CTIA asked the FCC to change part of its May 17 text-to-911 order to drop a roaming requirement. CTIA took issue with a single paragraph in the order, requiring all carriers and providers of interconnected text message services to provide subscribers with automatic 911 bounceback messages by Sept. 30 (CD May 9 p4). That paragraph said the requirement means carriers also have to provide the message “when a consumer roaming on a network initiates a text-to-911 in an area where text-to-911 service is not available.” CTIA said it’s too early in the game to impose this requirement (http://bit.ly/11UWFo1). “The Commission should not address roaming requirements until appropriate technical organizations are able to confirm that such requirements are technically feasible,” CTIA said. “Eliminating or modifying the rules ... will help ensure that the Commission complies with its statutory obligations. As adopted, the Commission did not provide adequate notice of the roaming requirement because commenters were instructed not to address roaming during the bounce-back message portion of this proceeding. Moreover, the rule is inconsistent with the Twenty-First Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act ... because, to the extent that the Commission relies on the CVAA as the rule’s basis of authority, the rule must be ‘achievable and technically feasible.'"

Tech Valley Communications (TVC) completed the purchase of most of the assets of TelJet Longhaul (CD April 3 p10), making TVC the operator of one of the largest and most dense fiber networks in upstate New York and northern New England, said TVC in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/13l391j).

Jarvinian plans to support testing necessary to ensure that broadcast auxiliary service (BAS) interests are protected as it moves forward with measuring the potential impact of terrestrial low-power service operation on BAS, it said in a filing in docket RM-11685 (http://bit.ly/1cItAxz). Jarvinian conducted the terrestrial low-power service proposed by Globalstar (CD June 19 p21). Jarvinian coordinated testing with BAS license holders and the tests “very comfortably met all of the agreed upon conditions of power level and stop buzzer protection,” it said in response to a filing from Engineers for the Integrity of Broadcast Auxiliary Services Spectrum (http://bit.ly/1avMF9v). “There have been no reports of BAS interference to TLPS in any test environment."

The FCC Media Bureau granted a Time Warner Cable petition this week to exempt the cable provider from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices for eight communities in Kentucky, said a Media Bureau order released Monday (http://bit.ly/19OZOrk). TWC’s petition cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The deregulation affects just under 33,000 households in the communities of Ashland, Flatwoods and Boyd. The Media Bureau also granted an effective competition petition for Cebridge Acquisitions, doing business as SuddenLink Communications, for the city of Helena-West Helena in Arkansas, said an order Monday (http://bit.ly/16K3IQj). The petition cites video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The deregulation affects around 4,600 households, said the order.

The “Watch ABC” TV Everywhere service will be available in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., said Disney/ABC Television Group in a Monday news release. Viewers in the market who have participating TV subscription services will join those in New York and Philadelphia among those who can use the app. Disney will roll out service in Houston and Fresno, Calif., prior to the fall broadcast television season, it said. Disney/ABC Television has agreements in place for its app with Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Midcontinent Communications and AT&T U-verse, it said. The company also made the app available for Android tablets, it said. Disney announced the app in May, when it became the first linear broadcasting service to provide access to shows and local programming in an app (CD May 14 p2).

Gilat’s Spacenet unveiled an enhanced suite of integrated Wi-Fi services. “Tiered Wi-Fi” services provide a centralized approach to in-store Wi-Fi “enabling the retailer to select the level of services needed for their specific retail environment,” Gilat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/12z4Q9q). The services will help retailers provide fast, reliable, accessible and secure Wi-Fi services throughout each store, it said. Customers will have an enhanced guest Wi-Fi user experience “that is uniform across all stores,” it said.

Netflix has a deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television to exclusively stream the first season of New Girl starting July 1, said the companies in a news release Monday (http://prn.to/14IS3jt). It’s a new, multi-year exclusive subscription VOD agreement, and subsequent seasons of the show will be available to Netflix after the broadcast seasons, said the companies. “New Girl has proven to be the biggest breakout sitcom hit of the season and we are thrilled to be able to offer it so quickly to our U.S. subscribers,” said Netflix Chief Operating Officer Ted Sarandos.

The House Communications Subcommittee is planning to schedule an FCC reform hearing this month, said Hill and industry sources. The hearing has not yet been announced and a subcommittee spokesman had no comment Monday.

AT&T named Underwriters Laboratories a preferred PCS Type Certification Review Board (PTCRB) lab for the AT&T Mobile Broadband Accelerator (MBA) Labs program, said a UL news release Monday (http://prn.to/1b21HT2). MBA Labs eliminates redundancies in devices, which allows technical acceptance to be achieved up to 33 percent faster, said UL, while PTRCB is the certification organization for U.S. wireless carriers. The MBA program was designed to make the process of network acceptance easier and more efficient, and UL will use this service to guide integrators through the onboarding process to help ensure that all AT&T requirements are met and mistakes are avoided, said UL. The partnership prevents the duplication of testing procedures and ensures that devices meet specific performance requirements, said UL.

Pandora Media signed an agreement with Acacia Research subsidiary Unified Messaging Solutions to resolve all disputes between the companies pending in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del., Acacia said in an SEC filing Monday. Unified sued Pandora Jan. 15, claiming the online music service violated U.S. Patents 6,857,074; 7,836,141; 7,895,313; and 7,934,148. Unified is the exclusive licensee of all four patents, each entitled “Systems and methods for storing, delivering, and managing messages,” it said. Pandora “committed indirect infringement through its inducing and/or contributing to the infringements of its customers via storing, delivering, and managing messages” through the operation of the Pandora Web-based communications services, the suit claimed. Pandora “has known or should have known that its actions would induce or contribute to actual infringement by its customers,” Unified claimed. The complaint didn’t mention that Unified was an Acacia subsidiary. The SEC filing didn’t give terms of the settlement and Acacia declined to provide that information. Pandora declined to comment on the settlement. An unspecified Acacia subsidiary, meanwhile, bought patents for content security used in consumer electronics and mobile devices including smartphones, tablets and laptops from an unspecified “major semiconductor technology company,” Acacia said in a news release Monday. Acacia declined to name the subsidiary, the company the patents were purchased from, or say how much they cost. A growing number of “major technology companies” are selecting Acacia as their partner for the licensing of their patented technologies, said CEO Paul Ryan. “We continue to grow our base of future revenues by adding new patent portfolios.” Acacia sued many companies before Pandora for patent infringement, including DirecTV, EchoStar, Charter Communications, Comcast and Cox Communications, as well as several pornography websites. More recently, Acacia sued Huawei and ZTE alleging infringement of Access Co.’s PalmSource patents in a dispute that’s scheduled for trial in mid-2014 in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, Acacia President Matthew Vella said recently. Acacia reached agreement with Access in 2010 to license PalmSource patents to cellphone suppliers and has since generated “in the nine digits” of gross revenue through settlements and licensing pacts, he said.