All four FTC commissioners will testify at a House FTC oversight hearing Thursday at 1 p.m., said a House Commerce Committee spokeswoman. Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Lee Terry, R-Neb., called the hearing to coincide with the FTC’s 100th anniversary next year, said the committee spokeswoman. Now is a “ripe time” to assess the FTC’s “authority and jurisdiction,” because “a lot has changed in 100 years,” she said. The hearing is expected to touch, but not focus, on current issues such as Internet privacy, Internet regulation, ongoing Do Not Track discussions (CD Oct 11 p12) and data security, the committee spokeswoman confirmed.

The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (DTC) should reverse a portion of its interlocutory ruling dismissing an investigation of the rate component of the state’s inmate calling service (ICS) rate-setting mechanism, said a Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts petition filed Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/H8wQsL). The usage rate of $0.102 per minute and a flat usage rate of $1.50 per 15-minute call is not “just and reasonable,” said PLS. Rates under $0.102 still yield a “fair profit to ICS providers,” said the petition. PLS said ICS can be profitable for $0.07 per minute with no additional surcharge, based on evidence from the FCC rulemaking proceeding on interstate rates (CD Sept 30 p9). “The Federal Communications Commission has cited the wide variation of interstate ICS rates as evidence of a market failure in the intrastate market as well,” said the petition. For the DTC to ratify a per-minute rate of $0.10 “flies in the face” of the FCC’s own analysis, said PLS. The FCC order made plenty of good points that help PLS argue its case to the DTC, Bonita Tenneriello, an attorney with PLS, told us Friday. “You can’t ask consumers to pay for kickbacks, and almost half of these rates are kickbacks,” she said. “You need to charge consumers fees that only cover the costs of a call.” The FCC’s case will be helpful for DTC regulators in their decisionmaking, said Tenneriello. “The calling companies asked the DTC to dismiss the case, but after the FCC decision, the DTC decided to go forward,” she said. Prison calling rates are unfair to families because prisons often drop the calls, and collect calls are not allowed, said Tenneriello. “The FCC understands that prison rates make it hard for prisoners to stay in touch with their families and keeping in touch is important for reentry after prison,” she said.

Officials from several ILECs met with FCC Wireline Bureau officials the Thursday before the shutdown to discuss the transition from legacy support to model-based support under Phase II of the Connect America Fund, a USTelecom ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1fJ3Oio). The officials from AT&T, Verizon, Windstream, FairPoint and USTelecom walked through the amount a company would get where it accepts a state-level commitment, in a state where its legacy support exceeds support calculated under Phase II. In that situation, the ILEC officials suggested a five-year transition to the Phase II support level. The ILECs also discussed a process where the FCC would sunset legacy price cap company eligible telecom carrier designations, and create a new ETC designation under the Phase II program for companies electing to accept support under that program.

Hearst asked the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston overturn a lower court denial of a preliminary injunction against streaming TV service Aereo, according to court filings. U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton ruled earlier this month that Hearst’s injunction request was unwarranted (CD Oct 11 p4). Hearst had argued that Aereo’s retransmission of its station’s broadcast violates copyright law. Broadcasters have also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a 2nd Circuit decision denying a similar injunction against Aereo (CD Oct 15 p15).

Low-power FM advocates asked the FCC to extend the length of the LPFM window. The FCC should extend the filing window “by the length of the shutdown plus an additional week, or suspend the originally planned LPFM window and reschedule to later in 2013,” said Prometheus Radio Project, Rec Networks, Common Frequency and ColorOfChange.org in an FCC filing (http://bit.ly/1hZROpN). The window was scheduled to be open Oct. 15-29, but that plan was derailed by the recent government shutdown (CD Oct 17 p3). The shutdown of normal commission operations has not only extended into the original time frame, “but has also prevented LPFM hopefuls from preparing their applications during this time,” they said. Applicants without the financial resources to hire engineering firms were disproportionately impacted by the shutdown, “as these groups are more likely to rely on free public software and advice from Audio Division staff,” they said.

Google websites and Facebook remained the top two online video content properties in September, said comScore in a monthly report Thursday (http://bit.ly/1cA8cg7). About 188.7 million Americans watched 46 billion online videos in September and viewed 22.9 billion ads, said comScore. Driven by YouTube, Google was the top online video content property with 165.4 million unique viewers, followed by Facebook (67.2 million), AOL (61.8 million) and Microsoft sites (49.2 million), said the report. About 46 billion video content views occurred during September with Google sites in the lead at 16.2 billion, AOL (976 million) and Facebook (975 million), said comScore. Following AOL’s acquisition of Adap.tv, the company had the most ad impressions in September (3.2 billion) and AOL also had the highest duration of video ads at nearly 1.7 billion minutes, said comScore.

