The FCC should retain Section 15.247 of its rules and allow continued operation of high-gain antennas in the 5 GHz band, said the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association in reply comments. The use of the antennas is “important for long-distance point-to-point links for wireless Internet service providers,” WISPA said (http://bit.ly/1dYdVuL). “Those commenters agreeing with the Commission’s proposal to eliminate these rules misinterpret the record of enforcement proceedings in suggesting that equipment authorized for the 5725-5850 MHz ISM band is causing interference to Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) facilities, when a careful reading of the record shows that it is primarily illegally configured equipment that caused such interference."

Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said the FTC should issue a policy statement on the application of Section 5 FTC Act authority to anticompetitive behavior, in a speech Thursday before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (http://1.usa.gov/1aLnRIg). “Others believe that, because there are places worth visiting that the Sherman [Antitrust Act] railroad will not reach, it is important to be able to use the [unfair methods of competition] route under Section 5. They may be right in some cases, but, before we set off into uncharted waters, I want to know where we are going and, equally if not more important, where we will not venture,” she said. She cautioned that the FTC’s authority in the space should be limited to addressing harm to competition and thus consumers, not harm to competitors. She said the commission could accomplish a lot using existing antitrust law, and that Section 5 “should not play a significant role in the FTC’s competition enforcement efforts,” though the agency’s capabilities in law enforcement, policymaking and research made it nevertheless well suited to address issues with unfair methods of competition. Commissioner Joshua Wright issued a similar call last month (CD June 20 p8).

Twitter will become “a big TV screen,” with Twitter posts from ordinary people slowing down and celebrities and commercial users continuing to post for financial gain, said scholars from Columbia Business School and the University of Pittsburgh. The research was released in the journal Marketing Science, said a news release Thursday (http://prn.to/1dXZzKT). The study randomly selected 2,500 noncommercial Twitter users, and through the use of synthetic accounts, it increased the selected group’s followers. As the selected group’s followers increased, so did the posting rate, but when the group reached a moderately large amount of followers, the posting rate declined significantly, the study found. “Twitter will become less of a communications vehicle and more of a content-delivery vehicle, much like TV,” said Olivier Toubia, a Columbia Business School professor who co-authored the paper with University of Pittsburgh professor Andrew Stephen. “Peer-to-peer contact is likely to evolve to the next great thing, but with 500 million followers, Twitter isn’t just going to disappear. It’s just going to become a new way to follow celebrities, corporations, and the like."

An appeals court’s denial of a Fox injunction to bar Dish Network’s commercial-skipping AutoHop feature (CD July 25 p6) marked “a good day for consumers and for common sense,” said CEA President Gary Shapiro in a statement Thursday. Under the Supreme Court’s 1984 Sony Betamax decision, “it is long-settled law that recording a television program for personal viewing is legal fair use,” Shapiro said. “Over and over, the broadcasters have gone to court claiming that new innovations will be harmful to their industry. In fact, these new products have opened up vast new revenue streams and consumer markets.” He urged broadcasters to “embrace -- not attempt to crush -- new technologies that make television more convenient to watch.” Broadcasters need to stop suing “innovators like Dish and Aereo, and start providing the cutting-edge functions and features that their viewers demand,” Shapiro said.The ruling is favorable to Dish in the short term, said a Moody’s analyst said. But the disruptive nature of the ad-skipping feature “may ultimately hurt Dish in the long-run when it faces affiliate agreement renewals with broadcasters,” said analyst Neil Begley in a research note. If AutoHop becomes widespread among other pay-TV distributors, “networks will not be sufficiently compensated for their content, the cost of which is currently subsidized by advertising revenue,” he said. The DBS company may end up facing contentious retransmission and distribution negotiations and pay higher fees, “which may bear a greater cost than the benefit provided by the AutoHop feature,” he said. The networks will likely seek to make up for lost revenue “by asking for higher fees than typical in the next round of distribution negotiations, at a time when pay-TV distributors are struggling to contain programming costs which they can no longer pass off to their customers,” he said.

The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence seeks public input on two proposed solutions for “use cases” the energy industry faces in dealing with cybersecurity, said the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NCCoE’s parent agency, on Thursday. The two cases “represent sector-wide cybersecurity challenges that we will address through a collaborative effort between the NCCoE, the energy sector, and technology partners,” said Nate Lesser, NCCoE deputy director, in a news release. The first proposed use case solution focuses on energy companies’ “need to control physical and logical access to their resources, including buildings, equipment, information technology and industrial control systems,” NIST said. It said that need requires companies to authenticate identity with a “high level” of certainty and consistently enforce access controls. The second use case solution would allow security analysts to view operational and information technologies as a whole, which would make it easier to detect issues that could disrupt services, NIST said. The agency said energy companies rely on two distinct information technology system types: Business enterprise systems that run billing, personnel and other enterprise functions, and operational systems that generate, distribute and meter power. Operational systems rely heavily on “cyber-physical systems,” NIST said. Standard IT security products can protect enterprise systems, but are often inadequate for operational systems, requiring augmentation to avoid security blind spots, NIST said. Comments are due to the NCCoE by Aug. 12, NIST said (http://1.usa.gov/14M7j2W).

