President Barack Obama suggested the U.S. might be able to accomplish its intelligence goals by other means than the Patriot Act Section 215 phone metadata surveillance, he told reporters at a news conference Friday before leaving for Hawaii. He had received 46 recommendations from a five-member review group he appointed on Wednesday (CD Dec 19 p4) -- recommendations that criticized the efficacy of the National Security Agency program, urged industry or a third party to hold the metadata and to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow for a public advocate, among other changes. AT&T, meanwhile, followed Verizon’s lead (CD Dec 20 p1) and said it will also post transparency reports.

It’s important to implement Phase II of the Connect America Fund “promptly and thoughtfully,” Frontier, Windstream and USTelecom told an aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Monday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1jmUunl). The groups, representing the ABC Coalition, told the aide that many challengers of Round 2 of CAF Phase I incremental support “have not borne their burden” of demonstrating the challenged census blocks are “in fact served” by fixed Internet service of at least 3 Mbps down/768 kbps up.

The scope of the FTC’s proposed study of patent assertion entities is “far broader than necessary to serve the proper performance of the functions of the FTC,” said InterDigital in a filing to the FTC released Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1ho7tkd). The FTC voted in September to begin exploring a proposed PAE study, which it would launch using its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act (CD Sept 30 p15). InterDigital said it doesn’t believe it’s a PAE as the FTC defined it in its study proposal, though many of the company’s critics have defined it as one. The FTC defined PAEs as “firms with a business model based primarily on purchasing patents and then attempting to generate revenue” by asserting their intellectual property rights “against persons who are already practicing the patented technologies.” Intellectual property groups and other companies often defined as PAEs also expressed significant concerns with the proposed study.

Several telecom associations asked the FCC for a stay of rules requiring their members to “reconcile and revise study area boundary data” that will ultimately be published in an online map of study area boundaries (http://bit.ly/JIaL6y). NTCA, USTelecom, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, Western Telecommunications Alliance and Eastern Rural Telecom Association asked Wednesday for a stay or a six-month extension to let the companies gather the information. The Wireline Bureau’s study area boundary order said the data would be used to implement the USF/intercarrier compensation benchmarking rule, which uses quantile regression analysis to generate capital and operating expense limits for each rate-of-return carrier study area. “The Chairman has indicated that consideration will be given by the Commission to the elimination of the quantile regression analysis ... mechanism in the near future,” the petition said. “Absence of the QRA would remove the stated reason for the study area boundary process, and particularly for the burdensome and time-consuming efforts that will be involved in reconciling many hundreds of overlaps and voids.” If the boundary data are still required, the groups said, a six-month extension is necessary to ensure accuracy. The groups are awaiting details of the QRA replacement FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Congress the agency is working on (CD Dec 18 p2).

FCC hires Sara Morris, ex-NTIA, as Office of Legislative Affairs acting director, effective Jan. 2; acting Director Patrick Halley will become Wireline Bureau associate chief … USTelecom promotes to vice presidents Kevin Rupy for law & policy and Sarah Versaggi for congressional affairs, and hires Mary Schultz, ex-Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, as director-marketing and events … Information Technology & Innovation Foundation hires Doug Brake, ex-Silicon Flatirons, as telecom policy analyst … magicJack VocalTec VoIP company hires Timothy McDonald, ex-Scatteree Partners, as chief operating officer … Disney promotes Katharine Linke to vice president of multiplatform programming, Disney Channels U.S.

The impending end of the USF quantile regression analysis, disclosed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler while being questioned at Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing, came as a shock to industry members who had long been urging QRA’s elimination. Wheeler told Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., he had asked the bureau to draft an order “to eliminate the QRA and return to the high-cost loop support model” (CD Dec 13 p4). There’s no word from the Wireline Bureau about what the replacement will look like, but many industry officials we interviewed were hoping for a predictable model based on plant depreciation.

