Southeastern Vermont is acquiring faster broadband service, said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in a news release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/13mEMie). His office named 14 towns that are receiving “state-of-the-art Internet access at speeds 100 times faster than average,” which he said “offers the chance to dramatically change how we think about education, health care and business.” His office praised the work of Vermont Telephone Co., or VTel, in bringing $35-a-month gigabit speeds to Springfield and the other 13 towns. “About 1,500 homes and business [sic] in the Springfield area already have the new fiber-optic connection, a number which VTel expects to double by the end of December,” his office said. “By the end of 2013, VTel says the framework of the fiber work, which includes running the fiber through 14 towns and into neighborhoods, will be complete.” Priorities now include attracting businesses and “good-paying jobs,” Sanders added. He called the deployments “a result of a federal, state and local government partnership with private business.”

Netflix’s House of Cards and Arrested Development snared nominations for 2013 Emmy Awards. CNN reported as breaking news Thursday morning that two Netflix series had received Emmy nominations, “marking the first time that a series distributed online has been nominated for an Emmy.” CBS reported the nominations as “the first time that television’s top awards have recognized a program delivered online as equal in quality to the best that TV has to offer.” The Huffington Post called the news “a breakthrough moment for shows making a splash without the aid of a TV set.” USA Today cited “the first time shows not aired on broadcast or cable networks were nominated in top categories.” House of Cards received four nominations, including one for outstanding drama series, and Jason Bateman of Arrested Development nabbed a nomination for lead actor in a comedy series. Other nominations for House of Cards include Robin Wright for leading actress in a drama, Kevin Spacey for leading actor in a drama and David Fincher for director of a drama series. A list of nominations is at http://bit.ly/111VpyQ.

Workers don’t know employers can see their work email on their mobile phones, said a MobileIron survey released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/12VYoGx). Of the 84 percent of respondents who own a smartphone and 82 percent of tablet users who use their devices for work purposes, 41 percent of respondents were sure their employer couldn’t see any information on their mobile device and 15 percent weren’t sure, the survey found. Respondents were most concerned with their employer seeing their personal communications and 48 percent of respondents found location a concern. People 18-34 years old were less comfortable with their employer seeing their data than people over 55 years old, the survey found. Employers can see corporate email, attachments and contacts on mobile devices, but they can’t see personal email, texts and information in apps. Vision Critical conducted an online survey of 2,997 randomly selected adults from the U.K., U.S. and Germany in June.

The FCC proposed an $8,000 fine for Medina, N.Y., noncommercial FM station WFWO for twice operating a transmitter from an unauthorized location without a license. A Media Bureau notice of apparent liability in the case was released Wednesday.

The large number of new “flagship” smartphones introduced by “top brands” in the first half of this year has given consumers “more choices than ever,” contributing to an expected doubling in shipments from 2012 to 2017, IHS said Wednesday. Global smartphone shipments will hit 1.5 billion units in 2017, up from 712 million in 2012, the research company predicted. Shipments this year are “set to rise” to 897 million units, it said. Shipments will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.8 percent, reaching 1.1 billion units in 2014, 1.2 billion in 2015 and 1.4 billion in 2016, it projected. Apple’s iPhone “franchise appears to be stalling” because Q1 shipments of 37.4 million were weaker than expectations, IHS said. The next iPhone model isn’t expected until the back half of this year, and “there is a real possibility that the full-year 2013 sales volume of the iPhone may be essentially flat” at about 150 million units, down from 134 million in 2012, it said. “The possible slowing growth” of the iPhone and the “rapid pace of competitive” smartphone releases highlights the “ferocious nature of the handset business, especially now as the market continues to pivot from a market dominated by lower-end handsets known as feature phones to one that is increasingly smartphone-centric,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst-consumer and communications, in a news release. Samsung continued its strong growth in Q1 with a quarter-over-quarter increase of 9 million units, while brands including Coolpad and Gionee outshipped HTC and Motorola, said IHS.

Incremental revenue for Gogo can be driven by its planned apps to help airlines and business aircraft operators collect, analyze and transmit real-time performance and data, said Evercore Partners analysts. The services “run largely through internal Wi-Fi systems and do not eat up external bandwidth,” they said in a research note. But there’s no track record for such services “and they compete with more established offerings such as DirecTV and other IFE [in-flight entertainment] systems,” they said. Gogo has made substantial investments in ground-based infrastructure, “which should help differentiate its offering from competition,” they said.

TechAmerica objected to a proposed Massachusetts tax on computer and software services in a transportation finance bill. “If enacted, the new 6.25 percent tax on computer services would strike a blow to Massachusetts’s technology industry, and would put the state at a competitive disadvantage,” wrote Kevin Callahan, director-state government affairs, in a Wednesday letter to the Legislature (http://bit.ly/1dFnwpS). “The proposed tax on computer system design services would have a far greater impact than the $160 million in annual revenues from businesses that has been projected. One analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation places that figure at closer to $500 million.”

