Netflix is adding two new features to its iOS app in mid-October, said the company in a blog post Thursday (http://nflx.it/19jZ6VZ). The updated app will stream Netflix in HD on any iOS 7 device and customers can start streaming over AirPlay to Apple TV, said Netflix. With an Apple TV device connected to the same Wi-Fi network as an iPhone or iPad, customers will be able to move playback to Apple TV and use the portable device as a remote control, said Netflix.

Mobile phone ownership has declined among children and the use of tablet computers at home has tripled since 2012 in the U.K., said an Ofcom report on media use and attitudes of children and parents in the U.K. released Thursday (http://bit.ly/16I9Ptb). The multifunctionality of tablets tends to meet younger children’s entertainment needs and older children use smartphones for peer communication such as IMing and social networking, said Ofcom. Twenty-six percent of children aged 12-15 and 18 percent of children aged 8-11 have their own tablet computer, and use of a tablet computer at home has tripled among 5-15-year-olds since 2012 from 14 percent to 42 percent, said the report. The number of children accessing the Internet via a personal computer has decreased to 68 percent, from 85 percent in 2012, and the number of children using a alternative device such as a tablet (13 percent) and a smartphone (11 percent) has doubled to 32 percent, from 15 percent in 2012, said the report. Compared with last year, children aged 12-15 are less likely to set up a social networking site profile (68 percent vs. 81 percent), but the variety of social networking sites has increased with 37 percent of children aged 12-15 with a Twitter profile, compared with 25 percent in 2012, said Ofcom. More than four in 10 children aged 5-15 are using alternative devices to watch TV content, said the report. Twenty-five percent of U.K. children watch TV programs on a mobile phone and 29 percent of children aged 8-15 are using on-demand services, said the report. Ofcom said it used three quantitative tracking surveys to understand children’s behavior in the U.K. communications markets for 5-15-year-olds, and it did surveys with parents of 3-4 year old children between April and June. Ofcom used BARB, U.K.’s TV measurement panel, to analyze children’s TV viewing habits and comScore to find the 40 websites visited by children and the frequency of IMing for 13-17-year-olds.

The government shutdown continued to wreak havoc on Washington schedules. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board will no longer hold its Friday hearing on U.S. surveillance law. PCLOB initially expected to cancel the day-long hearing in the event of a shutdown, but earlier this week, it insisted the event was on, citing carry-over funds from the 2013 fiscal year that would keep the board running through Friday. Since then, it “has been notified by a significant number of witnesses that they are unable to testify” due to lapsed funding, PCLOB said in notice Wednesday afternoon. “During the current lapse in government appropriations the PCLOB intends to use its FY2013 carryover funds to remain in operation and continue its examination of the surveillance programs operated pursuant to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” it said. The Federal Communications Bar Association also sent out a notice that some events may be canceled or postponed due to the shutdown. “Since it is not known when the government will re-open, events are not canceled or postponed until the morning of the actual event,” the FCBA said, asking people to check its website on the day of any given event to see whether it will happen. Congressional hearings, markups and committee meetings have also, for the most part, been postponed.

Dish Network said it remains ready and willing “to negotiate a fair deal to end Media General’s takedown,” a Dish spokesman said. “The ball is in their court.” Dish’s retransmission consent agreement with Media General expired Oct. 1 at midnight, blacking out broadcasts from 18 Media General-owned stations in 17 markets, Media General said in a statement. “All we are asking of Dish is to be fairly compensated for our programming … what we seek amounts to pennies a day per subscriber.”

Broadcasters provide the backbone of the emergency alert system, testified Barry Fraser, general manager of Maranatha Broadcasting’s WFMZ-TV Allentown, Pa., on Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management. He spoke on behalf of NAB and advocated for two priorities in keeping the EAS system strong. “State and local safety officials should receive ongoing training to properly use and protect the integrity of the EAS,” Fraser said in written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/18QkldO). “We strongly urge the committee to incorporate training into any legislation considered.” Fraser also urged the committee to create a National Advisory Committee on Emergency Alerting to “bring all stakeholders together, to ensure continual improvements to the system.” CTIA has been active in its own wireless alerts, testified Executive Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe (http://1.usa.gov/1brISM4). He said the wireless emergency alerts system “went live in April 2012 and carriers serving 98 percent of U.S. wireless consumers have opted to participate in the program.” He urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help educate consumers with the use of such alerts. “FEMA has worked over the past four years with emergency managers and public safety officials at all levels of government, the private sector, NOAA, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop and deploy the [Integrated Public Alert and Warning System] capabilities that are being used across the nation today to send citizens alerts and warnings quickly,” FEMA said in its written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1brJuBw). It was a joint submission from Damon Penn, assistant administrator of the National Continuity Programs, and Fred Endrikat, Urban Search and Rescue branch chief for FEMA.

