it would be better for himself and his business if broadband companies could prioritize his services over those of rivals, and claims to suffer irreparable harm from his inability to negotiate such business arrangements. ... It might benefit Mr. Berninger and a few privileged others for telephone and cable companies to pick winners and losers on the Internet. But a universe that allows AT&T or Comcast to pick Berninger as the winner is a world where all the rest of us lose.” AT&T, CenturyLink, CTIA, USTelecom and the Wireless ISP Association filed Friday for a partial stay (see 1505010059). The American Cable Association and the NCTA also filed for a stay of the order pending judicial review. Telecom industry officials have said they doubt the FCC will stay its order, though the petitioners can also seek a court stay.
The Competitive Carriers Association and TracFone filed joint comments with the U.S. Copyright Office asking the agency to recommend that the Librarian of Congress ensure consumers can legally unlock their wireless devices. “The Parties’ proposed exemption is pro-consumer by properly enabling users to take control over the use of their wireless handsets, and permitting them the choice of which network they will be connected to, while assuaging TracFone’s concerns regarding loopholes that would potentially prevent carriers from offering subsidies or other discounts that make wireless handsets affordable and accessible to American consumers,” the filing said. “Consumers wanting to unlock their devices legally should be allowed to do so, and I strongly encourage the Librarian of Congress to adopt CCA’s proposed unlocking exemption and create presumptions that will give consumers certainty about their ongoing ability to legally unlock their devices,” said CCA President Steve Berry in a news release. “Unlocking is not only beneficial for consumers, but it is also important for smaller and regional carriers who may have trouble accessing the newest, most iconic devices.”
The FCC OK'd Pandora's request for a declaratory ruling, letting it be up to 49.99 percent foreign owned. The company had also sought to buy KXMZ(FM), Box Elder, South Dakota, from Connoisseur Media, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sought to block that deal and opposed Pandora's petition. "We take no action at this time on the Assignment Application and related pleadings," said an order Monday approved by commissioners, with Commissioner Ajit Pai concurring. He called parts of the process "absurd," and noted that Pandora's request to buy KXMZ has been pending for two years. Pandora's "difficulties" to "prove that foreign entities do not beneficially own or vote more than 25 percent of its shares" are "far from unique," wrote Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. Connoisseur and Pandora lobbied the FCC last week to OK the deal (see 1505040031). Buying KXMZ would qualify Pandora for the same Radio Music License Committee license "under the same terms as our competitors," noted Dave Grimaldi, the company's director of public affairs. "This move makes sense to us beyond the licensing parity alone. Pandora excels in personalizing music discovery, and terrestrial radio is experienced in integrating with a local community." ASCAP had no immediate comment.
Wireless broadband in the U.S. is the best in the world, but the nation still lags in offering wired connections at blazing speeds, Gigi Sohn, counsel to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said in a speech Monday to the “Moving Forward Toward a Gigabit State” conference in New Haven, Connecticut. International rankings “consistently score the U.S. outside the top 10 in broadband speeds” and “Americans aren’t content with being outside the top 10 in anything that matters,” she said in prepared remarks posted by the FCC. According to Akamai, the average fixed broadband connection in America is about 12 Mbps, Sohn said. “That’s fine if you live alone, and all you’re doing online is minimal browsing each night while streaming a movie on Netflix. But broadband can enable so much more.” The FCC wants to see speeds of 50 Mbps, then 100 Mbps and “and eventually even 1 Gigabit per second,” she said. “When you achieve those speeds … you remove bandwidth as a constraint on innovation.” About 10 million Americans can’t get broadband at any speed, Sohn said. “The costs of digital exclusion are staggering,” she said. “I hear anecdotal evidence all the time about how young people in towns that are offline feel compelled to move elsewhere for fear that there’s no future for them in a town without broadband.” Sohn said projects like Connecticut’s CT Gig Project are critical, especially in areas where commercial operators aren’t stepping up. “When commercial providers don’t step up to serve a community’s needs, we should embrace the great American tradition of citizens stepping up to take action collectively,” she said. “Across America, communities have concluded that existing private sector broadband offerings are not meeting their needs and the only solution is to become directly involved in broadband deployment.”
The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment on a December petition by the Alaska Wireless Network for a one-year waiver of FCC rules requiring that all covered providers be able to transmit emergency texts to public safety answering points (PSAPs) by the end of last year. Comments are due May 14, replies May 19. AWN claims that it faces “unique financial and technical constraints in meeting the text-capable requirement by the deadline, and that technical issues associated with its deployment of an LTE network currently render it unable to route 911 texts to the appropriate PSAP,” the bureau said Monday. The small carrier also said no Alaska PSAP has requested text-to-911 service and “contends that enforcement of the requirement in this instance would be inequitable and unduly burdensome," the bureau said.