The FCC should reinstate most of the CableCARD rules stripped away by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its EchoStar decision, TiVo said in a petition for rulemaking filed Tuesday (http://bit.ly/12VRaSI). The court decision stripped away the “Second Report & Order pertaining to Section 629,” including rules governing CableCARDs and encoding rules. By vacating a number of technical standards that applied to cable operators along with the encoding rules that were at the center of EchoStar, “the Court created an unhealthy amount of uncertainty in the industry -- uncertainty that harms innovation and competition as well as settled consumer expectations,” said TiVo. To comply with the court’s ruling that the FCC did not have the authority to apply encoding rules governing copy protection to DBS, TiVo’s petition asks the commission to leave the rules that affect DBS out of the rulemaking. Since the court didn’t “make any findings adverse to any of the other regulations” aside from the rules that applied to DBS, “there is nothing in EchoStar to impede the Commission from re-instating the non-controversial standards-reference regulations adopted with the Second R&O, and from re-instating the Encoding Rules, sans the language that included DBS operators in their scope,” TiVo said. Restoring the rules would promote competition and clear up confusion about the state of CableCARD regulation, TiVo said. “Given Section 629’s requirement that the Commission assure the competitive availability of retail navigation devices, it is the Commission’s statutory responsibility to resolve any uncertainty or ambiguity concerning its rules,” TiVo said. The set-top box maker pointed to the Media Bureau’s CableCARD waiver granted to Charter Communications as evidence of a need for more clarity on CableCARD regulation. “The Media Bureau’s Order speculated about, but did not purport to resolve, the status of earlier and later rules in the wake of EchoStar’s rejection of only the Second R&O,” TiVo said. “Charter formulated arguments suggesting that every FCC rule pertaining to CableCARDs and common reliance was now subject to reinterpretation and dismissal,” said TiVo. The Media Bureau didn’t comment. “I have a hard time seeing what choice the FCC has,” said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. “They have a statutory obligation to do something about this -- I would expect to see most of the rules come back,” said Bergmayer. CEA also said it supports the proposed rulemaking. “They have the ability to reinstate them, it’s not a heavy lift,” said CEA’s Julie Kearney. The NCTA and American Cable Association -- both of which have opposed CableCARD requirements in the past -- did not comment on TiVo’s petition. “The petition doesn’t indicate any market impediment as a result” of the rules being vacated by EchoStar, said Davis Wright cable attorney Paul Glist, who has represented companies seeking CableCARD waivers. “This shouldn’t be controversial,” said TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn. “These are the rules we've all lived by for years.”

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers plans to reintroduce legislation to require the FCC to pair for commercial auction the 1755-1780 MHz band with the 2155-2180 MHz band, Capitol Hill sources told us Wednesday. The forthcoming bill, which will be co-sponsored by Reps. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., will mirror the Efficient Use of Government Spectrum Act which failed to pass in the 112th Congress (CD April 12/12 p1). Pairing the 1755-1780 MHz band, which has long been a top target of carriers, with the 2155-2180 MHz band would allow the spectrum to be auctioned and licensed by February 2015. Spokesmen for Matsui and Guthrie did not comment. The bill provides 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, Hill sources said. Defense is a large user of the band and the federal demand for spectrum is increasing due to the prevalence of advanced systems like drones. The cost of relocating Defense systems would be covered by the Spectrum Relocation Fund, which would be paid with the proceeds from the future commercial auction of the 1755-1780 MHz band, according to the bill. A March 2012 NTIA report estimated that repurposing all 95 MHz of the 1755-1850 MHz band would cost $18 billion and take 10 years to clear. NTIA had no comment. CTIA Vice President-Government Affairs Jot Carpenter said in an email statement the group “strongly supports efforts to reallocate the 1755 to 1780 megahertz band in time for it to be auctioned with the 2155 to 2180 megahertz band. Congresswoman Matsui has been a consistent advocate for the reallocation of the 1755 band and we greatly appreciate her continued leadership on this issue.”

BSA/The Software Alliance supports the Patents And Trademarks Encourage New Technology (PATENT) Jobs Act (HR-2582), which would exempt the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) from federal budget sequestration, the group said Wednesday. PTO currently faces the loss of $150 million from its budget due to sequestration. The bill, introduced in late June by California Democratic Reps. Mike Honda, Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo, will allow PTO to “continue self-funded operations critical to America’s innovation economy,” BSA said. It’s important for Congress to act quickly on the bill given PTO’s current backlog of more than 600,000 pending patent applications, the group said. “A funding cut would further exacerbate this problem,” BSA said in a letter to Honda, Lofgren and Eshoo. “We are also concerned it could delay the opening of much-needed new USPTO satellite offices in Denver, Dallas and Silicon Valley” (http://bit.ly/193q2bY). The bill has also received support from other industry trade groups, including the Internet Association and the Software & Information Industry Association.