Comcast "regularly engages in aggressive and reckless debt collection practices" in violation of federal law, some customers said in a lawsuit (in Pacer) filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The suit, brought by eight plaintiffs in California, Colorado, Michigan and Washington states, claims Comcast violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by repeatedly calling them about debts they allegedly owed, even after the plaintiffs asked to not be called again. The plaintiffs ask for $500 in statutory damages for each negligent violation of TCPA and $1,500 for each willful violation, plus $1,000 for each FDCPA violation and an injunction barring Comcast from "unlawful calls made with automated dialing systems to cellular phones." Comcast didn't comment.

Pay-TV providers and networks must abandon linear distribution and offer all programming on demand with full stacking rights, put in place better search and recommendation interfaces and start real-time targeted advertising placement aimed at viewers instead of programs in order to compete with rapidly growing over-the-top services and digital ad platforms, Moody's said in a report Wednesday on OTT Invasion. Moody's said OTT and digital ad platforms are quickly eroding contractual aggregation and bundling of content through closed-system set-top boxes as consumers embrace time-shifted, digital, mobile and subscription VOD streaming platforms. Moody's said a shift to a fully on-demand world is unlikely without content producers and distributors "lead[ing] a total overhaul [of] how the industry distributes content and advertising." But that unified approach also is unlikely, Moody's said, "meaning change will be inconsistent, stability will erode as individual network churn rises, and operating performance will come under pressure for those that stumble."

Comcast and a Florida customer are close to settling the company's appeal of a decision by a U.S. District judge in Tampa not to compel arbitration in the lawsuit that the customer filed against the cable company, said a notice of settlement (in Pacer) filed Tuesday with 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Sue Causey sued Comcast after she signed up for service in 2015, and previous debts from 2009 -- which Causey said were discharged in a 2009 bankruptcy -- were added to her bill. Comcast said it moved to compel individual arbitration in that suit, which the Tampa court denied, ruling the arbitration clause in the 2009 subscriber agreement was discharged in bankruptcy and the 2015 subscriber agreement was unrelated to the operator's attempts to collect a debt under a contract discharged in 2009. Court paperwork shows the Tampa court action is on stay pending the outcome of the appeal.

Comcast will pay $450,000 to settle a 2012 complaint by a group of cable line technicians, under a settlement approved Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago, said a docket entry (in Pacer). Under the terms worked out with a mediator, the seven plaintiffs will receive a gross settlement of $450,000, with $250,000 going for attorneys' fees and costs. A jury trial had been scheduled to start Nov. 1, according to court records, but the parties indicated in May they were close to a settlement (see 1605310033). The hourly workers sued, claiming they were owed overtime pay for work they did before and after their scheduled shifts in excess of 40 hours a week.

Charter Communications -- being sued by Frontier Communications over an advertising campaign making allegedly false claims about the robustness of its video, data and voice services (see 1606210013) -- is suing Frontier back. In a counterclaim (in Pacer) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the cable ISP said that under the Lanham Act, which governs unfair competition, and various state laws, it seeks a court order stopping "any further false advertising" and any profit Frontier made from the ad campaign. In the 18-page complaint, Charter compared itself with Frontier, alleging the telco "has not made the same kind of network investment that cable operators like Charter have." It also pointed to the FCC annual Measuring Broadband America report as proof of its advertised broadband speeds and that Frontier's broadband offering is inferior. Frontier in a statement Tuesday said, "Charter’s recent ad campaign is false and misleading and does not accurately portray the competitive, high quality products and services that we provide our customers. We owe it to our customers, employees, and shareholders to defend ourselves against false attacks such as this and to ensure that our products and services are honestly and fairly represented at all times by all parties.”

One thing seemingly everyone agrees on is American Cable Association's petition to the FCC urging it to rethink its New Charter broadband network overbuild condition, ACA said in a reply comment to be posted Tuesday in docket 15-149. "No one denies that, far from mitigating the merger-specific concerns raised by the Order, the overbuild condition would exacerbate them." ACA urged the FCC to strike the overbuild condition on the approval of Charter Communications buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks: "Nor does anyone suggest that the Order anywhere addresses the harms the overbuild condition imposes." The group said it agreed with New Charter that if the FCC strikes the overbuild condition, the deal-related transfers still are in the public interest. ACA is one of several parties that petitioned for reconsideration of New Charter conditions, with some seeing the association planning to take the agency to court if administrative options are unsuccessful (see 1606100043).

