Google Fiber seems poised to “satisfy business concerns,” said a research paper from Evercore Partners Friday. “Done selectively, Google Fiber has the potential to deliver a modest standalone return in addition to providing positive benefits to Google’s broader business in promoting faster industry speeds and accessibility, migrating more TV viewing and online behavior into Google’s cloud, and paving the way for YouTube, Google Play and other Google experiences to become a bigger part of the TV home viewing experience, even outside of fiber-deployed areas.” Google plans networks in a limited number of communities, namely in the Kansas City area, Austin, and Provo, Utah. The analysts point to Google’s disruptive potential on established industries as well as its focus on faster connection speeds as a vital factor in its business. Cable operators will roll out faster speeds and next-generation video as a result, they said. Google will earn back a return on its investment in under a decade, Evercore predicted: “We estimate a 12 percent ROIC (or 8.5 year payback) per subscriber, which factors capex deployment, including cost to pass, connect, and provide hardware.” Evercore also analyzed Google’s interest in spectrum policy and the effects of its Wi-Fi offerings: “As Google gives this away for free, we suspect that it will bring down the cost and increase the availability of Wi-Fi. We already seem to be witnessing this through a roaming consortium agreement announced last year by Comcast, TWC, Cablevision (Optimum), Bright House, and Cox.” The report envisioned Google passing 8 million homes and acquiring roughly 3 million subscribers over the next seven to nine years.

"The consensus ‘Down From 51’ band plan proposed by a broad cross-section of wireless providers, broadcasters, and equipment manufacturers maximizes the public interest benefits of the 600 MHz spectrum and should be adopted without significant revision,” Mobile Future said Friday in a filing at the FCC on the commission’s controversial 600 MHz band plan public notice by the Wireless Bureau. “While the Bureau should be applauded for a clear focus on the need for a viable 600 MHz band plan, the recent Public Notice introduces additional uncertainty and undermines the growing consensus behind the ‘Down From 51’ approach,” Mobile Future said (http://bit.ly/163LYzf). “Specifically, the modifications to the consensus proposal suggested in the Bureau’s Public Notice raise engineering and policy concerns. The Commission should adopt the consensus band plan without significant alteration and dedicate its finite resources to other technical and engineering challenges facing a successful incentive auction."

An FCC Wireless Bureau public notice on the 600 MHz band plan doesn’t sufficiently deal with the problem of co-channel interference -- “one of the most critical unresolved elements” of the band plan -- said the NAB in a comment filed Friday (http://bit.ly/12LPFfS). The NAB said the commission can’t use a variable plan like the ones suggested in the PN without resolving “the interference implications of broadcasters and wireless carriers operating on co- and adjacent channels in neighboring markets under a variable band approach.” The NAB said both options explored in the notice -- a reverse “down from 51” plan and a time division duplex (TDD) plan -- threaten to “cause widespread harmful interference to both broadcast and wireless operations in the 600 MHz” and could threaten the success of the auction. However, of the two plans in the PN, NAB said it favored the reverse “down from 51” plan, “if the Commission is intent on proceeding with a variable plan.” In a co-blog post with AT&T and Verizon, NAB has previously endorsed a “down from 51” plan,” which it says is the industry consensus (CD May 22 p4). The NAB said the Wireless Bureau must “rigorously evaluate” co-channel interference if it intends to pursue a variable plan. “The band plan options introduced in the Notice skirt this issue entirely, evidently favoring academic economic flexibility over real-world engineering,” said NAB.

CTIA officials and representatives of the major U.S. carriers met with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and staff Tuesday to discuss concerns with a proposed declaratory order clarifying that information stored on mobile phones is subject to the FCC’s rules for protecting customer proprietary network information (CPNI). Pai has concerns with the order as written, officials said last week (CD June 11 p2). “At the meeting, we discussed the status of the Commission’s proposal on circulation to issue a declaratory ruling addressing how the CPNI requirements apply to information stored on mobile communications devices and how carriers should protect such information,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/11FJnYG). “CTIA highlighted that its members take security and privacy seriously and are committed to protecting CPNI that a carrier causes to be stored on mobile communications devices.”

