CEA and NCTA urged the FCC not to add some rules on user interface accessibility, filings in docket 12-107 show. With a Further NPRM having been issued on the subject, CEA said the agency should stick to the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act in that CVAA doesn't allow any restrictions on how closed captioning display settings are accessed. Requiring makers of consumer electronics to post online information about display accessibility "could be reasonable," but the FCC shouldn't start a labeling requirement for equipment makers, CEA said its in-house and outside lawyers told staffers in the Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Media bureaus. NCTA members have made "significant progress" on CVAA, association attorneys told staffers in those two bureaus. New rules on accessing enhanced captioning display and navigation features beyond turning them on and off could "contravene" Section 205, NCTA said. The agency should "maintain a flexible approach as to what is considered a compliant mechanism for activating closed captioning," NCTA said. "Any requirement to integrate specific data about public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access programming in program guides would impose significant burdens on the industry."
ReelzChannel supports Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable as well as AT&T/DirecTV, it said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-57. ReelzChannel said the deals would serve the public interest as well as reduce business uncertainty and support growth of diverse voices offered by independent networks. The independent network said for an indie to be successful, it must get distribution from Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network and TWC, at a minimum. ReelzChannel said Comcast hasn't changed its path for the network over the years, including that it would make meaningful investments in original programming.
The FCC must not draw the wrong lessons from the AWS-3 auction, but instead should see the recently concluded sale as pointing to the need for competitive safeguards in the TV incentive auction (see 1501300051), members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition told the agency Tuesday. “The two dominant wireless carriers with the deepest pockets -- AT&T and Verizon -- walked away with 20 megahertz of the paired AWS-3 spectrum in most major markets and left the rest of the industry with only a smattering of paired blocks and 15 megahertz of low-value, unpaired, uplink spectrum,” the coalition said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. It asked the FCC to set aside at least 40 MHz in every market for competitors to AT&T and Verizon in the incentive auction. Otherwise, the two big players could buy enough spectrum to keep others from getting much of anything in the auction, the group said. AT&T and Verizon own 75 percent of the “uniquely valuable” low-band spectrum, they said. The incentive auction “provides what may be the FCC’s final opportunity to prevent the two dominant carriers from monopolizing the low-band spectrum needed to compete in a broadband data world,” the coalition said. “It is difficult to see how the non-dominant carriers can effectively compete in a 4G marketplace without sufficient access to low-band spectrum that enables in-building penetration and economic wide-area coverage.” The coalition also said the AWS-3 auction points to the need for the FCC to make more spectrum available for licensed and unlicensed use and to base auction rules on consumer benefits, not revenue for the government. The $41.3 billion that carriers and others will have to pay to get the AWS-3 spectrum on which they bid will harm consumers twice over, the coalition said. “Revenues from the AWS-3 auction ultimately get passed along as higher prices to wireless broadband consumers,” the group said. “It also sucks investment capital out of the highly productive telecom sector.” The Benton Foundation, the Center for Media Justice, Common Cause, Engine, the Institute for Local Self Reliance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Open Technology Institute at New America, Public Knowledge and Writers Guild of America, West signed the letter. A wireless industry official noted in response that T-Mobile was outbid in markets it was pursuing far more often by Dish Network than by AT&T and Verizon. Dish beat T-Mobile 132 times, AT&T 26 times and Verizon 16 times, the official said. "As we have seen in countless spectrum auctions in the U.S. and around the world, it is virtually impossible to predict auction outcomes or to try to engineer them," Mobile Future said in a written statement. "The commission must resist any efforts to expand restrictions on auction participation that would negatively impact continuing mobile innovation and the hundreds of millions of U.S. wireless consumers using exponentially more mobile bandwidth each year."
