Industry participants who took part in a meeting Wednesday at the FCC on 700 MHz interoperability (CD Aug 1 p1) were eagerly awaiting an ex parte filing by the agency on Thursday so they could get a better view on commission takeaways from the two-hour session, they told us. Several attendees said after the gathering that differences remain, with AT&T pressing for a compromise that doesn’t require a mandate, consistent with its filings on the topic, and smaller carriers arguing it isn’t necessary to address the alleged Channel 51 interference issues before requiring interoperability in the band. Verizon Wireless was at the meeting, as was T-Mobile, which inherited some 700 MHz A-block spectrum with its purchase of MetroPCS, and the small carriers that have been active in the proceeding, sources said. They said the meeting included a few attendees from the business side of their respective companies, including U.S. Cellular CEO Kenneth Meyers. AT&T was said to be represented by Senior Vice President Bob Quinn and Vice President Joan Marsh. “AT&T appreciates the productive dialogue that Chairwoman Clyburn has initiated and remains committed to finding a solution to the interoperability challenges in the lower 700 MHz band,” said the carrier in a statement. Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who signed off on a U.S. Cellular/Skadden Arps letter (http://bit.ly/1cinjgd) on 700 MHz interoperability, said in an email Thursday he does some work as a contractor for that law firm and is of counsel to U.S. Cellular on the issue.

The FTC issued new guidance for consumers on identifying and dealing with hacked email or social networking accounts, it said in a Thursday release (http://1.usa.gov/17mEE0o). The guidance, entitled Hacked Email, identifies signs an account may have been hacked, such as an emptied sent folder or social posts the user didn’t create. It suggests consumers make sure security software is up to date, change passwords, and check with their email provider or social networking site to restore the account.

Eutelsat’s debt may be downgraded over concerns about the company’s deal to buy all of the “share capital” of Satmex for $831 million in cash, said Moody’s Thursday. The acquisition “will boost Eutelsat’s presence in Latin America, a competitive market which offers good growth prospects,” said Assistant Vice President Gunjan Dixit of the ratings agency in an email to investors, but it “will lead to an increase in Eutelsat’s leverage.” Under review for downgrade are Eutelsat’s Baa2 issuer rating and a Baa3 senior unsecured bank credit line.

Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and John Thune, R-S.D., introduced legislation Thursday to codify a ban on Internet access taxes and on what they said are multiple and discriminatory taxes on e-commerce. The Internet Tax Freedom Forever Act would indefinitely extend the provisions of the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA), which are scheduled to expire Nov. 1, 2014. The new bill is an “extension” of Wyden’s work on the issue, his spokesman told us via email. “The legislation includes findings that underline important principles that have been established since the law was first passed,” the spokesman said. Wyden was the original author of ITFA and helped extend the law three times since its passage. There are no substantive differences between the Internet Tax Freedom Forever Act and the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (S-31), which was introduced in February by Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Dean Heller, R-Nev. Thune, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, said: “Keeping the Internet accessible to consumers encourages innovation and investment in our global economy.” Wyden said consumers, entrepreneurs, and innovators “can breathe easy knowing that a permanent extension of ITFA is on its way.” T-Mobile Vice President-Federal Legislative Affairs Tony Russo said the bill will provide a “permanent and predictable tax environment for businesses to grow, and promote further broadband adoption in all parts of America,” according to a news release. NCTA urged swift passage of the bill in a separate news release: “Extending the Internet tax moratorium will protect consumers and small businesses from new and burdensome state and local taxes on Internet access,” the group said. Peter Davidson, Verizon’s senior vice president of federal government relations, said: “It is critical that Congress permanently extend these Internet tax policies to ensure the U.S. remains competitive in today’s global marketplace.”

The FCC Wireless Bureau extended the reply comment deadline on an NPRM on combating contraband cellphones in correctional facilities from Friday to Aug. 23. The bureau said it acted at the request of the American Correctional Association. “ACA states it will be holding its annual summer meeting on August 9-14, 2013, and issues relating to managed access services and contraband devices, including issues raised by the FCC’s pending proceeding, will be discussed at the conference,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/12JgMIe). “ACA believes that further discussion of the issues by its membership at the meeting will enable it to submit more complete reply comments."

CTIA fired back at NAB comments that the FCC should gather more information “on how intensely mobile broadband providers use their already-allotted spectrum in various geographic markets” as the agency writes its annual wireless competition report. The NAB remarks (http://bit.ly/1bOZJs9) came in reply comments to a Wireless Bureau public notice. “While NAB may be confused about the facts when it comes to consumer demand and spectrum usage, it is clear that the Commission need not entertain this misguided attempt to create a diversion in its ongoing spectrum proceedings,” CTIA Vice President Scott Bergmann said in a Thursday blog post (http://bit.ly/13q8inT). “Instead, it can continue to focus on the critically important spectrum proceedings that Congress and the Administration directed.” More work remains to hit spectrum goals in the National Broadband Plan and Spectrum Act, he said. “Having recently released an order adopting service rules for the H Block, the FCC must now turn to planning an auction of this spectrum,” he said. “The Commission also recently initiated a proceeding to make up to 70 MHz of AWS-3 spectrum available for mobile broadband. Going forward, both the AWS-3 proceeding and H Block auction will require the attention and expertise of key Commission staff. Most importantly, the Commission is working tirelessly to establish rules for the first-of-its-kind broadcast incentive auction, an incredibly complex process.” NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan said the blog post leaves questions unanswered. “It appears as if our comments hit a nerve in the soft underbelly of CTIA’s unending spectrum crunch storyline,” Kaplan said. “We asked two simple questions that CTIA’s blog still fails to answer. First, if the government is going to push everything else aside to dish out spectrum to the wireless industry, one would imagine it would do at least some analysis as to how the wireless industry is using that spectrum -- especially when it already has far more spectrum than any other industry. And today, the FCC collects absolutely no data -- literally zero -- on how efficiently the wireless industry uses its spectrum. Second, we asked whether the recent major spectrum consolidation in the wireless industry -- with megahertz upon megahertz changing hands -- should affect how we view how much spectrum that industry needs? These are basic questions that a data-driven agency should explore, and it’s curious that it provoked such a strong response from CTIA."

