Verizon’s unacceptably vague ex parte notices “violate the spirit, if not the letter,” of the FCC’s ex parte rules, a telecom law firm said in its own ex parte filing Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmt7jj). Attorneys from Lukas, Nace -- which often represents small wireless carriers -- argued that Verizon has not provided sufficient information to comply with Section 1.1206 of the FCC rules, which require that “memoranda must contain a summary of the substance of the ex parte presentation and not merely a listing of the subjects discussed.” The notices “filed by Verizon wholly fail to summarize the arguments made and the support offered for those arguments,” the lawyers said of Verizon’s recent ex parte filings regarding the Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation order. “We cannot address the options presented by Verizon because we do not know what these options are.” The lawyers want the agency to require Verizon to file a summary of its past meetings that complies with the rules. Verizon takes the FCC’s ex parte rules “seriously” and follows them, a spokesman said.
EchoStar’s Hughes Communications sees a potential slowdown in subscriber additions due to ViaSat launching its Excede satellite-based broadband service, Hughes President Pradman Kaul said on a conference call. But Hughes’ subscriber additions will pick up speed when its new satellite goes into service later this year, he said. The Space Systems/Loral-built Ka-band Jupiter-1, which was renamed EchoStar-17, is expected to launch mid-year aboard an Ariane-5 rocket with a higher-speed HughesNet service to follow in August, industry officials have said. The satellite will deliver up to 25 Mbps downloads. Download speed for a basic package could start at 3-5 Mbps, Arunas Slekys, vice president of corporate marketing at Hughes, told us. EchoStar-17 will have capacity for 1.5 million-2 million subscribers. The current Spaceway-3 satellite, which entered service in 2008, operates with 2 Mbps download/300 kbps upload speeds. HughesNet’s Q4 subscriber base was flat with the previous quarter at 626,000, Kaul said. ViaSat’s Excede is delivering 12 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload speeds. The company also plans to launch in July-August the Space Systems/Loral-built EchoStar-16 Ku-band satellite aboard a Proton M rocket to 61.5 degrees west from Kazakhstan, company officials said. Dish is leasing EchoStar-16’s 32 transponders. EchoStar has $110 million in payments remaining on EchoStar-17 and a $34 million insurance premium, while EchoStar-16 has $65 million and $30 million, company officials said. EchoStar swung to a $22 million Q4 net loss from a $186 million profit a year earlier as it took a $33 million asset impairment charge related to one-time affiliate CMB Satellite. Q4 revenue grew to $834 million from $513 million a year earlier, which didn’t include Hughes Communications.
The American Federation of TV and Radio Artists said members approved an agreement with the four major broadcast-TV networks and some other producers on a successor deal to the AFTRA National Code of Fair Practice for Network TV Broadcasting. The deal will run retroactively from Nov. 16, 2011, to Nov. 15, 2014, the union said. The agreement calls for increased wages by about 6 percent over its term for most work categories and adds an agreement to prohibit discrimination based on a union member’s “gender identity,” AFTRA said. A tentative deal was reached Dec. 9, and the union said 96 percent of members voted in favor of it.
The FCC should “align its production instructions” with those used by the Justice Department for documents on Verizon Wireless’s deal to buy spectrum from four cable operators, if both agencies seek “overlapping categories” of paperwork, the companies told the commission. The companies are making “ongoing efforts to comply with document requests” from Justice, a lawyer for Comcast reported he and executives for that company and the carrier and Time Warner Cable and attorneys for Bright House Networks and Cox Communications told FCC officials. There’s a “need to protect the confidentiality of documents and information provided to the Commission in this proceeding,” the filing said of the meeting with Renata Hesse, who advises FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on transactions, and staff in other bureaus and offices. Some nonprofit groups seeking to block FCC approval of the AWS deals want access to confidential marketing agreements between the companies (CD Feb 23 p1). The ex parte filing was posted Wednesday in docket 12-4 (http://xrl.us/bmt7ie).
There is a possible inconsistency between a provision in the Universal Service Fund/Intercarrier Compensation Order and an FCC rule already in place, according to counsel for General Communication Inc. General Communication met with officials in the FCC Wireline Bureau pricing policy division to discuss the interplay between Paragraph 801 of the USF/ICC order and FCC rule 51.909(a)(2), according to an ex parte notice filed Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmt64c). The paragraph said “for rate-of-return carriers, all terminating intrastate access rates will also be capped,” but that conflicts with the rule, which does not cap originating and terminating Dedicated Transport Access Service, the notice said: “This could have an impact in those states that annually recalculate intrastate access revenue requirement."