NTIA awarded the first $13.1 million in grants of what is planned to be more than $100 million under the State and Local Implementation Grant Program to help states and localities prepare for FirstNet, it said Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/137X1bH). Colorado will receive $2.5 million, Connecticut $1.4 million, Delaware $724,613, New York $4.86 million and Ohio $3.6 million, NTIA said. The agency said recipients must provide a match of at least 20 percent. The first phase of the implementation grant process is intended to help states bolster their points of contact and work with stakeholders and other entities. Other implementation grant funds will be awarded on a rolling basis, NTIA said. Its documents earlier this year (http://1.usa.gov/14a6oDf) said it anticipated awarding all grants no later than July 15. FirstNet is also extending its spectrum lease negotiating time period for both a group of broadband stimulus grantees as well as for the public safety broadband project of Harris County, Texas. FirstNet adopted two resolutions to that effect Monday, it said Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1bRcUIf). NTIA had suspended seven of the public safety broadband grant projects in May 2012 to make sure they didn’t conflict with FirstNet. FirstNet has attempted to negotiate spectrum leases with them since February to reactivate them as FirstNet pilot projects, and successfully negotiated one such lease with the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority last month (CD June 28 p11). FirstNet now has until Aug. 13 to negotiate with the other six, and through Aug. 29 to negotiate with Texas on the Harris County project, which was not funded through the same stimulus program.

Cloud data center solutions provider CoreSite Realty is expanding its business relationship with NTT Communications. The NTT subsidiary will enter CoreSite’s Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia facilities and expand its presence in the company’s Chicago and Los Angeles offices, allowing NTT Communications to increase its access to CoreSite’s customers. CoreSite said Thursday that its customers will benefit from a direct link to NTT Communications’ global network and give them additional connectivity options to the CoreSite Mesh. The expanded partnership will let NTT Communications “reach a broad community of Internet-centric businesses,” said Michael Wheeler, executive vice president-NTT America, in a news release (http://bit.ly/172r0iD).

Proposals by the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition that the FCC step up rule enforcement against low-power TV stations and require secondary broadcast licensees share a single 6 MHz 2 channel would be illegal rule changes, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition in an ex parte filing Thursday (http://bit.ly/19kiv8X). PISC said the agency should “vigorously” enforce rules “to ensure that LPTV, translator and booster stations that are not entitled to interference protection also do not have protected status in the TV Bands Database.” If PISC’s suggestions -- made in an ex parte filing Tuesday (http://bit.ly/12jBYUZ) -- are put into effect, it could “slow the Spectrum Auction implementation by many months or years because of the lawsuits which will be initiated to protect the rights of the LPTV, translator, and TV booster services,” said LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino. Responding to PISC’s statement that “too many” LPTV stations “are not operating or occupying far more spectrum than needed for a single digital stream of content,” Gravino said the LPTV rules are protected by Congress, and that LPTV stations “are free to program as much or as little of their 6-MHz license spectrum as they want.” Since LPTV has “secondary spectrum priority and interference to other TV stations only,” unlicensed spectrum uses like those advocated by PISC “have to not interfere with it, not the other way around,” said Gravino. “What PISC wants to do is to do a ’taking’ from LPTV so that their Silicon Valley backers do not have to bid on spectrum that would help with the other goals of the auction, that is, funding First-Net, and reducing the deficit.” PISC’s recommendations are consistent with longstanding FCC policy on “legacy services,” said Harold Feld, PISC member and Public Knowledge senior vice president. “We think LPTV stations that are doing their job and servicing their communities ought to be protected, but a license is not an entitlement,” he said. The agency should issue a public notice that focuses on LPTV and the spectrum repacking to facilitate more discussion of the issue, he said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau granted a petition for transfer of control of Global Conference Partners from Freeconference.com to Iotum Inc. Grant of the application “will serve the public interest,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/13fQhVw).

The FCC Wireline Bureau is closing its Connect America Cost Model virtual workshop, it said in a public notice Wednesday (http://bit.ly/13fPhAI). The virtual workshop, started in October, examined 28 different topics over the course of ten months, the bureau said. Parties can continue submitting input about a finalized cost model for Connect America Phase II into docket 10-90, it said.