T-Mobile disputed many of the arguments in a September paper by former FCC Chief Economist Leslie Marx, which argued that the FCC should not restrict bidding in the TV incentive auction (http://bit.ly/1evJAbs). Marx wrote the paper for Verizon, and T-Mobile made a counter filing. “Professor Marx first asserts that AT&T and Verizon are unlikely to foreclose smaller carriers from the 600 MHz auction,” T-Mobile said. “She claims there is a highly liquid market for low-frequency spectrum, identifies a number of low-frequency spectrum transactions, and professes surprise that neither Sprint nor T-Mobile have pursued secondary market transactions to acquire spectrum. In fact, the secondary market for low-frequency spectrum is highly illiquid and fragmented.” T-Mobile countered Marx’s reliance “on the unstated but incorrect assumption that low-frequency spectrum is valuable only to expand network capacity.” “The greatest value of low-frequency spectrum, though, is not to expand network capacity, but rather to enhance network coverage indoors and out,” T-Mobile said. “No commenter in this proceeding, other than Verizon and AT&T, has argued that non-dominant carriers want to acquire 600 MHz spectrum to increase capacity. Whether Sprint and T-Mobile are capacity constrained is thus irrelevant to their potential to be foreclosed.” The FCC will impose restrictions on who can bid in the incentive auction, predicted Anant Raut, a former FTC attorney and antitrust counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1gqTBse). “Some commentators have looked to Chairman-elect [Tom] Wheeler’s comments as the head of a trade association in the private sector for clues as to whether he will let AT&T and Verizon bid on all of the available spectrum,” Raut wrote. “Bad sleuthing. ... Once confirmed, Chairman Wheeler will be representing the Administration, and the Administration has already spoken, to an extent, through another Executive Branch filing -- the DOJ’s comments calling for an allocated spectrum auction. Look for the Commission to decide by a partisan 3-2 vote to set aside certain blocks of spectrum” for competitors to AT&T and Verizon.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau extended until April 18 a freeze on the filing of new non-rebanding related 800 MHz applications along the U.S. border with Canada. “This extension of the freeze on non-rebanding applications is needed to preserve vacant channels for licensees re-tuning their systems according to the reconfigured band plan adopted by the Bureau for licensees operating along the U.S.-Canada border,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/16kYE3R). The bureau first imposed a 30-month freeze in October 2008, which was later extended through Oct. 14. The freeze is tied to the ongoing 800 MHz rebanding, launched by the FCC’s landmark 2004 order, which sought to resolve interference problems in the band between public safety and Nextel, before Nextel merged with Sprint.

The upcoming rural call completion order got attention from long-distance carriers in the days before the government shutdown. The circulating order is set for a vote at the Oct. 28 FCC meeting. In a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Ajit Pai, Verizon questioned the general obligation that originating providers report call completion metrics. Soliciting reports from intermediate providers would be “the most efficient way to gather potentially relevant data,” Verizon said, given that the focus of the proceeding has been on how intermediate providers’ conduct may affect call completion rates in rural areas (http://bit.ly/16UQRgQ). Verizon had a similar meeting with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel a few days earlier (http://bit.ly/1i2dAsI). To the extent periodic reporting is required, “carriers should be able to rely on reports filed by a long-distance affiliate if the affiliate is the carrier’s only intermediate provider,” Verizon said. It makes “little sense” to force long distance providers to “expend the effort to segregate the traffic from their affiliates and file separate reports,” the telco said. Verizon also questioned the potential requirement to retain detailed records for calls to non-rural destinations for up to seven months. That would lead to a nine-fold increase in the size of Verizon’s records “with no countervailing benefit,” Verizon said. Verizon also pushed for the rules to sunset in two years -- “more than sufficient” to determine where the call completion problems lie, it said. CenturyLink also met with a Pai aide in the days before the shutdown to suggest “it is important that any reporting be done collectively for affiliates, as long-distance routing generally doesn’t distinguish between affiliates” (http://bit.ly/1i2dWzG). Call hand-offs between affiliates, or to tandem providers, shouldn’t count as exchanging traffic to intermediate providers, the telco said.

Nigeria is the first African country to sign an agreement with the Alliance for Affordable Internet, A4AI said Friday. The alliance, recently begun by the World Wide Web Foundation (CD Oct 8 p11), consists of more than 30 public and private sector and civil society organizations seeking to make mobile and fixed-line Internet access available in developing countries, it said. A4AI said it will work with a range of stakeholders in Nigeria to identify policy and regulatory barriers to Internet affordability and find a plan to address them.