Getting the incentive auction structured correctly is more important than holding the auction as soon as possible, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said at an NAB State Leadership Conference Tuesday. Resolving questions about dynamic reserve pricing, interference, opening bid prices and repacking is “critical to any potential participation by broadcasters,” he said, according to prepared remarks. Eliminating reserved spectrum and limiting impaired markets will improve the forward auction and “ensure that we maximize revenues to compensate interested broadcasters,” he said. The commission should update the contest rule to let broadcasters post contest rules on a website, which makes rules more available in an Internet age, he said. Broadcasters have sought such changes (see 1502200035). Broadcasters also should be able to use the Internet to recruit more minority and female applicants, to comply with the commission’s equal employment opportunity rules, he said. Companies are forced to “duplicate their recruiting efforts using old-school methods like newspaper ads” because of 2001 estimates of Internet availability, he said. The commission should update its EEO rule to allow online dissemination of job vacancy information “combined with aggressive notification to candidate referral organizations,” he said. O'Rielly made a similar point in a blog last week (see 1502200054). The commission should adhere to updating media ownership rules every four years -- they haven’t been reviewed since 2006, he said. The commission repeals or modifies rules “no longer in the public interest due to increased competition,” he said. The 2010 quadrennial review wasn’t completed when the 2014 review started, he said. The industry is “saddled” with restrictions, including the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule, he said. O'Rielly encouraged commissioners to address consequential matters, not FCC staff. Documents should be posted in a transparent manner so the public is aware what issues are up for a vote, he said. He urged the commission to make all FCC items to be considered at open meetings public. Texts are circulated internally three weeks before meetings but “the public is left out of the loop,” he said. Some items are released by bureaus without notifying commissioners, he said. “Far from being a rare or isolated circumstance, commissioners must ‘vote on it before you can see what’s in it’ every single month.”
The FTC is cracking down on marketers who deceptively claim an app can detect symptoms of melanoma, even in the cancer’s earliest stages, the agency said Monday in a release announcing the settlement of two separate lawsuits with the marketer of MelApp, Health Discovery, and a marketer of Mole Detective, Kristi Kimball and her company, New Consumer Solutions. Under the settlement, neither marketer can continue to make such unsupported claims, the agency said. Health Discovery was fined $17,963, Kimball and her company $3,930, the agency said. Two additional marketers of Mole Detective didn't agree to settle and the agency said it will continue to pursue charges against U.K.-based Avrom Lasarow and his company, L Health, which began marketing the Mole Detective app in August 2012. “Truth in advertising laws apply in the mobile marketplace,” said Director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Jessica Rich. “App developers and marketers must have scientific evidence to support any health or disease claims that they make for their apps.” The FTC voted 4-1 in favor of filing a complaint against the Mole Detective defendants in district court, approving the final judgment with Kimball and New Consumer Solutions and issuing the administrative complaint and accepting the proposed consent order against Discovery Health. Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, dissented on all three votes. Public comments on the consent agreements will be accepted until March 25. Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Democratic Commissioners Julie Brill and Terrell McSweeny issued a separate statement supporting the agency’s actions, while Ohlhausen issued a separate dissenting statement. Health Discovery, Kimball and Lasarow didn't comment.
The FCC and the Food and Drug Administration plan a March 31 workshop on wireless medical test beds, said a Friday commission notice. A test bed allows testing of devices across a range of interference scenarios, the FCC said. “As the rapid pace of innovation blurs traditional boundaries between consumer health technology, medical devices, and communications, the agencies seek to better understand how wireless test beds can be used and configured to meet the challenges and to take advantage of the opportunities this convergence presents.” The workshop starts at 9 a.m. at FCC headquarters.
The FCC should begin reporting Measuring Broadband America performance results for AT&T’s IP-based U-verse broadband subscribers separately from those of the company’s legacy ATMbroadband subscribers, the telco told officials from the agency and SamKnows, said an ex parte letter posted Friday in docket 12-264. AT&T has invested “significantly” in migrating ATM-based Internet customers to “more robust” IP-based U-verse technology, the company said. SamKnows is the FCC contractor on the project to measure wireline and wireless broadband speeds.
Accessibility rules for user interfaces on digital devices used to view video programming that required additional approval from the Office of Management and Budget took effect Jan 26, the FCC Media Bureau said in a public notice Thursday. The rules involved have to do with information collection connected with the rules, the PN said. The remaining rules in the user interfaces order took effect Jan. 21.
The FCC extended the deadlines for paper and electronic files that were due Feb. 17 to Feb. 18, due to the commission's closing Feb. 17 for inclement weather, it said in a public notice Thursday. Feb. 17 doesn't count for computing filing periods of fewer than seven days because the commission counted that day as a holiday, it said.
The Media Bureau released a redacted transcript of a Jan. 30 workshop of economists held at the FCC to discuss Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable. The portions redacted from the transcript include any references to highly confidential information and confidential information, said an ex parte filing from Bureau Chief Bill Lake. Those with access to confidential information in the proceeding can obtain access through the Office of General Counsel, the letter said. The workshop participants included FCC transaction review team economist Shane Greenstein and discussion topics included program access, interconnection and online video, the transcript said.