Nothing in the language of the VoIP symmetry rule, or the text of the USF/intercarrier compensation order, indicates any intent to limit the scope of the VoIP symmetry rule to facilities-based VoIP, Bandwidth.com and Level 3 told the FCC Wireline Bureau chief Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bn63sv). The order for the first time adopted rules to clearly state when access charges would be paid by carriers working with VoIP providers, the companies said. “AT&T is attempting to pull at one thread of this framework to reestablish asymmetric compensation,” where AT&T can charge excess charges for traffic sent to it by an interconnected VoIP provider through a CLEC, but doesn’t have to pay the same access charges for traffic between the same end points in the reverse direction, they said. AT&T also continues to ignore the definition of end office access service as stated in Section 51.903 of the Telecom Act, they said.
Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., on Tuesday named Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., to replace him as chair of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet in the next Congress. Goodlatte also named Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., to become chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.
The Texas Public Utility Commission ruled Time Warner Cable was discriminated against by San Antonio electric company CPS Energy (http://xrl.us/bn63e8). The Dec. 13 PUC ruling was a “significant victory,” and the ruling said the utility favored AT&T, wrote Dave Thomas, representing the operator, on the blog of his law firm, Hogan Lovells (http://xrl.us/bn63fe). “The PUC found that the discrimination occurred with respect to the rates (that were four to five times as high), terms and conditions for access to the utility’s poles (including faster and cheaper access requirements for AT&T), and infrastructure critical to the provision of electronic communications services.” CPS had no comment.
The House passed by voice vote Tuesday HR-6671, which would amend the Video Privacy Protection Act to permit online video consumers to share their video habits and preferences. The legislation was authored by incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and aims to limit the consent needed to share video rental records, something online video rental companies like Netflix have long sought. The bill is different from HR-2471, a similar House-passed bill, in two respects, Goodlatte’s spokeswoman told us. The new legislation forces companies to give consumers the “clear and conspicuous” option to withdraw their consent to share at any time, and a consumer’s consent to share video watching habits expires after 24 months, unless the consumer again chooses to opt in, she said. The American Civil Liberties Union slammed the bill for failing to include provisions to reform the decades-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act. “Changes to electronic privacy cannot happen piecemeal,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU. “If we are to achieve true reform -- which means getting full protection for Americans’ in-boxes and private communication -- we cannot give priority to special interests,” he said in a news release.
Samsung will drop injunction requests against Apple products in France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. Samsung had sought the sales bans over claims Apple had infringed on some of its standard-essential patents. “Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court,” Samsung said in a statement. The move came a day after U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., ruled against Apple’s request for an injunction against eight Samsung phones targeted in its successful lawsuit against Samsung. That ruling was part of post-trial motions in the case, which have continued since a jury in San Jose awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages in August over its claims of patent infringement (CD Aug 28 p6) . Samsung continues to fight the jury’s verdict, though on Monday Koh ruled against the company’s request for a new jury trial. The same day, Koh ruled against Apple’s request for the injunction. “Apple simply has not established a sufficient causal nexus between infringement of its design patents and irreparable harm,” she said in her ruling. “Though evidence that Samsung attempted to copy certain Apple features may offer some limited support for Apple’s theory, it does not establish that those features actually drove consumer demand.”
Staff of the FCC Media and Consumer and Governmental Affairs bureaus will be taking meetings related to the commission’s implementation of accessible emergency information and video description rules Jan. 14, 16 and 17, a public notice released Monday said (http://xrl.us/bn63ji). “Given the April 9, 2013 statutory deadline for completing the emergency information proceeding, we have determined it would be more efficient” for the commission staff to set aside a few days for ex parte meetings, the notice said.
Civil society should continue to be involved in the discussions over the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) and the ITU, Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said Monday in a statement. While civil society was only able to play a limited role during negotiations at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), civil society groups were able to increase public scrutiny of the conference and pressured the ITU to webcast major portions of the conference, Public Knowledge said. “Public scrutiny and the involvement of civil society held countries around the world accountable while thwarting the most dangerous attempts at global censorship,” Sohn said. Issues raised at WCIT will reappear in discussions at the World Telecom Policy Forum, set for May, as well as at the ITU Plenipotentiary conference in 2014, Public Knowledge said. “Civil society needs to be prepared to push back against countries that continue to pursue a pro-censorship agenda,” Sohn said (http://xrl.us/bn63i8).
Liberty Global said it opened its offer to buy the shares and voting-rights securities it doesn’t already own of Telenet Group Holding, a Brussels cable operator. Shareholders will have until Jan. 11 to tender their securities under Liberty Global’s offer of about $46.30 per share or about $2.6 billion. Liberty is already Telenet’s majority controlling shareholder.
Adam Sosinky joined the Connected Media Experience (CMX) as an individual member, according to a Justice Department Antitrust Division notice (http://xrl.us/bn63hk). The CMX is a standards-setting organization working on technical standards for “a new digital media package format,” according to its website. Its members include the Recording Industry Association of America, Sony, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Microsoft, Dolby Labs and others.
The FCC Media Bureau should grant Charter’s CableCARD waiver request as soon as possible, Charter lawyers urged bureau officials in a recent meeting, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bn63he). They also said a recent CEA ex parte letter filed in the docket raised no new arguments or issues “but instead merely repeats CEA’s wish for the Commission to ignore valid requests for waiver and instead devote its attention” to a proceeding on CEA’s policy preferences.