Broadcasters are “already easing ‘access to capital'” through joint services agreements (JSA) and other resource-sharing deals, a broadcast lawyer told FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. Access to capital’s “the foremost challenge faced by so many persons, including minorities and women” to own TV stations, Richard Zaragoza of Pillsbury Winthrop told Rosenworcel during a brief conversation at last week’s NAB State Leadership Conference, which she addressed (CD March 7 p1). A draft order that’s on hold would attribute a station having more than 15 percent of its ads brokered to the other in-market separately owned broadcaster doing the brokering. Zaragoza’s filing, which he said was representing only his views, was posted Friday in docket 09-182 (http://bit.ly/Z6sx4V).
An FTC staff report on mobile payments warns of a “potentially confusing landscape” for consumers trying to decide which funding method to choose based on the dispute process for unauthorized charges, the agency said Friday (http://1.usa.gov/10h78H8). “Paper, Plastic... or Mobile?” is based on an April 2012 agency workshop on mobile payments. Among credit card, prepaid card and mobile carrier billing, “consumers may or may not have statutory protections regarding unauthorized charges” through mobile payment, the report said (http://1.usa.gov/14DrBXp). Credit cards generally have the strongest level of protection, with a $50.25 liability cap for unauthorized use; debit cards require reporting a problem within 2 business days to get a $50 cap, a $500 cap after 2 days and “unlimited” liability if consumers don’t report within 60 days after their “periodic statement” is mailed; and there’s no federal statute other than the FTC Act protecting consumers if their mobile mechanism is linked to a pre-funded account or stored-value card like a gift card, the report said. FTC staff filed a comment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, supporting proposed protections for buyers of general purpose reloadable cards, whose main use is by students and “the underbanked,” the report said. Voluntary liability caps by mobile payment providers are good but “such protections are not consistent, and companies that provide them could withdraw or modify them at their discretion.” Policymakers should consider “the benefits of providing consistent protections across mobile payments, and weigh these benefits against the costs of implementation,” the report said. Mobile carrier billing “raises a unique challenge with regard to third parties” and has already been identified in connection with landline “cramming,” the report said. The FTC told the FCC in a recent comment on mobile cramming that consumers should have the ability to block “all third-party charges,” including “on individual accounts operated by minors in the household,” and that carriers should be required to “clearly and prominently inform” customers how to block third-party charges at account creation and renewal, the report said: Carriers should also set up a clear process for charge dispute, require “aggregators” and others to maintain “sufficient and accessible records” of authorizations, and standardize dispute policies “to more closely align” with statutory protections. The report said FTC staff is organizing a roundtable in May to discuss potential approaches to fraudulent mobile charges. There should be industrywide adoption of strong security measures that cover the whole mobile payment process, especially via end-to-end encryption for sensitive financial information, the report said; encryption possibilities include data authentication during the transaction and secure storage on a mobile device. Companies also need to practice “privacy by design” in mobile payments, give consumers choice and build in transparency “from the outset,” it said. The report also warns that unlike merchants processing credit card transactions, mobile payment providers may have access to “a larger cache of personal information stored on the consumer’s mobile device.” The commission vote to issue the report was 4-0-1, with former Chairman Jon Leibowitz not participating. CTIA General Counsel Mike Altschul said the group welcomes the report: “CTIA and its members remain dedicated to working with retailers, third-party service providers, regulators and law enforcement to ensure consumer privacy and security in transactions involving mobile devices, and to remove fraud from the mobile consumer experience."
MPEG LA granted Google a license to “techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders,” the company and licensing group said Thursday (http://bit.ly/ZmrZ9F). The agreement grants Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any VP8 user, whether the implementation is by Google or “another entity,” and to sublicense techniques in “one next-generation VPx video codec,” they said. MPEG LA will quit trying to form a patent pool for VP8 as a result, they said.
NAB said companies seeking to retransmit the signals of U.S. TV stations “should be required to do no less” than the European Court of Justice affirmed last week (CD March 8 p15). Thursday’s ruling said that since the TVCatchup service to watch terrestrial U.K. TV programming can be seen by anyone in that country with a TV license, the company’s online retransmissions can be barred by broadcasters. “The Court’s ruling noted the ‘high level of protection of authors’ provided under European law ‘allowing them to obtain an appropriate reward for the use of their works,'” an NAB spokesman said in a Friday news release. “The ‘Directive’ under which the case was decided is designed to harmonize the domestic laws of countries belonging to the European Union.” NAB backs the World Intellectual Property Organization’s effort to harmonize such laws internationally, he said (http://bit.ly/WaJFaM).
