Android Wear smartphone owners will soon be able to control music from the iHeartRadio streaming app from their wrists, iHeartMedia said Thursday. Users who sync an Android Wear smartphone -- including the Samsung Gear Live, Moto 360 and LG G Watch -- with a compatible Android phone will be able to access the iHeartRadio app via voice activation, iHeartMedia said. Features that will be available through Android Wear integration, effective Oct. 15, include voice search, access to favorites, customized recommendations and a thumbs up/thumbs down feature, the company said. IHeartRadio also has announced integrations with Amazon’s Fire Phone, Amazon’s Fire TV, Android Auto, Apple’s CarPlay, Chromecast, Qualcomm’s AllPlay, Samsung’s Gear 2 Smartwatch and auto partnerships with AT&T Drive, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Subaru and Volvo, iHeartMedia said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., hammered home the need for the Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act surveillance overhaul this year. “The House acted earlier this year to end the bulk collection of data by the government and provide American tech companies new ways to report data concerning government requests for customer information,” he said in a statement Thursday. “When the Senate returns in November, it must pass the USA Freedom Act in order to protect Americans’ civil liberties and to ensure that American tech companies can begin to rebuild trust with their customers and flourish in the global economy."
The American Cable Association is expected to be among participants at Thursday’s House Commerce Committee staff briefing on video marketplace issues, an industry official told us. The private event is part of the House Republican effort to overhaul the Communications Act and is open to Democratic and Republican staffers from the Communications Subcommittee. The committee has held two other such briefings -- one on wireline issues and another on wireless (WID Oct 7 p2). Industry officials had previously told us the speakers expected at the Thursday briefing are DirecTV, Dish, NAB and NCTA.
Failing to address the overreach of U.S. government surveillance will create long-lasting damage for the digital economy, said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and tech executives from Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Facebook and Microsoft during a Wednesday discussion at Palo Alto High School, where Wyden went to high school in Palo Alto, California. “The cost,” said Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “is huge in terms of knowledge, discovery, science, growth, jobs.” Countries around the world will start implementing data localization requirements, said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. In the last few months alone, 20 governments have either proposed or discussed such laws, said Dropbox General Counsel Ramsey Homsany. Cloud storage services like Dropbox rely on the ability to store data anywhere, the industry officials said. Requirements to keep individuals’ data stored locally would kill cloud-based storage, they said. In turn, the Internet slows down, becomes less personalized and costs are driven up as companies are required to put data centers in each country, said Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch. Data localization also is a threat to civil liberties, he said. Insisting on local data storage could “result in quite possibly more access by state sponsored surveillance,” he said. Governments have been able to sell data localization as a consumer protection measure, Schmidt said, when in fact localization erodes “the architecture that all these companies and all the startups really need to have.” Wyden touted his industry-supported Digital Trade Act (S-1788), which would prevent cross-border data flow restrictions and prohibit localization requirements, as a first step toward ensuring the continued health of the digital economy. But it’s no fix for the “reckless broad surveillance,” which “hampers our ability” to convince countries to accept the free flow of data, Wyden said.
The Telecommunications Industry Association Wednesday named Scott Belcher as CEO. TIA President Grant Seiffert will report to Belcher, the group said (http://bit.ly/1pR99Fp). Belcher was CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, which has been battling the wireless industry on proposals to use the 5.850-5.925 GHz band for Wi-Fi. Belcher’s group has lobbied on behalf of the automotive industry, which plans to use the spectrum for vehicle-to-vehicle crash avoidance systems and has been worried about Wi-Fi interference. Industry officials said in June the TIA board was looking for a new CEO and had hired a major head-hunter firm to identify and vet candidates. Seiffert had been the top official at the group since January 2007. Belcher takes over Nov. 9. As CEO, Belcher “will have responsibility for managing TIA’s overall operations and providing long-term strategic direction,” said TIA Chairman Tom Stanton, CEO of Adtran.
More than 99 percent of Comcast’s shareholders voted to support a proposed stock issuance in connection with the planned buy of Time Warner Cable, Comcast said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1qj5xeF). Comcast will issue 2.875 shares of Comcast Class A common stock for every one share of Time Warner Cable common stock, the release said. TWC shareholders will vote on the merger Thursday, the release said.
Creating net neutrality rules under Title II would require edge providers to make payments to ISPs for termination services, said George Ford, Phoenix Center chief economist, during a teleforum Wednesday. Reclassification, he said, would turn edge providers into ISP customers, which would require the broadband providers under Section 203 of the Communications Act to tariff termination service for Internet content. The FCC can’t forbear the tariff because the broadband providers are considered terminating monopolies, and competition is the basis for Section 10 forbearance, said Ford, who made the argument in a policy bulletin last month (http://bit.ly/WEvdLa). That the tariff requirement hasn’t been discussed in depth during the net neutrality debate “reveals the superficial nature of this debate,” Ford said during the forum. Tariffing has “significant compliance costs,” and neither carriers nor the agency is set up to handle tariffs, which have become less common, said Wiley Rein’s Thomas Navin, a former Wireline Bureau chief, during the forum. Title II proponents disagreed. The agency could forbear the tariffing requirement in Section 203, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld, pointing to his Oct. 2 blog post (http://bit.ly/10K8cZV), because other statutes like Sections 201 and 202 allow the FCC to act in the case of “unjust reasonable rates and practices and otherwise protecting consumers.” Edge providers “are not in fact the customers of the end-user ISP. There is no service there,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood, and “there'd be a real danger in that view,” because “quite literally every website in the world becomes a customer of Comcast’s just because I view that site on my Comcast connection.”
The FCC should move forward on rules streamlining the approval process for wireless facilities, said PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein and others from the association in a meeting with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 13-238. “Clear FCC rules in this proceeding will promote broadband deployment, encourage investment in upgraded wireless infrastructure, and improve service coverage, capacity, and quality for consumers,” the group said (http://bit.ly/1t3dYT7). PCIA also said there is a “historically high level of capital” being invested in broadband deployment.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler assured lawmakers that he’s taking security into account in the agency’s selection of the local number portability administrator. “Security is at the forefront of the Commission’s mission in overseeing our nation’s communications infrastructure,” and the administrator “is of vital importance to the national security and the country’s communications networks, and we recognize the need to preserve the effective, reliable, and secure operation of the LNP system and protect it from rapidly evolving future cyber threats,” Wheeler said in a Sept. 30 letter released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1vWLXJu). “I can assure you that, throughout this [selection] process and thereafter, we will do whatever is necessary to ensure the LNP system meets highly rigorous standards for security and reliability for our Nation.”
Acxiom, a U.K. enterprise data and analytics company, partnered with U.K.-based Starcom Mediavest Group (SMG) to help it develop more targeted branding, retention and acquisition strategies, it said. SMG will use Acxiom’s advanced customer recognition technology to centralize and connect campaigns and data across all the channels and platforms it uses to deliver results for its advertisers, Acxiom said Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1oRHXpP). The deal also will let SMG get a head start in creating “true one-to-one marketing at scale, execute more targeted campaigns across all channels and devices” and transform customer experiences, it said.