The Interactive Advertising Bureau released the final version of its Quality Assurance Guidelines 2.0 (QAG 2.0) compliance program to provide brand safety assurances to advertisers that their ads won’t appear next to inappropriate content, said IAB in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1675vjD). The revised guidelines respond to the industry’s increased reliance on automated processes and programmatic buying, “which has put at risk trust in the quality of a transaction,” said IAB. The QAG 2.0 deals with processes in compliance, mobile, transparency and display, video and programmatic auction mechanics (real-time bidding), said IAB. The new version of the guidelines increased information on how to obtain independent certification, how industry can comply with these revised guidelines and clarifications on complaints and non-compliance, said IAB. “This iteration of QAG has now broadened the framework to embrace a wide set of stakeholders in the digital advertising supply chain,” said Rob Rasko, an author of the original QAG. “This is part of a longer progression down a formidable path, which will ultimately allow us to more fully address some of the industry’s most contentious issues -- including piracy -- in the months to come."

Tennessee is making the right moves with its transition to a statewide Internet Protocol-based 911 system, said AT&T in a case study on the state’s efforts (http://soc.att.com/145xQch). It pointed to the many benefits of next-generation 911 and included statements about the state’s progress in the case study. It also posted a video on the Tennessee transition. “Tennessee collaborated with AT&T to implement the new statewide solution, and officials have been very impressed with the company’s performance,” the telco said in the case study. “Among other competencies, AT&T is helping to set up the IP network, install new core switches, and build two new data centers with failover capability. The redundant data centers will help emergency response operations run more smoothly in the event of a natural disaster or other unanticipated wide-scale event."

NARUC formally adopted several resolutions relating to communications, following votes in favor from its telecom committee earlier in the week. The state regulators adopted the new policies Wednesday at the conclusion of its board meeting in Denver, with resolution language often clarified and adjusted over the last several days due to input from industry and debate among regulators (http://bit.ly/11ghREq). The resolutions urge the FCC to examine the Lifeline recertification process to ensure its proper function, and urge state and federal regulators to talk on how to make sure wireline and wireless communications are reliable during power outages. The resolutions affirm the agency should apply numbering resource utilization and optimization rules and obligations equally to all providers and that any future interconnection protects the public interest and that the commission should ensure that the Connect America Fund Phase II rules be transparent and help ensure voice and broadband services are comparable for those living in U.S. high-cost areas. State regulators also adopted a resolution urging states to collaborate with experts in cyberthreat management and mitigation. The telecom committee voted Tuesday to table a resolution on slamming until its November meeting due to a debate over the factual basis surrounding wireless slamming (CD July 24 p19).

The FCC Media Bureau should grant Samsung’s request for an analog tuner waiver because no objections were raised by Tuesday’s comment deadline, said Samsung in a reply comment filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/15MKaKg). Samsung has requested the waiver for the Smart Media Player, its Internet-enabled, cable compatible set-top box (CD May 23 p16). “It would be unfair to consumers to drive up the cost of Samsung’s product and reduce its energy efficiency to satisfy a rule that no longer is necessary or in the public interest,” Samsung said. The company asked the bureau to grant the waiver petition “no later than the beginning of September” so it can have the Smart Media Player on the shelves of a major retailer in time for the 2013 holiday season. “If Samsung cannot deliver Smart Media Players to this major retailer in September, the devices will not be available on retail shelves until spring 2014, if at all,” Samsung said.

Charter Communications will offer customers a dual-band, high-speed wireless router, it said in a Thursday news release (http://bit.ly/18EXmqt). The router takes advantage of the 5.0 GHz bands while operating a network on the 2.4 GHz band to ensure older devices can still connect, it said. Charter said offering a dual-band solution made it unique among its competitors. To utilize the device, customers must subscribe to one of Charter’s Plus or Ultra Internet speed tiers, said the cable ISP. “We selected this router after extensive testing against a variety of high-performance Wi-Fi equipment."

