Smith Media’s KEYT-TV Santa Barbara is entitled to HD carriage on Time Warner Cable’s systems in western Ventura County, Calif., an FCC Media Bureau order said. KEYT-TV had sought carriage on those systems even though they're in a Nielsen designated market area adjacent to Santa Barbara, the order said. TWC had only been carrying the station’s signal on those systems in standard-definition and provided the commission with a retransmission consent letter that it said gave “rolling retransmission consent to TWC” for carriage of the station, the order said. But the bureau found that “TWC has failed to disprove record evidence submitted by KEYT indicating that KEYT’s grant of retransmission consent applies only to TWC’s systems located in eastern Ventura County and not to TWC’s systems in Western Ventura County."
Technology trade groups and advocacy firms objected in separate filings this week to the FTC’s proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule. The commission has been working for at least a year to update the COPPA rule and impose new requirements on website operators with the aim of protecting children from online threats. Among its proposed changes, the FTC sought to expand its governance of personal information, online services and parental notification requirements relating to children under the age of 13. Monday was the FTC’s deadline to submit comments on the agency’s supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking. By our deadline, the FTC had posted more than 50 filings on its website (http://xrl.us/bnrihi). The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) said in its filing its member companies had “significant” concerns that the FTC is creating a “burdensome regulatory framework that goes well beyond congressional intent.” The group said the commission’s COPPA proposals represent an “overly broad and unworkable regulatory framework” that would create “harmful barriers” to American innovation. SIIA objected to the FTC’s proposal to expand the COPPA definitions of “personal information,” website “operators,” and “website or online service dedicated to children,” among other concerns. TechFreedom also objected to the FTC’s proposed revisions and argued in a separate filing that the commission’s proposal might actually drive up prices, reduce the quality and quantity of online content for children and decrease competition. In its comments (http://xrl.us/bnrigq), TechFreedom warned against replacing the current “email plus” method of parental consent and the unintended consequences of expanding the definition of “personal information” to include persistent identifiers. TechFreedom did commend the agency for its proposal to replace COPPA’s current “100 percent deletion” requirement for information with a “reasonable measures” standard. TechFreedom President Berin Szoka, who signed the group’s filing, said the proposal could “go a long way to minimizing the burden of COPPA on the expression of children and interactivity of child-directed sites, by allowing sharing without the burden of obtaining verifiable parental consent.”
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Forum formed the SIP over Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Task Group to address deployment and interoperability issues related to telecom’s migration to SIP over IPv6. The group will enlist key stakeholders from the service provider, app developer and equipment communities, the SIP Forum said Wednesday. In addition to identifying issues with SIP over IPv6, the group will assess what impact transition technologies and dual stack devices will have on existing SIP networks, the SIP Forum said. The group aims to use its findings to develop technical recommendations to remedy any transition issues. “This is a complex transition, involving issues critical to the foundation of the future Internet,” SIP Forum President Marc Robins said in a news release. “This new task group is charged with developing the strategy and best course of action to guide the IP communications industry toward the smoothest transition to IPv6” (http://xrl.us/bnrieo).
The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued a $10,000 forfeiture notice to James Cable for violating antenna structure visibility rules, an order said (http://xrl.us/bnrihr). The “serious steps to restore the Antenna Structure well before the FCC inspection” had been delayed because of unexpected costs. “We do not find James Cable’s pre-inspection efforts sufficient to justify cancellation or reduction of the proposed forfeiture,” the order said.
In Japan, South Korea and the U.S., LTE subscribers outnumbered WiMAX subscribers in Q4 2011 and through the first two quarters this year, ABI Research reported Wednesday. Those three markets “used to have strong mobile WiMAX proponents, so while the momentum and future of WiMAX and LTE are clear, it is somewhat surprising to see how long the subscriber crossover has actually taken,” it said. By mid-2014, “even subscribers to LTE in TDD mode will have surpassed WiMAX subscribers at which point WiMAX subscribers will begin their permanent, slow decline,” it said. While TD-LTE growth is currently slow, it will accelerate at the end of 2013 into 2014 as larger operators like China Mobile begin adding LTE subscribers, it said (http://xrl.us/bnrh48).
The Game Show Network (GSN) and Cablevision are to submit a joint status report by Oct. 10 detailing several issues related to their program carriage dispute, an order from FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel said (http://xrl.us/bnrif9). The status report is to include an update on the progress of document production between the parties, as well as on issues such as the number of fact depositions each party is entitled to, the inclusion of Cablevision’s CEO as a custodian of files that can be searched for responsive documents and the appropriate sampling of hours of GSN programming the network is to provide to Cablevision, the order said. The order also asked for an update on “any other obstacles to discovery or refusals to produce documents that either party is confronting, if any."