Policy discussions about intellectual property protections -- whether they are copyright, patent or trademark -- in the digital age should follow a certain set of guiding principles, the Internet Society said Friday, releasing its paper on the topic (http://bit.ly/154piwe). Policy discussions about IP and the Internet should be transparent and include stakeholders, consider rule of law -- including “principles such as due process, equality of rights, fairness, transparency, the right to be heard, and legal certainty” -- respect “the global architecture of the Internet” and respect the standards development process, the group said. “An important point for the Internet Society in writing this paper is the understanding that intellectual property discussions, irrespective of whether they reflect trademark, copyright, or patent considerations and, as long as they primarily relate to Internet concerns or propositions, are part of the wider Internet governance discussions,” Internet Society Policy Adviser Konstantinos Komaitis said in a statement. “This pragmatic rationalization is significant in making some subsequent determinations relating to the structure, design, and ultimate approach of such discussions.”

Dish Network is implementing its standard procedures for natural disasters to serve customers affected by the Colorado wildfires, it said in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/17MLxgI). It said these customers can pause their Dish service and account, waive equipment fees for lost or damaged equipment and waive installation fees when a customer is ready to resume service.

Carrier Wi-Fi will grow significantly over the next year, said a survey of global service providers released Friday by Infonetics Research (http://bit.ly/12LNHMy). It marked revenue generation, enhanced throughput and the use of unlicensed spectrum as the top deployment drivers for carrier Wi-Fi. Tiered/premium hotspots, managed hotspots and Wi-Fi roaming are the fastest growing monetization models for Wi-Fi services, said the industry research firm. It predicted that by 2014, hotels, sports and entertainment venues, airports, trains and retail malls will see significant growth in carrier Wi-Fi deployment. Providers surveyed anticipated 30 percent of their new Wi-Fi access points will be based on 802.11ac by the end of 2014. “Best effort WiFi is no longer good enough; mobile operators need carrier-class sophistication,” said analyst Richard Webb in a statement. The survey found Cisco to be the most widely deployed Wi-Fi equipment vendor among respondent carriers and Ruckus Wireless led the list in vendors under evaluation for future purchases. We didn’t immediately hear back about the survey’s methods.

Reps. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and Michael Capuano, D-Mass., introduced the We Are Watching You Act on Friday aimed at preventing companies from spying on consumers via their video devices. The bill would ban video service operators from collecting visual and auditory information about consumers unless the company displays a message that says: “We are watching you” and provides consumers with information about the data that are collected. The bill would also require video service operators to obtain express consent from a consumer to collect any visual or auditory information, the legislation said. The law would be enforced by the FTC under its regulations regarding unfair or deceptive acts or practices. “This may sound preposterous, but it is neither a joke nor an exaggeration,” Capuano said in a news release. “These DVRs would essentially observe consumers as they watch television as a way to super-target ads. It is an incredible invasion of privacy,” Capuano said. “Given what we have recently learned about the access that the government has to the phone numbers we call, the emails we send and the websites we visit, it is important for consumers to decide for themselves whether they want this technology,” he said. “Allowing this type of technology to be installed in the homes of American citizens without their consent would be an egregious invasion of privacy,” said Jones in a news release.

ViaSat, the first satellite ISP to sell home phone service as of this Monday, is bundling that Exede Voice product with its broadband product and also selling the two with video, the company said. A “small Exede Voice Adapter” connects the company’s satellite model with the phone service, ViaSat said in a news release Thursday (http://prn.to/10ix5dQ). “The service is integrated with 911 and Enhanced 911 services for emergency response as well as 711 services to access Telecommunications Relay Services.” The Internet service has speeds of 12 Mbps and uses the ViaSat-1 satellite, the company said.

Charter Communications’ CableCARD waiver could invalidate all of the FCC’s rules assuring commercial availability of retail navigation devices, said CEA in its latest ex parte asking the Media Bureau to rescind or reconsider the waiver (http://bit.ly/12tEh73). CEA said the waiver overreaches the bureau’s authority and “confirms that Bureau level waivers on delegated authority are not substitutes for Commission policy determinations.” Charter had said the EchoStar decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (http://bit.ly/10nMM3E) already struck down the commission’s rules on CableCARDs (CD June 6 p3), but CEA said Charter’s argument ignores several other regulations that weren’t affected by EchoStar. “Charter’s EchoStar argument is based on misreading and ignoring Commission Orders,” said CEA. The association also attacked the waiver for not sufficiently guaranteeing continued supply of CableCARDs and chastised the bureau for granting concessions to Charter that were not included in the commission’s public notice, which CEA said “misled the public.” Charter and bureau spokeswomen declined to comment. CEA said the waiver “provides no guidance for industry toward the establishment of a uniform set of expectations for a downloadable security system that, like the CableCARD, would support competitive entry products through a national standard."