Forty-four percent of small firms have been hit by a cyberattack, said a survey the National Small Business Association released Tuesday. NSBA’s Aug. 14-23 online survey of 845 small-business owners said 59 percent of the cyberattacked respondents had a service interruption, 35 percent had information falsely sent from their domains or email addresses and 19 percent saw their website go down. The average cost associated with such cyberattacks was $8,699, said the survey (http://bit.ly/14fft26). It said 88 percent of respondents back legislation that increases criminal penalties for those convicted of online theft. The growing information technology “reliance” of small firms “makes issues such as cybersecurity, intellectual property protection and a functional online marketplace critically important,” said NSBA CEO Todd McCracken in a news release (http://prn.to/18vsg3O).

A radio broadcaster and an advertising software company are working together to bring digital marketing products to small firms in 15 U.S. urban markets. Radio One will offer Radiate Media’s radiate360 platform to some of the broadcaster’s clients, said the ad firm in a news release Tuesday (http://prn.to/14ZsY8V). Services include social media, mobile marketing and directory management.

The recent release of National Security Agency surveillance documents revealed behaviors that suggest bulk collection of phone records should end, said Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a statement Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1elL5sO). “The government’s misrepresentations inevitably led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court being consistently misinformed as it made binding rulings on the meaning of U.S. surveillance law,” said the senators, members of the Intelligence Committee. “This underscores our concern that intelligence agencies’ assessments and descriptions about particular collection programs -- even significant ones -- are not always accurate.” The documents released last week (CD Sept 12 p11) show “ineptitude and not malice” on the part of the NSA, which if true makes the programs questionably effective, they said. These NSA violations of court orders, allegedly made in ignorance, raise the “potential for blind spots in the NSA’s surveillance programs,” Udall and Wyden said. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence defended its program and how it’s trying to reduce concerns. “As the Court’s opinion clearly shows, there were compliance incidents that were discovered by NSA, and resolved four years ago,” an ODNI spokesman told us in a statement. “Despite the fact that those incidents were largely the result of the complexity of technological systems, we know that they raise concerns about civil liberties and privacy and the protection of US persons data. By continuing to declassify and release information about the Intelligence Community’s activities, while protecting valuable sources and methods, we hope that over time we will alleviate those concerns. It’s important that Americans know that the intelligence community is committed to protecting our nation and does not have the wherewithal nor the resources to snoop on Americans.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pointed to these understanding gaps last week (CD Sept 13 p9). “These gaps in understanding led, in turn, to unintentional misrepresentations in the way the collection was described to the FISC,” Clapper said then in a statement (http://1.usa.gov/1eehimy). “As discussed in the documents, there was no single cause of the [compliance] incidents and, in fact, a number of successful oversight, management, and technology processes in place operated as designed and uncovered these matters.” Clapper said there were a “handful” of such compliance issues, resolved four years ago.

Mediacom opposed NAB’s rejection of draft legislation aimed at increasing FCC authority during retransmission consent disputes. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. (CD Sept 10 p6). NAB didn’t offer any suggestions for improving the bill “or any alternative solutions to the problems for consumers that Rep. Eshoo and many others think are caused by the retransmission consent law as it currently operates,” said a Mediacom attorney Joseph Young in a letter to acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn’s staff. NAB’s “denial that blackouts are possible ignores reality,” the letter said. Even if a strong broadcast signal is available at a consumer’s home, “the digital transition means that he or she must, first of all, have a digital ready television set or a separate converter,” it said. To have any hope of reliable reception, the viewer will have to mount a rooftop antenna, “which both increases costs and may require senior citizens and others unable or unwilling to climb on the roof to hire someone to perform the installation,” it said. The cost of switching to a competitive multichannel video programming distributor may be higher, Mediacom said. The FCC should require that before a broadcast station licensee blocks carriage by any distributor willing to continue meaningful negotiations or submit deadlocked negotiations to binding arbitration, “the licensee must ensure that its station’s signal is available off-air to a very high percentage of households in the station’s DMA [designated market area], without any expense beyond the cost of an affordable in-home antenna,” it said.