Aereo’s decision not to oppose broadcasters’ attempt to seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court of their case against the streaming TV service increases the possibility that the court will review the case, said Stifel Nicolaus analysts. Broadcasters filed a cert petition asking the high court to overturn a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that rejected a preliminary injunction against Aereo (CD Oct 15 p15). “We believe the justices are generally reluctant to review appeals of preliminary injunction decisions and so far there is no circuit split, which can invite high court review,” Stifel said in a research note (http://bit.ly/1jY0Hnl). This may change if the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals soon upholds a district court decision to grant broadcasters a preliminary injunction against FilmOn X, an Aereo-like service, said the analysts. These actions could spur retransmission consent changes next year, they said. If the broadcasters don’t shoot down Aereo’s service in court, “they could start to push hard for Congress to write new legislation to ensure they receive Internet video provider payments for their programming,” they said. The “largely-unaddressed ‘copying’ element of broadcasters’ lawsuit makes this case too early-stage for Supreme Court review,” said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant. The courts have barely begun addressing broadcasters’ argument that Aereo’s system makes unlawful copies of broadcasters’ shows, he said in a research note. If the Supreme Court is going to rule on Aereo next year, “it probably needs to announce by January that it will hear the case,” he said. If broadcasters win, the Aereo threat is extinguished, he said. “If broadcasters lose, they can seek legislative change by Congress, where they would likely have the upper hand.” FilmOn X asked the 9th Circuit to overturn a preliminary injunction against it (CD Aug 29 p5). A similar appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also is pending (CD Sept 13 p22). Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Engine Advocacy urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn a decision by the U.S. District Court in Washington. The law doesn’t grant copyright holders complete control over the distribution and quality of their works, they said in a friend-of-the-court brief (http://bit.ly/1dxK5hx). “Fair use allows the public to make copies of varying quality in many circumstances, including home recordings of TV programs.” The existence of a service like FilmOn X “does not appreciably increase the risk of a broadcast program being redistributed illegally on the Internet by third parties,” it said. In a separate brief, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Center for Democracy and Technology and other groups asked the court to approach the case in a way that preserves the holding and principles of the Cablevision case, during which an appeals court found that Cablevision doesn’t infringe copyright by launching a DVR service. The court should avoid any legal theories “that would cast a pall over wide swaths of the modern technological landscape, including the burgeoning cloud computing industry,” they said. CTIA, USTelecom and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition filed along with CCIA and CDT. The groups aren’t taking a stance on either party, they said.

It may be an uphill battle for two partisan video bills House lawmakers introduced Thursday before breaking for recess, lobbyists told us. Two House Commerce Committee Republicans introduced the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act, which would kill compulsory copyright licenses and some FCC broadcast and media ownership rules. Two Democrats introduced the Video CHOICE (Consumers Have Options in Choosing Entertainment) Act (http://1.usa.gov/18qEVWT), which would allow the FCC to step in during retransmission consent blackouts and introduce rules for how companies can behave during such retrans negotiations. In contrast to the praise several cable companies and associations offered, broadcasters slammed both bills, while NCTA pointed to a need to change retrans rules.

January’s order on the IP transition will “invite, on a rolling basis, service-based experiments with short timelines for submission,” Jon Sallet, interim director of the FCC Technology Transitions Policy Task Force, told commissioners at Thursday’s agency meeting. Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly have emphasized the need for speed, Sallet noted, so the deadline to submit experimental ideas will come up quickly. Later, companies can propose more experiments that the commission would process on a rolling basis, he said. By “service-based,” Sallet means trials where real customers with real services will see those services transition to IP, he said.

The House Commerce Committee cleared two key telecom bills Wednesday, as expected (CD Dec 10 p3). The panel unanimously passed by voice vote the FCC Process Reform Act and the Federal Spectrum Incentive Act. Reps. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., introduced the Federal Spectrum Incentive Act, HR-3674 (http://1.usa.gov/1gTEKmX), Monday to much initial acclaim, while the FCC Process Reform Act, HR-3675 (http://1.usa.gov/IBxQXF), introduced earlier this year, was revived as part of a bipartisan compromise between Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. Industry welcomed the process revamp to come.