Time Warner Cable had more than 608,000 super-fast broadband subscribers in Q2, double the number of such wideband customers in the same quarter last year, the company reported Thursday (http://bit.ly/142WFCS). That increase, along with a 21 percent increase in business services revenue to $565 million, helped drive the company’s $5.55 billion in revenue for Q2 2013, a 2.7 percent improvement over Q2 2012. TWC had net income of $481 million this quarter, up from last year’s Q2 net income of $452 million. TWC’s growth in business services revenue -- the 13th straight quarter of such growth -- came primarily from increases in the number of high-speed data and voice subscribers and “growth in cell tower backhaul revenue,” said the earnings release. Advertising revenue decreased 1.9 percent to $260 million, because of a decline in paid political ads, said TWC. During Q2, TWC increased the number of its Wi-Fi access points in New York City to 19,000 and released versions of its TV Everywhere offering for Roku, Samsung Smart TV and Xbox, the company said. Time Warner Cable stock closed up 3.2 percent to $117.78 Thursday.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said lawmakers should “thoroughly investigate” and “promptly pass legislation” to rein in the NSA’s top-secret XKeyscore program, in a news release Thursday. The program, whose existence was revealed in a Guardian article published online late Wednesday (http://bit.ly/15aTRpw), permits NSA analysts to search and access Internet traffic data including user emails, chats and browsing history. Barton said lawmakers were “assured that the NSA was only collecting unidentifiable metadata that could only be accessed after a warrant was issued. The truth is that by filling out a simple online form analysts could search your emails, your online chats and even your browsing history without prior authorization. This is a violation of your privacy, a violation of the 4th Amendment, and it is just wrong,” Barton said. Separately, the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee said the disclosure of XKeyscore “provides a completely inaccurate picture of the program,” in a joint news release. “The program does not target American citizens,” said Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md. “Further, the program referenced in the story is not used for indiscriminate monitoring of the Internet, as many falsely believe. Rather, the program is simply a tool used by our intelligence analysts to better understand foreign intelligence, including terrorist targets overseas. Finally, the story also once again ignores the legal constraints, comprehensive training, and layers of oversight built into all NSA programs. Every search on the program by an NSA analyst is fully auditable to ensure it is done within the law,” Rogers and Ruppersberger said.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., added the Efficient Use of Government Spectrum Act (HR-2739) to the House Democrats’ “Make It In America” jobs plan. The bipartisan bill would require the FCC to pair for commercial auction the 1755-1780 MHz band with the 2155-2180 MHz band (CD July 19 p3). Pairing the 1755-1780 MHz band with the 2155-2180 MHz band would allow the spectrum to be auctioned and licensed by February 2015. The bill would give the Department of Defense and other federal agencies a five-year window to leave the band and offers reimbursements for planning costs and the acquisition of replacement systems. Last month Defense offered to open up the 1755-1780 MHz band for sale by the FCC for wireless broadband use as long as Defense would be permitted to continue its operations in the 1780-1850 MHz band and have shared access to the 2025-2110 MHz band (CD July 23 p1).

Straight Path Communications subsidiary Straight Path IP Group (SPIPG) said Thursday it has filed patent protection claims with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against major electronics companies LG, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba and Vizio. SPIPG wants the ITC to bar the importation and sale of allegedly infringing products the companies manufacture. Those products include smartphones, tablets, e-readers, smart TVs, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes, SPIPG said. SPIPG also filed a lawsuit against “substantially the same parties” in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (http://bit.ly/18UjddA). SPIPG also filed a separate lawsuit against VoIP providers Bandwidth.com, Telesphere Networks and Vocalocity. SPIPG claims the three companies infringed its patents by selling and authorizing “certain Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products and/or services” (http://bit.ly/16J4HzO). “We intend to vigorously and tenaciously defend our IP across industry verticals, wherever our technology is being used without license,” said SPIPG CEO David Jonas in a statement. “We owe it to our stockholders to prevent infringement of our IP.” An LG spokesman said the company “does not generally comment on pending legal matters.” Bandwidth.com’s “products and services do not infringe any patents issued to Straight Path Communications,” a spokeswoman said. “We nonetheless will review the allegations. We intend to vigorously defend the suit and anticipate a favorable outcome.” The other companies involved did not respond to requests for comment.