Three of four Europeans can’t access 4G/LTE in their home towns and virtually no rural area has 4G service, said the European Commission on Thursday. By contrast, over 90 percent of people in the U.S. have 4G access, it said. EU members Ireland, Cyprus and Malta have no 4G services at all, and only Germany, Estonia and Sweden have advanced 4G rollout, it said. The “EU is teetering on the edge of network collapse,” said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. With global mobile traffic predicted to grow by 66 percent a year, and more people wanting to watch video on their smart devices, more spectrum must be made available or “the whole thing falls apart,” she said. The EU isn’t to blame for the situation, the EC said. It has made huge amounts of spectrum available to meet the needs of high-speed wireless broadband, but spectrum is allocated at the national level, it said. National problems have caused procedural and licensing delays, while spectrum auctions have left mobile operators without the cash needed to roll out networks, it said. Combined with the fragmentation of 28 national markets, operators have no real chance to develop an EU-wide mobile strategy it said. The prices companies pay for spectrum can be 50 times higher in one EU country than in another, and on average, spectrum rights are nearly four times more expensive in the EU than in the U.S., it said. To alleviate the situation, the EC is consulting on better coordination of spectrum licensing to help operators take advantage of economies of scale which could come from deploying 4G in the same spectrum band in several nations at once and give consumers 4G access sooner, it said. The EC has also begun the preliminary phase of enforcement under Europe’s radio spectrum policy program to authorize EU-harmonised spectrum suitable for 4G (870 MHz), it said.

The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on TiVo’s rulemaking petition on reinstating the commission’s second report and order on commercial availability of navigation devices. TiVo said (CD July 18 p14) the EchoStar v. FCC decision this year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated rules that include standards for encoding of signals and conditional access “that cable operators, content providers, equipment manufacturers and consumers have relied upon for years,” the bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/143MroP). Comments are due Sept. 16, replies Oct. 9, it said.

The FCC should deny Gannett’s planned $1.5 billion acquisition of broadcaster Belo, said a coalition of public interest groups that filed a petition Wednesday asking the commission to block the merger. “Gannett’s acquisition of several of Belo’s television stations -- in cities including Louisville; Phoenix; Portland; Ore.; and St. Louis -- would violate the FCC’s newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule or the television duopoly rule” said Free Press, one of the groups involved, in a release Wednesday. Other members of the coalition include Common Cause, the Institute for Public Representation and National Hispanic Media Coalition. “The deal would clearly violate the Commission’s cross-ownership bans, with covert consolidation contracts working to combine newsrooms,” said Free Press CEO Craig Aaron in the release. In a conference call on the deal in June, Gannett conceded market overlaps between itself and Belo, but said it would address the problem through shared service agreements. “These covert consolidation arrangements would allow Gannett to control multiple media outlets in the same market, resulting in job losses, less diversity on the airwaves and diminished competition,” Free Press said. Gannett and Belo didn’t comment by our deadline.

Providing lots of spectrum for unlicensed use must be a priority of the FCC as it draws up rules for an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition said in a series of meetings at the FCC. “The public interest representatives emphasized that the public interest is best served by band plan, auction and repacking policies that strike a balance between broadcast stations, licensed mobile operators and facilitating robust unlicensed nationwide,” PISC said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday by the commission (http://bit.ly/13bivzG). “We acknowledged that although last year’s Spectrum Act imposed certain statutory guideposts and constraints, we urged the Staff to be mindful of the general statutory obligations that apply to auction design and license assignments: First, Section 309(j)(3), by which Congress established that competition and innovation are primary auction objectives; and second, Section 309(j)(7), by which Congress explicitly prohibits basing a public interest finding on the expectation of federal revenue.” The New America Foundation, Public Knowledge and Consumers Union attended the meetings.

The situation presented by damaged copper, either by a natural disaster or a man-made emergency, is “fundamentally different” than a scenario involving planned copper retirement and replacement, XO told FCC officials Friday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/13bhpDV). “The general copper retirement rules are inapt to the emergency situation, and the Commission needs to adopt an approach to the availability of ILEC unbundled loops specifically tailored to damage to this plant arising from natural disasters and man-made emergencies where no plans exist for copper retirement,” XO said. It advocated that, in a post-emergency situation, “an affected ILEC either continue to make available copper loops (using new copper if necessary) or provide fiber facilities or services enabling equivalent throughput to that obtained or which could have been obtained by competitors using copper (and at a net price equivalent to that of the requisite number of unbundled copper loops).”