Nearly four in every 10 U.S. broadband equipped homes “regularly use transactional services,” such as online video rentals and downloads, for over-the-top video, Parks Associates said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1EzsXHt). “The vast majority of consumers making these a la carte purchases also have a streaming video subscription, emphasizing the potential role of transactional services to supplement subscription OTT,” it said. For example, about two-thirds of Amazon Instant Video subscribers also rent or buy titles through the service, and “their average expenditures are increasing,” it said. “By contrast, expenditure on downloads among Netflix subscribers is decreasing.” Though subscription services “are the most popular form” of OTT video, transactional services that offer a wide selection of titles and are easy to use “can score with consumers and create new revenues,” the company said. “However, the lack of content can be the death knell for a service.” For example, Redbox Instant by Verizon “failed in large part because only a limited number of titles were available to rent through its streaming library,” it said. “What the service needed was a large selection of online titles, with easy access for streaming."
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., laid out her technology vision Thursday. “To stay ahead of the curve, I've developed several principles that can help our country maintain its high tech edge -- a proposal called, ‘A Fresh Technology Agenda for Growth, Innovation, and Opportunity,'” Fischer said in an op-ed for The Hill (http://bit.ly/1ycZKjS). “It’s an effort to spur a real debate about the best federal policies to empower creators and consumers.” She posted a seven-page agenda on her website and attacked the FCC for certain policies. The FCC “sends businesses the wrong signals, meddles in local affairs, and fails to prioritize how best to improve rural citizens’ access to modern networks,” said Fischer (http://1.usa.gov/1oVb4bZ), slamming FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler for proposing to pre-empt state laws restricting municipal broadband networks. Fischer’s document called for upping the focus on rural call completion problems and overhauling USF rules “so that providers have more of an incentive to bring broadband Internet service to consumers.” Her manifesto urged regulatory humility and attacked the FCC for its now-abandoned Critical Information Needs study: “I led the effort in the U.S. Senate to defeat this terrible proposal,” she said. She attacked FCC consideration of Communications Act Title II reclassification of broadband and the FTC for its “unwarranted investigations and aggressive regulatory treatment toward American technology companies.” Fischer, a member of the Commerce Committee, is meeting with Silicon Valley tech companies, such as Apple, Facebook and Google, said her office. “A Communications Act reform would be one venue to push some proposals, although it may not be the best fit for all the reforms that Senator Fischer is proposing,” a Fischer spokesman told us. “While it remains to be seen just how some of these reforms would advance, Senatr Fischer is happy that more in Congress are prepared to have the discussion.” Her spokesman said Capitol Hill’s “appetite for addressing needed changes to telecom policy” is “encouraging.” In the op-ed, Fischer dismissed Washington as “way behind” in its regulation of health IT “with old rules that predate the VCR,” and said “Congress must modernize outdated federal regulations,” pointing out concerns about how Food and Drug Administration rules affect mobile health applications. She touted efforts to require the FCC “to be more responsive to all individuals who apply for a new technology or license” and her backing of the E-Label Act.
The FCC Media Bureau asked AT&T to provide responses, supporting documentation, and data on Internet speeds offered, network planning, subscriber behavior and other information, by Oct. 31. The information is needed for the FCC to complete its review of the transaction applications of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the bureau said in a letter to AT&T (http://bit.ly/1yd6cYc). The FCC requires information and data from other commercial wireline carriers against which the applicants compete, it said. The information requested includes plan level subscriber data by ZIP Code for the period June 1, 2013, through June 30, 2014, and the company’s use of data caps, the bureau said (http://bit.ly/1CYRbsJ).
Allowing the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) to expire could cost $14.7 billion annually in taxes, said research released Thursday by the American Action Forum (AAF) (http://bit.ly/1CYKmHK). The self-described center-right group, which does not take specific policy stances, calculated its number by applying state wireless tax rates to the Internet. “Sales taxes often hit the poorest the hardest and that is where the burden of new Internet access taxes would fall,” the organization said.
The FCC shouldn’t tighten rules for closed captioning video clips delivered over the Internet before they've even taken effect, said NAB (http://bit.ly/ZSvtJc) and NCTA (http://bit.ly/1shfWwZ) in comments filed in docket 11-154 in response to the Second Further NPRM on IP clip captions (http://1.usa.gov/1ooIsWB) that was issued alongside the IP clip captioning order (http://bit.ly/1xuDSgE). Portions of the order don’t take effect until January 2016. The FNPRM had sought comment on shortening the period of time companies have to caption live and near-live clips after they're posted online, applying the rules to “mash-ups” of previously captioned and uncaptioned material, as well as to third parties hosting content on their websites. “It would be arbitrary and capricious for the Commission to now alter the timeline for complying with captioning requirements that are not yet in force under the schedule the Commission very recently adopted,” NAB said. Consumer groups representing the hearing impaired, including the Hearing Loss Association of America, the National Association of the Deaf and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, disagreed in a joint filing (http://bit.ly/1pWfOhA). By punting the stiffer captioning rules to the FNPRM, the FCC left in place “critical barriers that pose substantial confusion and deny equal access to consumers who are deaf or hard of hearing,” the consumer groups said. “We urge the Commission to act quickly to eliminate these barriers."