The Local Community Radio Act doesn’t back any FCC preference for licensing low-power FM stations within a market based on population density or LPFM viability “at the expense of long-pending applications” for FM translators, the NAB said. It reported (http://xrl.us/bmt6zs) on association executives’ meeting with an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about two pending items on docket 99-25. A draft rulemaking asks about licensing new LPFM stations under the 2010 legislation and a draft order limits to one per market how many translator applications from a 2003 filing window an entity can get (CD Feb 9 p6). The commission should grant waivers of how far LPFM stations must be away on the radio dial from a full-service outlet only “in truly exceptional circumstances,” the NAB said.
Centurylink (Qwest) is abandoning copper cables in Arizona, Iowa, Minnesota and Washington, according to a public notice of network changes (http://xrl.us/bmt6cu). Many of the working services will be transferred to a fiber-fed digital loop carrier system, the notice said. The implementation dates will be March 15 through May 31.
Mobile hookup apps Grindr and Blendr appear to have security holes, House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Manufacturing Subcommittee Ranking Member G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., told the CEO of the U.S.-based app companies, Joel Simkhai, in a letter (http://xrl.us/bmt6bk) Thursday. The lawmakers referred to a Sydney Morning Herald article saying a hacker had breached Grindr accounts in Australia, logging in as another user and impersonating that person, and quoted a security expert who replicated the breach for the newspaper and said neither app has “real security.” Though Congress is most concerned with security of data such as financial account and Social Security numbers, “the failure by online services to secure chats, location information, photographs, and other information people would want to keep private also could lead to economic harms as well as reputational harms, so we believe such information should also be protected,” Waxman and Butterfield told Simkhai: “This incident raises questions about the steps your company takes to protect the privacy and security of your users’ information.” The lawmakers asked Simkhai to provide information so they can assess the apps’ security measures, and they are “not asking for, nor are we interested in, any personally identifiable information about your users.” They asked for the particulars of “any other breaches of any size,” including how users were notified and whether users were given “direct notice” of the Australia breach; security features in the apps that preceded “the latest updates”; whether the apps collect and transmit mobile device information beyond the device identification code, such as phone number or address book; and whether the device’s Unique Device Identifier (UDID) or Media Access Control address is part of the “hash” required for users to log in. Apple started phasing out developer access to UDID with iOS 5.0. Waxman and Butterfield asked Simkhai whether his companies had conducted assessments to evaluate security risks from relying on hashes to log in users or conducted a privacy impact assessment on their collection and use practices. The lawmakers said they were troubled that it took two weeks for Simkhai’s companies to release security updates for Grindr and three weeks for Blendr, when the expert quoted by the Morning Herald said security fixes “wouldn’t be too hard.” They asked Simkhai how the apps protected users’ information between the Jan. 20 breach and the Feb. 3 and 10 updates. Simkhai should respond by March 8, they said. In Feb. 10 blog posts, Grindr and Blendr portrayed the “mandatory” updates as multifaceted, not specific to security holes. Gay male-focused Grindr said the update included “crucial security enhancements, better compatibility, and improved performance for all users, plus two exciting new features exclusive to [paid] Xtra subscribers.” Straight and lesbian-focused Blendr said its update had “crucial security enhancements, along with improved performance and bug fixes.” In a Jan. 20 blog post, Grindr said the breach was caused by a site that violated its terms, that only a “small number of primarily Australian” users were affected, and that Grindr does not “retain chat history, credit card information, or addresses -- and no such information was ever compromised.” A similar post on the Blendr blog said media reports had “incorrectly associated Blendr with an incident on our other social networking application.” We couldn’t immediately reach Grindr or Blendr for comment.
President Barack Obama signed into law the spectrum legislation passed last week by Congress as part of the payroll tax extension. Obama signed HR-3630 late Wednesday. CEA, CTIA and other industry groups applauded the authorization of voluntary incentive auctions.
The comment deadline was extended in the Video Relay Service rulemaking to improve structure and efficiency (CG Docket No. 10-51), the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmt49q). Several consumer groups representing the deaf and hard-of-hearing had requested the extension due to the size, scope and complexity of the further notice of proposed rulemaking, and because many of the affected consumers use American Sign Language, not English, as their primary language. Comments are now due March 9; replies March 30.