DirecTV shareholders voted to approve AT&T’s proposed buy of DirecTV. More than 99 percent of votes cast were in favor of the deal at the DirecTV shareholder meeting Thursday, DirecTV said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1BcL7Kv). AT&T will work with the various regulatory agencies reviewing the deal to gain their approval as well, an AT&T spokesman said in a statement.
The House Commerce Committee received 50 responses to its white paper on USF policy, the committee revealed Thursday, posting all comments online (http://1.usa.gov/1lBg6gN). It had issued the white paper in August as part of the Communications Subcommittee initiative to overhaul the Communications Act, and responses were due Sept. 19. It was the fifth white paper on aspects of the overhaul issued this year. Respondents include major companies such as AT&T and Verizon as well as state groups like NARUC and NASUCA and the tech company Microsoft, which has responded to every white paper so far. Other commenters include the Nebraska Public Service Commission, the Oregon Telecom Association and the Telecommunications Association of Maine. “We urge Congress to encourage the FCC to create an inclusive environment where all eligible providers have an opportunity to compete for support with the goal of closing the gap between broadband available in urban and rural areas,” the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association told House lawmakers. Microsoft lauded the shift in focusing USF on broadband and encouraged Congress to “continue to afford the FCC with authority and flexibility to reform the mechanism for contributing to the universal service fund, as needed.” The Alaska Communications System noted that “contrary to the prevailing view in Washington,” it “has never considered the USF system as ‘broken,'” but said it’s “vital to include safeguards that ensure that available funding is used efficiently.”
The “primary,” and for most end users, the “sole function” of broadband is precisely how telecom service is defined in the Communications Act -- “’the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received,'” said a NASUCA net neutrality reply (http://bit.ly/1n1jdjK) posted Thursday in docket 14-28. Therefore, net neutrality rules should be based on Title II authority, the organization said in the Sept. 15 reply.
The number of consumers using tablets to watch TV shows and movies has skyrocketed, a survey by Altman Vilandrie & Co. found. Tablet ownership penetration increased to 50 percent last year, up from 40 percent in 2012, said the consulting firm Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1v4tL2l). The portion of all consumers watching TV shows or movies on tablets on a weekly basis jumped from 17 percent to 26 percent last year, it said. More than 40 percent of consumers under age 35 use smartphones to watch TV or movies, it said. More than 70 percent of the consumers binge watch at least once a month, and 41 percent use their cable providers’ TV Everywhere service each month, it said. The survey also found that over-the-top use increased from 26 percent last year to 35 percent in 2014. The survey received input from more than 3,000 U.S. respondents. It was drawn from an online panel by Research Now, Altman Vilandrie said.
Disney re-launched its Watch ABC services with enhanced social sharing features for a more personalized experience. The new features include “FastShare,” “Social Lens” and “Multi-Cam,” Disney said Thursday in a news release. FastShare allows viewers to access and share clips of “in-show moments, all while staying within the viewing experience in the app,” it said. Social Lens integrates users’ Facebook and Twitter profiles in the Watch ABC app, and Multi-Cam offers exclusive access to backstage cameras during live events, Disney said.
Opportunity in the smart home market is being challenged by a host of factors including pace of new product introductions, lack of interoperability, increasing product complexity and business objectives that “aren’t aligned,” said Tom Kerber, analyst at Parks Associates, during a webcast. Kerber said there’s swelling interest in the category as participants on the manufacturer, service provider and retailer sides all look for ways to profit from the nascent, but growing, category. As the number of smart home devices grows “exponentially,” companies in the market are challenged to “scale to keep pace” with the number and breadth of smart devices available, Kerber said. Consumers increasingly want those products to be interoperable, but most aren’t because interoperability “is rather difficult to accomplish,” he said. Another hurdle to smart device interoperability is the “growing number” of home network standards, Kerber said. “It seems like every month there are announcements of new groups that are working together to expand interoperability,” he said, citing Open Interconnect Consortium, Thread Group and ULE on the home network side and Allseen, DLNA and UPnP on the peer-to-peer side. Interoperability also is occurring in the cloud where services and business data are exchanged between partners to create new value-added services, he said. “The challenge is bridging between the multiple protocols and communications standards.”
Facebook is “unlikely” to renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Yelp withdrew, said spokespeople for the companies Wednesday. A Yelp spokesperson said the online review website pulled its membership several months ago. Facebook is evaluating whether to renew its membership and hasn’t made a final decision, said its spokesperson. “While we have tried to work within ALEC to bring that organization closer to our view on some key issues, it seems unlikely that we will make sufficient progress so we are not likely to renew our membership in 2015.” Earlier this week, Google said it was pulling its financial support from ALEC because of the organization’s denial of climate change (WID Sept 23 p10).
The administration should revise its plans to relocate and consolidate the Department of Homeland Security headquarters, and Congress may want to consider making future funding for the project contingent on DHS and General Services Administration progress, said a GAO report. Completion of the $4.5 billion construction project at the St. Elizabeths campus in Washington is now estimated at 2026. The location is slated to eventually house senior DHS officials and Customs and Border Protection headquarters. DHS and GSA officials said the project has received $1.5 billion less than requested for FY 2009-14, GAO said Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1uH3g0F). “According to these officials, this gap has escalated estimated costs by over $1 billion -- from $3.3 billion to the current $4.5 billion -- and delayed scheduled completion by over 10 years,” said a report summary. It’s “disappointing that we don’t yet have a detailed and viable plan for the consolidation,” said Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in a Monday news release (http://1.usa.gov/1wLAC04).
The FTC has received many complaints about two bitcoin miner manufacturers since January 2013, said documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by technology news website Ars Technica (http://bit.ly/1unGtdP). The documents showed 80 complaints about CoinTerra and HashFast, which make bitcoin mining hardware. The FTC as a rule doesn’t confirm the validity of documents obtained through FOIAs, a spokesman told us. On Tuesday, the commission revealed a lawsuit against Butterfly Labs, a bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer about which the commission received over 300 consumer complaints, the FTC said (WID Sept 24 p3).
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) structure, policies and procedures are consistent with standards in the Inspector General Act of 1978, but there are areas for improvement, said the GAO Wednesday. It recommended that the DHS OIG establish additional automated and supervisory controls to protect the identities of DHS employees who file complaints, having found that existing procedures involve manual recording and are thus subject to “human error.” GAO recommended the OIG develop a policy for obtaining legal advice from counsel, having found that OIG doesn’t have such a policy in place. Twenty-eight reports dealt with IT management, while two dealt with infrastructure protection, GAO said (http://1.usa.gov/1ruR8RV). OIG told GAO it’s revising its online complaint forms to protect employee confidentiality.