Eighteen seats on 10 states’ public utilities commissions (PUCs) were up for election Tuesday. Industry observers said in recent interviews that the results of elections to the Montana Public Service Commission and Nebraska Public Service Commission are the ones that could have the most impact on telecom regulation. Two Montana PSC seats were up for a vote, and one Nebraska PSC seat was on the ballot.

AT&T warned Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that reclassifying broadband as a Communications Act Title II telecom service would not give regulators the tools to ban paid prioritization, as some net neutrality advocates have recommended. Leahy has not specifically called for Title II reclassification but has long targeted paid prioritization deals and introduced legislation that would ban them. If the FCC reclassifies, “any attempt to ban paid prioritization would run headlong into decades of Title II precedent that make clear that generally available differentiated service options, including paid prioritization, are allowed,” wrote Tim McKone, AT&T executive vice president-federal relations, in a response dated Thursday. “Thus the Commission would be unable to prevent any Internet service provider that did decide to offer paid prioritization from doing so.” AT&T “has no plans to offer such capabilities to third parties,” McKone assured Leahy, referring to the possibility of entering “into arrangements with third parties to prioritize traffic over a consumer’s last mile broadband Internet connection without the knowledge and direction of the end user.” AT&T said that not all prioritization deals pose risks to consumers. Leahy had requested earlier this month that AT&T and other major ISPs pledge to forgo paid prioritization deals (see 1410230041).

An attorney representing plaintiffs in more than 50 lawsuits against companies for allegedly sending fax ads without opt-out notices blasted Thursday’s FCC order, which reaffirmed the notice requirement in the commission’s 2006 Junk Fax Order. But the order, acknowledging confusion by companies, granted several of them retroactive waivers.

National Religious Broadcasters cautioned against increased government control over speech on the Internet. The U.S. “rightly has made Internet freedom a foreign policy anchor,” NRB President Jerry Johnson said Tuesday in a news release. This follows a statement by Ann Ravel, Federal Election Commission vice chair, who announced last week her intent to re-evaluate FEC policies on political Web ads. The commission specifically exempted certain types of Internet communications from campaign finance regulations, Ravel said in a written statement. In doing so, the FEC “turned a blind eye to the Internet’s growing force in the political arena,” she said. The effort to protect individual bloggers and online commentators “has been stretched to cover slickly-produced ads aired solely on the Internet but paid for by the same organizations and the same large contributors as the actual ads aired on TV,” she said. The Obama administration must be careful “to avoid any action that could, purposefully or not, undermine free speech online,” NRB said.

Incoming FTC Chief Technology Officer Ashkan Soltani drew high praise in interviews this week from online consumer advocates and technologists. They expect him to help illuminate the agency’s understanding of emerging tech policies and investigations. Soltani will begin his service next month, after the end of current CTO Latanya Sweeney's 10-month term, said an FTC news release last week. Consumer and privacy advocates don't think the concerns raised by former intelligence officials -- who worried about Soltani’s work with The Washington Post in publishing analyses of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures -- are in any way related to Soltani's new job.

The FCC seems likely to increase the broadband speed requirement for getting Connect America Fund funding, and the agency could increase the amount of E-rate funding, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly predicted in a speech Monday at an NTCA event. O’Rielly also urged the organization to push for USF reform this year so the commission would be able to move on to other issues, like allowing rate-of-return carriers to get CAF support as they want, O’Rielly said. He pledged to “do what I can to push for rate-of-return reform” by summer and called it “a necessary part of meeting our obligation under the statute to ensure that all consumers have access to reasonably comparable services at reasonably comparable rates.”

The FTC commended the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for taking privacy and security concerns into account in a rulemaking on vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability for passenger cars and light trucks, in comments filed at NHTSA. In February, following extensive testing, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it was moving forward on vehicle-to-vehicle warning systems as part “the next generation” of auto safety improvements (http://1.usa.gov/1bkqG1L). The rulemaking has been of concern to the telecom industry because the spectrum band automakers will use, the 5.850-5.925 GHz band, is adjacent to a band targeted by the FCC for unlicensed use on a secondary basis (see 1409050030). The FTC said it supports “implementation of a deliberative, process-based approach to address privacy and security risks.” NHTSA appears ready to “ensure that the V2V system will contain multiple technical, physical, and organizational controls to minimize privacy risks, including the likelihood of vehicle tracking by commercial entities,” the FTC said (http://1.usa.gov/1D7RLCE). “The Commission appreciates NHTSA’s explanation of the substantial steps it took as part of its interim privacy impact assessment, and looks forward to reviewing the results of the final assessment.” NHTSA also appears to have the designed the system in a way that “limits the amount of data collected and stored to that which serves its intended safety purposes,” FTC said. “NHTSA’s attention to potential security issues is equally thorough and demonstrates a clear commitment to creating both a functional and secure communications system based on research efforts over more than a decade.” CTIA's comments said NHTSA lacks statutory authority to adopt Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for mobile devices, apps or software (http://bit.ly/1xiapWG). The comments were filed in docket NHTSA-2014-0022.

The FCC said the start of the TV incentive auction was pushed back from mid-2015 until a date in early 2016. The Friday announcement came in a blog post by Gary Epstein, chair of the FCC’s TV Incentive Auction Task Force. Industry officials have long predicted that a delay was possible, given the NAB legal challenge to the auction rules and the number of items the FCC needs to complete before the auction can take place (see 1409100041).

Virginia believes the federal government needs to improve its information sharing with the states and clearly define when the federal government and states have authority over specific aspects of cyber policy to assist states as they align cybersecurity policies with the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework, said Zaki Barzinji, Virginia deputy director-intergovernmental affairs. Virginia was the first state to adopt version 1.0 of the NIST framework after its release in February, doing so in conjunction with Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s (D) formation of the Commonwealth of Virginia Cyber Security Commission, Barzinji said. The Department of Homeland Security has been working to encourage state and local governments to use the NIST framework, but “in a lot of cases we don’t know which federal agency, which state agency has authority,” Barzinji said at a Microsoft event Wednesday.

The European Parliament Wednesday approved the new European Commission, prompting hope and optimism from telecom, tech, consumer and civil society groups. The 423-209 vote followed an intense debate that highlighted a major rift between the three main political parties and others, such as the Eurosceptics and Greens. Parliament members (MEPs) split over several candidates and issues, but EC President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker's choices of former Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip for digital single market vice president and current Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger as digital economy and society commissioner sailed through without comment. The strong opposition by some political groups showed that MEPs "are taking the prime opportunity at the outset to make sure the Commission knows it has a handbrake," emailed a European Consumers' Organisation spokesman. The new panel must now be formally appointed by the Council of Ministers, and will begin work Nov. 1, Parliament said.