The MIPI Alliance will use the Audio Engineering Society convention Saturday in Los Angeles to present a technical paper on MIPI SoundWire, a new audio interface standard for amplifiers, mics and audio codecs used in smartphones, tablets, mobile PCs and other devices, the group said Thursday (http://bit.ly/10WrwmP). “Companies can apply the specification as needed to best fit their particular systems integration requirements.” It said more than 25 companies “from across the audio technology ecosystem” took part in developing MIPI SoundWire. Ratification of the spec is expected to be done by year-end, but products based on it “are already in development and IP, silicon components and test tools based on the specification are expected to become commercially available also by year-end 2014,” it said. MIPI SoundWire is a hardware interface and transport protocol that companies can apply “to add intelligence to audio peripherals, increase the number of peripherals attached to a link and optimize their implementations without compromising product cost, pin count, power consumption, software complexity, or key audio metrics,” it said. “The boundaries between mobile phones, tablets and PCs are converging but until now, standardized audio interfaces have been specific to the individual market segments,” it said. “The fragmentation has made it very challenging for firms to scale their product designs for use across segments. MIPI SoundWire was developed to provide a common interface to overcome this challenge.”
More can be done to include people with disabilities in the design, development and re-engineering of advanced communications technology, said the FCC in its second biennial 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) report to Congress, released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1v7PlEV). The availability of accessible communications equipment has increased since the 2012 report, and industry “has made efforts to ensure that advanced communications services and the equipment used for these services are accessible to people with disabilities,” the report tentatively concluded. But some accessibility gaps remain, the report said. One issue is that while software updates can be used to disseminate accessibility improvements to technology such as Web browsers and mobile phones, they can also unintentionally make such features malfunction, the report said. “These concerns suggest a need to be mindful about avoiding the creation of new barriers to accessibility as technologies and service plans continue to evolve,” the report said. The CVAA report is largely complimentary of industry efforts to provide accessible products and information to the disabled. Between Jan. 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2013, consumers filed 92 complaints with the commission, the report said. Of these, 31.5 percent alleged violations by equipment manufacturers, 55.5 percent by service providers, and 12 percent complained of violations by both, the report said. All of the complaints reported violations of Section 255 of the Communications Act, which requires telecommunications providers to ensure “that such services and equipment are accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities, if readily achievable,” the report said. Fifteen percent of complaints about equipment-related issues involved “inaccessible wireless handsets received in conjunction with subscriptions for telephone services under the Commission’s Lifeline program,” the report said. Another 12 percent of complaints about service providers concerned an inability to access billing information, the report said. “Most of these were from consumers who were blind or visually impaired, who expressed long-standing frustrations with acquiring access to their accounts,” the report said. The commission’s Disability Rights Office was able to resolve nearly all the complaints, the report said. “The Commission did not assess any forfeiture penalties for accessibility-related violations during the period covered by this Report,” the report said.
The government’s “broad regulatory approach” to health information technology (IT) is creating confusion about which regulations apply to various technologies, said Software and Information Industry Association Senior Director-Public Policy David LeDuc in a Thursday blog post (http://bit.ly/1pVYPMu). “There is significant confusion in the market about what technologies may be regulated, by which agencies, and to what standards,” LeDuc said. “This uncertainty is standing in the way of myriad promising technologies.” Earlier this week, a broad array of healthcare tech companies sent a letter to members of Congress (http://bit.ly/1neEgz5), urging Congress to take action following the Food and Drug Administration’s release of a risk-based framework for regulating health IT devices (WID April 4 p1). That framework was a start, but Congress needs to make categories and definitions more concrete through legislation, the organizations said in the letter. “It is now time for lawmakers to pass legislation that achieves the complementary goals of protecting patients, ensuring safe and effective care and fostering continued innovation in the rapidly-growing health IT field,” the letter said.
The FCC has been implementing recommendations from its report on process reform to reduce the number of pending items and move incoming items through the FCC system faster, said Diane Cornell, special counsel to the Chairman’s Office, in a blog post Thursday (http://fcc.us/1oVdirW). Efforts to streamline processing have led the Enforcement Bureau to “largely complete” its review of pending complaints, which in turn led to the Media Bureau granting “almost 700 license renewals this week,” Cornell said. The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau has closed more than 760 dockets and sought comment on another 750 dockets that could be eligible for closing by the end of 2014, Cornell said. Between May and September 2014, the Wireless Bureau resolved 2,046 applications older than 6 months, creating a 26 percent reduction in its applications backlog, Cornell said. The process improvements responsible for the enhanced efficiency include the FCC’s consent agenda, Bureau specific backlog reduction plans and best practices, said Cornell. These have led to the Media Bureau issuing effective competition rulings in omnibus form, the International Bureau eliminating the effective competitive opportunities test for submarine cable landing licenses and 214 applications, and the Wireline Bureau streamlining USF appeals, the report said. Further process reforms will come in the months ahead, and will be accompanied by periodic updates, Cornell said.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched a digital privacy advocacy website Thursday, said IFightSurveillance.org, the digital rights advocate, in a news release (http://bit.ly/1yQPGhJ). EFF said the site will feature digital privacy advocates worldwide and offer a list of steps to challenge and fight “state and corporate spying.” EFF founded the site to show surveillance overreach is a worldwide issue, said EFF International Director Danny O'Brien. “Too often, the debate over surveillance is seen as a ‘domestic’ issue, only of concern to citizens of the country doing the spying,” O'Brien said. “The truth is that mass surveillance isn’t confined to national borders, and neither is the response to it.”