The set-top compromise to build pay-TV apps on an open HTML5 standard is a "common-sense, technology-friendly replacement" plan, FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said in a blog post. Noting the plan from NCTA and some pay-TV programmers and carriers (see 1606160059) has generated some criticisms -- that consumers aren't familiar enough with apps, they don't provide a unified search or fix unreliable equipment, and they won't drive down monthly rent prices -- O'Rielly then tackled them individually. Data shows apps are widely used, and customers wouldn't be required to go with apps because they could keep their set-tops, he said. Section 629 of the Communications Act has no unified search requirement, and users might not even care for that option, O'Rielly said: "Why obsess over a feature that may or may not have little to no consumer value?" Apps also will make the whole issue of equipment and its reliability moot, he said. O'Rielly called the prospect of having to pay monthly fees for apps "farfetched" but said the FCC could work with industry to ensure they're free. He has been critical of the FCC's own set-top proposal, including at a broadcasters conference last week, the remarks of which were posted online shortly Monday before his blog post (see 1606270066).

The National Labor Relations Board, when it decided CNN was the actual employer of Team Video Services (TVS) workers, violated administrative law principles by changing its legal standard without acknowledging it was doing so and applying that new legal standard retroactively, CNN said in a final brief (in Pacer) Friday filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In its own brief (in Pacer) Friday, NLRB said CNN met all the long-held criteria of being a joint employer, such as control over or participation in hiring, setting wages and day-to-day supervision, and TVS was following CNN policy regarding not hiring technicians who came from the network's competitors. Friday was the deadline for final briefs to the D.C. Circuit on an NLRB 2015 order requiring CNN to hire more than 100 laid-off TVS workers. Oral argument isn't scheduled. In its brief, CNN said the NLRB ruling changed the joint-employer analysis -- which had focused on whether a putative joint employer's control over employment matters was direct and immediate -- and the new standard can't be applied retroactively to the company, or the NLRB had to explain how it came to that new conclusion. In an intervenor brief (in Pacer), Communications Workers of America's National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians locals 11 and 31, which represented the laid-off workers, said CNN wasn't penalized by the NLRB order since it had to restore employment conditions only to the extent its changes hadn't resulted in improved terms and conditions of employment, and "any 'penalty' is the result of CNN's unlawful conduct." NLRB, in its brief, said CNN is mischaracterizing its "direct and immediate" standard. "No court has ever cited it, nor has any Board decision turned on that ... language or even treated it as an 'essential element,' " it said, and thus didn't retroactively apply a new joint-employer standard, but merely clarified it.

The FCC should give an additional six months, until Jan. 31, before it requires cable systems to be capable of retransmitting a national periodic test (NPT) event code, NCTA said in a petition for a limited waiver in docket 04-296 Monday. The agency's 2015 emergency alert system order specified the NPT event code as the test code for national EAS testing and said that by July 30 all EAS equipment must be capable of immediately retransmitting the NPT event code (see 1506040056). "This turned out to be a more daunting challenge than the industry anticipated or the Commission envisioned," NCTA said, pointing to remaining challenges of modifying IP infrastructure for delivering EAS alerts, upgrading legacy program guide systems and modifying legacy encoders and decoders. NCTA said cable operators plan to use the extra six months for finishing software and firmware testing and for purchasing and installation of new equipment.

Under a pay-TV compromise set-top box proposal (see 1606160059), carriers would license their video apps to third-party box makers without charging them, said representatives from NCTA and AT&T in a meeting with FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, FCC Chief Technologist Scott Jordan and staff from the bureau and Office of General Counsel Thursday. Since the pay-TV carriers wouldn't charge for the license, the proposal would include provisions preventing others from charging customers to use it, NCTA said in docket 16-42 Monday. The license also would include provisions protecting privacy, copyright, advertising and the “technical integrity of the app” for content security, it said. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly chastised the FCC set-top plan, in a speech released Monday (see 1606270066).