The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on a waiver request by PTC-220, a joint venture of the nation’s seven Class I freight railroads, which is asking for increased power and antenna height limits in part of the spectrum railroads own, which they are using to deploy positive train control (PTC) systems. Railroads face a mandate to deploy PTC by Dec. 31, 2015, under the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008. PTC systems are designed to protect trains from collisions, overspeed derailments and other threats to rail safety. PTC-220 owns spectrum in two bands -- the lower 220-221 MHz and upper 221-222 MHz bands, but the latter band faces more restrictions, the bureau notes. Commission rules currently permit stations in the lower 220-221 MHz band to use 500 watts of effective radiated power (ERP) and antennas with height above average terrain (HAAT) of up to 150 meters, the commission explains (http://bit.ly/Y19nye). But fixed stations in the upper 221-222 MHz band with an ERP greater than 50 watts are limited to antennas with a HAAT no greater than 7 meters. Higher antennas are allowed but at lower power levels. “PTC-220 states that under the rule’s current limits, base station transmissions in the upper 221-222 MHz band would have a much smaller coverage footprint than those with higher power and antenna height in the lower 220-221 MHz band,” the bureau said. “PTC-220 states that waiver of Section 90.729(b)’s power and height limits would enable it to increase network capacity and allow more railroads to benefit from PTC-220’s member networks, including commuter and short line railroads, and especially in congested markets.” Comments are due April 8, replies April 23.
Charter Communications said funds affiliated with Apollo and Oaktree Opportunities Investments are selling a total of 9.3 million shares in an offering where the cable operator isn’t selling stock or getting money (http://bit.ly/15CF8Rf). The shares are worth about $828 million based on Friday’s prices.
Comments on the December FTC and Justice Department workshop about patent assertion entities will be accepted through April 5, the agencies said Friday (http://1.usa.gov/13Kaze5). Comments can be submitted to ATR.LPS-PAEPublicComments@usdoj.gov.
The combination of T-Mobile and MetroPCS won’t mean job losses, T-Mobile said Thursday in a statement. The potential threat that both carriers could cut employees has been raised repeatedly by the Communications Workers of America (CD March 8 p3). “Over the last six months, T-Mobile has hired more than 3,600 employees in our 17 domestic call centers and we plan to continue hiring in all of our call centers, increasing the number of overall positions, to support our customers,” T-Mobile said. “Moreover, the synergies model we have shared with the FCC assumes no reductions in retail stores or retail store positions. Indeed, our plans post-merger are to keep the two brands as separate lines of business and to maintain the two distribution networks of retail stores and dealer franchisees."
The fight over Progeny’s pursuit of a waiver to offer advanced location services in its 900 MHz Multilateration Location and Monitoring Service spectrum has big implications for “a proceeding you probably never heard about,” Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/13K2shp). Feld recounted the long history of the band. “Part of the problem is that once Progeny goes live, no individual user of unlicensed devices has any protection from increased interference. That’s the trade off for unlicensed,” he said. “On the plus side, it’s cheap, ubiquitous, and completely flexible. On the downside, you get no protection from interference. Worst case, if it turns out the FCC is wrong and Progeny does cause ‘unacceptable levels of interference (whatever that means),’ the unlicensed users have no recourse. Progeny going live could wipe out a huge chunk of the investment in smart grid (and smartmeters generally), kill a couple of hundred million dollars in investment by the oil and gas industry, drive WISPs out of urban areas, and kill a whole bunch of consumer product lines,” he said.
Efficient number portability has saved U.S. consumers billions of dollars, according to a report released Friday by Navigant Economics Managing Director Hal Singer. The paper, commissioned by Neustar, found that “the United States boasts the most efficient [mobile-number-portability] regime in the world, with average porting times of roughly two hours” (http://bit.ly/ZxvtHH). Any delay in porting times would increase wireless prices, Singer said. “This report demonstrates how important it is for U.S. consumers to continue to have the gold standard number portability system,” said Steve Edwards, Neustar senior vice president-carrier services. Neustar has been the local number portability administrator since portability started in 1997. “As the administrator of this crucial element of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure, Neustar continually meets the demands of an ever-changing industry in a way that enhances competition and benefits consumers.” Neustar’s contract is scheduled to end in 2015.