A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit partially reversed a U.S. District Court ruling that IBM, eBay, Adobe, Cisco Systems, Oracle, PayPal, SAS Institute, Sun Microsystems, SAP, Software AG and Sybase violated three TecSec-owned patents on data encryption technology. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema had ruled in a 2011 case in Alexandria, Va., that the software companies had not infringed on six TecSec encryption patents. TecSec appealed Brinkema’s ruling on three of the patents -- U.S. Patent 5,369,702, Patent 5,680,452 and Patent 5,898,781. The appeals court affirmed Brinkema’s ruling on Patents 5,680,452 and 5,898,781, but reversed the finding that the Patent 5,369,702 specification “failed to provide sufficient structure corresponding to these means-plus-function limitations.” Judge Jimmie Reyna dissented in the case, arguing that the Federal Appeals Court had issued a previous ruling in 2012 on the case that “summarily affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement. ... I believe that entertaining this appeals gives TecSec a second bite at the apple and undermines the utility of Rule 36” (http://1.usa.gov/1eZRCJZ). Federal Circuit Rule 36 allows the court to issue a judgment without an attached opinion under certain circumstances. The court’s first ruling on the TecSec case was issued without an attached opinion under Rule 36.

Broadband access is mostly a demand issue in Maine, said David Maxwell, Connect Maine Authority program director, on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network Wednesday (http://bit.ly/19mdpn3). Maxwell joined two other members of the Maine Broadband Task Force on a daily call-in radio show to talk about the obstacles of getting high-speed Internet access in Maine. “Most connections in Maine are Tier 1 or Tier 2, which we would consider your basic average,” said Maxwell. “There’s conflict when increasing demand is coming from the unserved and the underserved.” The broadband technologies are always changing, so the industry “needs to decide what level of service they are going to provide,” said Maxwell. The state would need $60 million to expand coverage to all areas of the state in a “few dozen years” and therefore the state “needs to do something different” in order to get the rest of the state connected, he said. The University of Maine wants to get 25 percent of all credits produced to be online courses, said Allyson Handley, University of Maine-Augusta president and Maine Broadband Task Force member, on the radio show. “We have a number of Mainers who have not completed their bachelor’s degrees, and technology will be a primary factor to make this program happen,” said Handley.

AT&T’s gigabit network in Austin, Texas, should lower prices and improve customer services, Rondella Hawkins, Austin Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs officer, told us Wednesday. AT&T is deploying a gigabit-speed fiber network in Austin in December, before Google Fiber’s start in mid-2014 (CD Oct 2 p7). The city doesn’t have a service agreement with AT&T for its upcoming gigabit network because the company is upgrading its existing infrastructure, said Hawkins. “Both services will provide faster services than what we already have, but we're waiting to hear from AT&T what its pricing structure will be,” she said. The city received about 160 applications from local businesses to become community anchor institutions in order to receive free Google Fiber service, said Hawkins. Her office will review the applications with Google Fiber and present the city council with a proposed list of sites on Nov. 21 for approval. AT&T hasn’t announced plans to provide free gigabit service to any institutions, but the city “welcomes the opportunity to start discussions,” said Hawkins.

Sprint’s backing and conditional acceptance of Dish Network’s petition for flexible use of its AWS-4 spectrum is helpful to the DBS company, AT&T and smaller 700 MHz licensees seeking device interoperability, Stifel Nicolaus analysts said. Resistance from Sprint “could have further complicated inter-related industry commitments and conditions,” analysts said in a research note Wednesday. “We expect the FCC to approve the interoperability implementation order this month (assuming the government shutdown ends soon), and to approve Dish’s AWS-4 petition by mid-December.” Last month, Dish asked the FCC for the option to use its AWS-4 spectrum as either downlink or uplink spectrum and a one-year extension of its terrestrial buildout requirement (CD Sept 13 p13). Dish agreed to bid the reserve price in the H-block auction to start Jan. 14 if its request is granted by Dec. 14. Dish has made a fairly compelling case for downlink use at 2000-2020 MHz, Sprint said in comments in docket 13-225. But Dish demands “more than making 2000-2020 MHz downlink in return for its participation in the 700 MHz interoperability agreement,” Sprint said. Other requests, such as bidding nearly $1.6 billion in the H-block auction, are “far-reaching” and “interdependent,” it said. The commission should ensure that “to the extent it determines that grant of Dish’s petition is warranted, it has the ability to enforce Dish’s commitments and ensure its compliance with the commission’s rules,” Sprint said. AT&T’s comment urged the commission to grant Dish’s petition. NTCH said Dish’s request for a waiver and extension of time “is procedurally and otherwise improper.” If Dish wants the AWS-4 rules to be changed, “it should request that the commission open an appropriate rulemaking to vet the issues in an orderly fashion,” NTCH commented. “If the commission is willing to accept a billion and a half dollars in exchange for a waiver, the integrity of the commission’s rules have been seriously compromised.” If Dish gains approval for converting 2000-2020 MHz to a downlink and wins the H block and a portion of J block, it could create a contiguous 30 MHz downlink block at 1995-2025 MHz “to go along with its 20 MHz downlink at 2180-2200,” said Stifel. Dish had no comment.

Residential customers of the Veracity Networks can start signing up Wednesday for Google Fiber in Provo, Utah, said the company in a blog post (http://bit.ly/18u1nuP). Sign-ups for the rest of Provo residents will open in January, said Google Fiber. The sign-up process in Provo will be different from and faster than the process for its networks in Kansas City and Austin because Google Fiber bought the iProvo network (CD Aug 18 p5). A lot of the network already exists in Provo, so Google Fiber said it “just needed to upgrade it to make it faster.” Veracity customers are getting Google Fiber first because they were already connected to the former iProvo network, said Google. Veracity customers must sign up before Oct. 31 to get access to the service. Google Fiber said it’s asking residents in apartment buildings or multidwelling units to request that their landlords fill out a questionnaire about how many units they represent.