Microsoft was dragged into the mobile privacy maelstrom this week when a Washington woman sued the company for alleged geolocation tracking on its Windows 7 phones. Rebecca Cousineau filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday with the U.S. District Court in Seattle that claims the company “intentionally” and “deceptively” tracks its users’ movements even if they affirmatively deny their consent to do so. Microsoft’s conduct violates the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and the Washington State Consumer Protection Act, the suit said.
The Justice Department, in a surprisingly quick decision, said Wednesday it’s suing to block AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioner Michael Copps were quick to react, issuing statements saying they too had concerns about the deal, raising the question of whether the transaction was in trouble at the commission as well. A top AT&T executive expressed surprise and said the company will fight the DOJ’s decision.
The FCC review of Dish Network’s transfer of control and waiver applications (CD Aug 23 p5) will likely use LightSquared as the starting point for discussions on possible conditions of the deals and any resulting waivers, said observers. It will be up to the company and others to convince the agency of major differences between Dish’s situation and business plans and those of LightSquared if it hopes to see a major departure from the conditions imposed on LightSquared, they said. Many questions about Dish’s intent remain unanswered, and the commission will likely seek far more specific information on the plans before conditions are imposed, they said.
Comcast and Bloomberg show no sign of ending an impasse over what channel positions the cable operator carries Bloomberg TV on its systems. Both sides seem dug in on their stances about whether Comcast needs to put the financial news channel near clusterings of other similar networks in its channel lineups, according to interviews with an FCC official and a Bloomberg executive and recent filings from both companies.
Openwave sued Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) at the International Trade Commission for allegedly infringing patents related to mobile Internet access, the company said Wednesday. The mobile software developer owns patents for five mobile device inventions that are directly infringed by several Apple and RIM products, the company alleged.
Wisconsin’s local telecom operators continued to attack the University of Wisconsin’s stimulus-funded broadband project, UW-System, with a lawsuit and in an audit process. Local telcos had sought the state legislature’s action last year to block the project, but that effort failed (CD Oct 21/2010 p10).
Positions vacated at the Media Access Project this year that haven’t all been filled keep the group challenged to stay active on a wide array of communications policy issues, current and former staffers said. They agreed it’s a bad time for MAP to be missing a CEO and an associate director. It has a new public relations and fund raising staffer, as of this month, replacing one who left to work for House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. Senior Vice President Andrew Schwartzman said he hopes to fill the other vacancies in 2011.
Congress should specify a date to begin the phase-out of distant signal licenses, while leaving the repeal of local signal licenses until later, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a report to Congress released late Monday. The report (http://xrl.us/bmbx7j) on phasing out Sections 111, 119 and 122 of the Copyright Act, which let pay-TV providers carry broadcast programming without signing deals with every program copyright holder, was required under last year’s Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act (STELA). The FCC Media Bureau also released a report also required under STELA to Congress (http://xrl.us/bmbx69) on so-called ‘orphan counties’ -- those getting broadcast signals as part of designated market area based in another state.
Wireless cell sites in Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island were particularly hard hit when Hurricane Irene swept up the East Coast over the weekend, according to numbers released by the FCC late Monday. It said 210,700 wireline customers didn’t have service by its latest count. Two TV stations and 10 radio stations remained down and a million cable customers had no service. But first responder communications didn’t take the same huge hit they did six years ago as a result of Hurricane Katrina, the FCC said.
The FCC released a draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) to be used in evaluating the environmental impacts of the Antenna Structure Registration (ASR) program. The PEA looks at varying levels of new tower requirements with an eye on reducing bird deaths as a result of collisions with towers. The document estimates that, conservatively, 2,800 towers will be constructed every year in the U.S. over the next 10 years (http://xrl.us/bmbvbz).