Telecom networking startups are starting to become more attractive to venture capital (VC) firms after years of declining interest, said a report from market research firm Ovum. VC support for such start-ups totaled $270 million from Q3 2011 to Q2 2012 -- down from $796 million in 2009, according to Ovum. That decline came despite an overall recovery in VC investments, which rose from $20.1 billion in 2009 to $27.8 billion from Q3 2011 to Q2 2012. VCs have shifted their money to mobile, social media and over-the-top startups, Ovum said. Service providers are more actively funding and working with infrastructure startups, Ovum analyst Matt Walker, the report’s author, said Wednesday in a news release. But recent IPO and M&A deals indicate VCs are becoming interested in telecom again, such as VMware’s recent purchase of VC-funded Nicira Networks, he said. “The tide seems to be shifting,” Walker said. “With heightened investor interest and carrier need for solutions in such areas as small cells, network virtualization, and network optimization, telecom network infrastructure VC seems ripe for a rebound” (http://xrl.us/bnrh2w).
The FCC’s broadband measurement program is getting its own docket number: GN Docket No. 12-264. “In the two years since the launch of this Program, it has increased in scope and complexity,” and it is now “appropriate” for the program to have its own docket, a public notice said Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnrif3).
It’s fair to say FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch will continue objecting to the agency’s settlements that include prominent “unfairness” prongs, he told us Wednesday. Rosch abstained from a vote on a deal with such a provision Tuesday, with seven computer rental providers and a software firm alleged to have spied on customers in their homes through keylogging, screen captures and webcams (CD Sept 26 p16). Congressional Privacy Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, Wednesday said he was “dumbfounded” by the spying allegations. (See separate report below.) Rosch also dissented from a summer settlement with the Wyndham Hotels chain over an unfairness provision. The commissioner Wednesday pointed us to his speech to the Forum for EU-US Legal Eco Affairs in Paris Sept. 14, on “The Evolution of ‘Privacy Policy’ at the Federal Trade Commission: Is It Really Necessary?” In the speech (http://xrl.us/bnrijc) Rosch said he “bridled” at the FTC’s preliminary staff privacy report in 2010 (http://xrl.us/bnrije) that, among other things, “suggested that ‘notice’ might be replaced by a new and untested paradigm based on ‘unfairness.'” The final staff report’s insistence that the “unfair” prong of the commission’s Section 5 authority should govern information collection practices, rather than the “deceptive” prong, was Rosch’s “primary” disagreement with the report, he wrote. “What is ‘unfair’ is in the eye of the beholder,” with “most consumer advocacy groups” judging behavioral tracking to be unfair regardless of whether such tracked information is personally identifiable or what the circumstances are for the tracking. Yet consumers “by and large do not ‘opt out’ from tracking when given the chance to do so,” he said. The FTC largely sided with consumer advocacy organizations, contrary to its statements to Congress in 1980 and 1982 (http://xrl.us/bnrikq) that “absent deception,” the commission “will not generally enforce Section 5 against alleged intangible harm,” Rosch said. The FTC historically has also not “tethered itself to the policy judgments of other regimes about consumer privacy,” he said, referring to the final privacy report’s recommendation that the U.S. align itself with Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development principles. The guiding principle of FTC privacy policy thus far has been that it consider “innovation” and that other regimes should do the same, he said. By applying Section 5 authority beyond prescribed limits -- “on a standalone basis only to a firm with monopoly or near-monopoly power” -- the FTC could enable the abuse of privacy “as a weapon by firms having monopoly or near-monopoly power to disadvantage rivals,” Rosch said in the speech.
The FCC should “defer all the issues” raised by the upcoming text-to-911 mandate to a further notice of proposed rulemaking, rather than to “bifurcate” them in an order and subsequent further notice, T-Mobile USA officials told the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau chief Friday (http://xrl.us/bnrieh). If the commission issues an order requiring future text-to-911 capabilities, it should not impose an implementation schedule because there’s no basis for determining the appropriate timeframe, the carrier said. The pace of third-party technical development, procurement time for modification to networks, and the need for testing can all affect implementation periods, it said. When the service is implemented, it will require communications from 911 call centers, public safety and carriers that calling 911 is preferable to texting, it said. These challenges must “not be forced into a predetermined timeline,” T-Mobile said, arguing it would be “arbitrary and capricious to set the implementation time now."