The House Rural Education Caucus hosted an educational briefing on E-rate reform Monday, a spokeswoman for NTCA told us. She was on Capitol Hill accompanying Leif Oveson, NTCA government affairs director. President Barack Obama announced his intentions this summer to revamp E-rate as part of his ConnectED initiative, which the FCC has been pursuing in a proceeding on what it calls E-rate 2.0.

The federal government has tried to reduce barriers that companies may face in installing broadband infrastructure on federal land and roads, said Homeland Security Director for the Office of Emergency Communications Ron Hewitt and Martha Benson, General Services Administration Office of Real Property Asset Management public buildings service assistant commissioner, in a joint White House blog post Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1ejeS5j). They co-chair the Broadband Deployment on Federal Property Working Group and outlined how many parts of the country still lack adequate broadband. But the federal government “owns or manages nearly 30 percent of all land in the United States, including 10,000 buildings nationwide,” they said. “Today, we are announcing new steps to build on this progress, including the launch of several new tools and resources to help make it easier for companies to build out high-speed Internet, particularly in underserved communities, and the release of a progress report on implementation of the President’s Executive Order.” The tools and the report were developed by a working group of 14 federal agencies charged with managing federal properties and roads, they said. The tools include an interactive map to help stakeholders identify how to leverage federal properties, a dig-once guide and a broadband inventory tool kit. The government is also working on “a single master application for deploying broadband on Federal properties, to provide multiple broadband service providers and public-safety entities with streamlined business documents for the deployment of wireline and wireless facilities on Federal property,” the post said. “In the coming weeks, we will also be launching an online broadband projects platform, located on the Department of Transportation’s Federal Infrastructure Projects Permitting Dashboard, which will allow agencies to identify and expedite key broadband projects and to publicly track their status.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau adopted a consent decree terminating its investigation into Cordova’s “possible violations” of rules on the deployment of digital wireless hearing aid-compatible handset models, said the bureau in an order released Monday (http://bit.ly/1aOjAYg). The Wireless Bureau had referred Cordova’s apparent violations to the Enforcement Bureau after receiving Cordova’s 2010 annual hearing aid compatibility status report. “The company has modified its procedures for monitoring and reporting Cordova’s compliance with the hearing aid-compatible handset deployment requirements,” the order said. It said Cordova will make a “voluntary contribution” of $35,000 to the U.S. Treasury.

HTC and Athena Wireless Communications said Monday they have completed S1 and X2 interoperability testing between HTC’s Mobile Core and Athena’s Pixie LTE small cell technologies. HTC’s Mobile Core software, including the ER5000 MME, SGSN and SmallCell Gateway, provide users with quick deployment and support for “small to very large” systems with unlimited scalability for signaling and data throughput, HTC said in a news release. Athena’s Pixie small cells allow for a “differentiated small cell solution” for cellular infrastructure OEMs and system integrators through the use of integrated millimeter-wave backhaul, Athena CEO Eduardo Tinoco said in the news release (http://bit.ly/1aOjz6x).

Any application for 900 MHz B/ILT licenses in any NPSPAC region received after Aug. 26 doesn’t require additional evidence of concurrence from Sprint, said an FCC Wireless Bureau public notice Monday (http://bit.ly/1aOiVWI). It said Sprint on Aug. 26 said it had shut down its nationwide Nextel iDEN network and surrendered all of its 900 MHz special temporary authority grants, or allowed them to expire without renewal.

Nexstar Broadcasting and Mission Broadcasting agreed to buy five TV stations in four markets for a total of $103.3 million. Nexstar will buy stations in Iowa’s Des Moines and Sioux City and in Rock Island, Ill., from entities related to Citadel Communications for $88 million, said Nexstar in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1djujHM). Mission will acquire two stations in Binghamton, N.Y., from Stainless Broadcasting for $15.25 million “in a transaction structured as an asset purchase agreement,” it said. In the first 12 months following the transaction closing, the five stations are expected to contribute about $35 million in incremental net revenue, said Nexstar.