The FTC filed a lawsuit against Dish Network alleging that it violated provisions of the commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). The agency alleged that the DBS company “illegally called millions of consumers who had previously asked telemarketers from the company or its affiliates not to call them again,” it said. The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court in Springfield, Ill. (http://xrl.us/bnmw5y). Dish Network called consumers in the Central District of Illinois and other parts of the U.S. “even when consumers have stated they did not wish to receive an outbound call made by or on behalf of Dish Network programming,” the complaint said. The agency said Dish uses a network of authorized dealers to make the calls. The FTC urged the court to award it “monetary civil penalties from Defendant for every violation of the TSR.” It’s particularly disappointing when a well-established, nationally known company “appears to have flagrantly and illegally made millions of invasive calls to Americans who specifically told Dish Network to leave them alone,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. Dish said it “respectfully disputes the merits of the complaint” filed by the FTC. “We manage our marketing practices to best-in-class standards.” The commission “was recently denied the ability to assert these same claims by a federal court in another contested matter, and we will defend ourselves vigorously against them,” Dish said. A similar lawsuit filed in 2009 against Dish from the FTC and the Justice Department (CD March 26/09 p13) is still pending, the FTC said. Last year, Dish and other entities filed petitions with the FCC seeking clarification on liability for companies when third parties make unlawful telemarketing calls (http://xrl.us/bnmxhj).
Correction: Wireless subscribers would need to have a text plan to be able to send a text to 911, said Patrick Donovan, attorney adviser with the FCC Public Safety Bureau (CD Aug 23 p4).
A GAO report said the Department of Defense didn’t provide complete information on DOD’s decision to waive a Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act requirement for the Air Force’s Enhanced Polar System. EPS consists of two payloads hosted on classified satellites, a gateway to connect user terminals and a control and planning segment (CAPS). In June, DOD waived the competitive prototyping requirement for the EPS CAPS, the report said (http://xrl.us/bnmxev). The department didn’t provide complete information “about the potential benefits of competitive prototyping or support for its conclusion that prototyping would result in schedule delays,” the report said. The Air Force’s cost-benefit analysis about the CAPS technical and design risk was incomplete “because neither the waiver nor the business case analysis supporting it provided an estimated dollar value for the expected benefits,” it said. GAO also said DOD’s conclusion that it can’t meet national security objectives without the waiver wasn’t well supported. GAO said it will send the report to DOD, the secretary of the Air Force and the Armed Services and Appropriations committees in the House and Senate.
CenturyLink won a General Services Administration task order to provide VoIP services at GSA offices in six Rocky Mountain states. Under the contract, valued at $20 million over the next five years, CenturyLink will provide hosted and premises-based VoIP to GSA offices in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah, CenturyLink said in a news release Thursday. “We've successfully worked with GSA Region 8 for decades as a provider of Centrex and business voice services, and we're delighted that GSA has chosen CenturyLink to provide turn-key VoIP services to GSA’s customer agencies in the Rocky Mountain region,” said CenturyLink general manager Diana Gowen (http://xrl.us/bnmxds).
Comments are due Sept. 6 on the tentative findings for the FCC’s first report to Congress on the accessibility of communications technologies, a public notice said (http://xrl.us/bnmxc9). The commission’s first biennial report on the topic, required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, is due to Congress Oct. 8. “Specifically, we seek comment on whether these findings accurately represent the current state of communications technology accessibility,” the notice said. “We also seek comment on whether and the extent to which the actions taken by industry ... have resulted in increased accessibility,” it said.
NCTA attorneys met with FCC Media Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning officials to push for allowing the exclusivity ban on vertically integrated pay-TV programming to expire under the commission’s program access rules, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnmxcp). “The exclusivity prohibition should be allowed to sunset in its entirety,” the notice said. “Congress intended that once sufficiently sturdy competition took hold in the marketplace, the prohibition was to ‘cease to be effective.'” Separately in the same docket 12-68, seven broadcast and cable TV programmers opposed a request by the American Cable Association for the agency to expand the scope of discovery in cases brought by multichannel video programming distributors of alleged price discrimination. That association wanted access to, in such instances, “the contracts that other programmers offer the same MVPD and other MVPDs for similar programming,” said CBS, Disney, News Corp., Sony Pictures, Time Warner, Univision and Viacom (http://xrl.us/bnmxh8). “The Commission has no authority to accede to ACA’s proposal, and it would be extraordinarily inequitable to permit MVPDs to engage in a broad exploration for confidential information under the auspices of the program access rules. This is especially so when disclosure would implicate the rights of innocent bystanders like the Content Companies, who are not parties to program access disputes and who have not placed their private business dealings at issue before the Commission."
The International Trade Commission released details of a patent complaint Google-owned Motorola Mobility filed Aug. 17 against Apple. Motorola Mobility wants the ITC to ban the import of Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch product lines, which Motorola Mobility claims include software features that violate seven of its patents. The ITC said Thursday it wants comments that discuss whether granting an import ban would “affect the public health and welfare in the United States, competitive conditions in the United States economy, the production of like or directly competitive articles in the United States, or United States consumers” (http://xrl.us/bnmxcr).
ViaSat Chief Financial Officer Ronald Wangerin resigned, but will be paid salary through Dec. 17 under an agreement with the satellite service operator, ViaSat said in an SEC filing. Wangerin’s pay will be based on his $440,000 annual salary, Viasat said. Wangerin, who joined ViaSat as CFO in 2002, also will get $293,333 in severance paid over eight months, the company said. Corporate Controller Shawn Duffy was named interim CFO and a search has been launched for Wangerin’s successor, Viasat said.
The FTC touted a $478 million judgment from a federal court in California against several “get rich quick” informercial marketers including John Beck’s Free and Clear Real Estate System, John Alexander’s Real Estate Riches in 14 Days and Jeff Paul’s Shortcuts to Internet Millions. “This huge judgment serves notice to anyone thinking of using phony get-rich-quick schemes to defraud customers,” Jeffrey Klurfeld, director of the FTC’s western region, said in a news release. Attorneys for the defendants either declined to comment or did not respond immediately to our query. The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles’s final order said that nearly all of the products’ customers lost money, and some lost more than $10,000 (http://xrl.us/bnmxa9). The case is likely to be appealed, said Larry Russ, counsel to Family Products, a defendant in the case. “We think the court’s assessment of the deceptive nature of the educational products was in error,” he said. “According to the FTC and the court, the average consumer that purchases a how-to product has to do as well as the testimonials, or the infomercial is considered to be deceptive,” he said. “In our view that creates a new standard in the advertising world."
The FCC granted the county of Hawai'i a 21-month waiver to release it from the VHF/UHF narrowbanding deadline of Jan. 31, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnmw8c). The new deadline for the county will be Sept. 30, 2014, the filing said. Then it'll need to change its private land mobile radio licensees in the 150-174 MHz and 450-512 MHz bands to operate in a channel bandwidth of no more than 12.5 kHz, the FCC said. “The County warrants waiver relief because it has demonstrated that the underlying purpose of the narrowbanding rule -- to promote spectrum efficiency -- would not be served or would be frustrated by application to the present case, and that a grant of the waiver would be in the public interest,” the FCC noted. “Based on these facts, including the County’s assertion that it expects to be narrowband-compliant within fewer than two years after the January 1, 2013 deadline, we find that strict enforcement of the narrowbanding deadline under these circumstances would not serve the underlying purpose of the rule."