Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., picked by Mitt Romney Saturday as his running mate, has a strong FCC tie. Courtney Reinhard, new wireless adviser to Commissioner Ajit Pai, was counsel and budget analyst for Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, from January 2009 to June 2012, when she moved to the FCC.
FCC TV captioning waiver rules take effect Sept. 12, and didn’t need Office of Management and Budget approval because there were no new information collection regulations, the commission said in Monday’s Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bnkksr). The FCC’s rules were changed “to replace all current references to ‘undue burden’ with the term ‘economically burdensome'” as a threshold for captioning exemption requests, the notice said. Commissioners last month approved the change that implemented the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CD July 23 p22).
TDS Telecom asked the FCC for help in recovering money lost to Halo Wireless. The telco “seeks a limited waiver of the Commission’s [USF/ICC Transformation Order] rules so it can include in its eligible recovery baseline calculation the intrastate revenues that it billed Halo for usage during FY2011 for each of the TDS Telecom Subsidiaries,” it said in a Friday petition (http://xrl.us/bnkknf). Halo Wireless was liquidated in late July after battling AT&T across numerous state public utility commissions over disputes about an interconnection agreement and access charges (CD Aug 2 p8). But Halo “still owes TDS Telecom compensation for access services rendered in Fiscal Year 2011” despite its liquidation, TDS said, noting “Halo has confirmed that it lacks sufficient assets to make such payment through the orderly wind down of its operations in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding ... an unfair and untenable position.” The FCC should allow TDS Telecom to “include within its Base Period Revenues unpaid amounts billed to Halo Wireless, Inc” and thus make those payments eligible for recovery through the FCC, TDS said. “Not recovering this amount will limit TDS Telecom’s ability to deploy additional network and improve its existing network so that more of its customers can receive broadband service and existing broadband customers can benefit from greater broadband speeds."
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) urged lawmakers to avoid privacy legislation that places restrictions on third-party data brokerage companies, in letters sent Monday to eight House lawmakers (http://xrl.us/bnkknj). Restrictions on data use could have negative consequences on America’s job creation, economic growth and innovation, the group wrote to Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairmen of the Congressional Privacy Caucus; House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C.; Steve Chabot, R-Ohio; Austin Scott, R-Ga.; Bobby Rush, D-Ill.; and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. The eight lawmakers previously said large-scale aggregation of personal information raises a number of serious privacy concerns and asked nine data brokerage companies to explain how they collect and use consumer data (CD July 26 p14). The companies included in the inquiry were Acxiom, Alliance Data Systems, Equifax, Experian, Harte-Hanks, Intelius, FICO, Merkle and Meredith Corp. DMA said it was concerned that the congressional inquiry appears to question “legitimate commercial data practices” and sought to dissuade lawmakers from creating “unnecessary” restrictions on marketing practices. DMA said the Supreme Court determined last year that companies can legally mine consumer data for advertising purposes in Sorrell vs. IMS Health Inc. The case overturned a Vermont statute that prevented data mining companies from selling patient prescription information to pharmaceutical firms. DMA said the case affirmed that “truthful advertising activities -- including the transfer and use of data for advertising -- are protected speech under the First Amendment.” Congress should continue to avoid placing restrictions on commercial data practices and support industry self-regulation efforts as the “most efficient and effective method” to address privacy concerns, the letter said.
The U.S. won’t seek to block the sale by Comcast’s NBCUniversal of NBCU’s 16 percent of A&E Television Networks to A&E’s other owners, Disney and Hearst. The FTC and Justice Department said in a notice to appear in Tuesday’s Federal Register that on July 27 they granted early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust waiting period. The companies agreed to the $3 billion deal in July (CD July 11 p18).
The public will have an additional 45 days to comment on applications for generic top-level domains (gTLDs), ICANN said last week (http://xrl.us/bnkkun). The decision to extend the comment window, which will now conclude Sept. 26, comes “[a]fter review and discussion of the community’s input, and careful consideration of the implications and impacts the additional time may have on the processing of applications,” ICANN said, adding that it was expecting to receive 500 applications. ICANN said earlier this year that it had received 1,930 applications (http://xrl.us/bnkkvo). In July, the Association of National Advertisers asked ICANN to extend the window for public comment, saying 60 days was not long enough to process the unexpected large volume of applications (WID July 31 p7). Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., sent a letter to ICANN President Akram Atallah asking that the period for comment be extended (http://xrl.us/bnkkth). They had expressed concerns that the new gTLDs could increase online fraud and cybersquatting. Comments on the gTLD applications are due Sept. 26 (http://bit.ly/OCSRPp). Leahy said he welcomed ICANN’s decision but asked the group to do more to seek public input on the program. “I urge ICANN to take meaningful steps to inform the public about this program and to listen to the concerns and comments that are raised,” Leahy said in an email Monday.
The leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee continued to spar over the best approach to secure U.S. critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, following the Senate’s failure to pass cybersecurity legislation this month. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the Senate’s ability to reach a cybersecurity compromise is “very unclear” and urged President Barack Obama to issue an executive order that addresses the problem, in a letter sent Monday (http://xrl.us/bnkkey). Rockefeller offered his “strong support” for an executive order that creates voluntary cybersecurity guidelines to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure systems. The president should create a program that enhances private and public sector collaboration, conducts risk assessments of critical cyber systems, and develops “dynamic and adaptable” cybersecurity practices for the private sector, he wrote. The program should be led by the Department of Homeland Security and coordinated with the assistance of the departments of Defense, Commerce and Justice, among others, the letter said. Last week, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, suggested that the White House was considering a cybersecurity executive order (CD Aug 9 p3). Rockefeller, a sponsor of the Cybersecurity Act (S-3414), slammed the GOP-led vote against cloture of the bill (CD Aug 3 p3) and said he could not recall a circumstance in which Senate lawmakers had “obstructed genuine efforts to address a threat to our national security that is so urgent and widely recognized, where the military intelligence advice was so explicit and urgent, and where bipartisan national security consensus was so deep and broad.” Separately, Senate Commerce Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said she was optimistic that the Senate will be able to reach a consensus on cybersecurity legislation by Labor Day. She wrote in an op-ed published on a San Antonio news site operated by KSAT-TV12 (http://xrl.us/bnkkhg) that there is “no partisan dissent” over whether Congress needs to act to prevent cybersecurity threats, but “the question is how we act.” Hutchison, who helped author an alternative cybersecurity bill, the SECURE IT Act (S-2151), said she opposed S-3414 because it would have actually deterred cooperation between the public and private sectors, rather than encourage it. Instead she promoted S-2151 as a nimble, flexible approach to cybersecurity that has industry support and can pass the GOP-led House. “We all agree that cybersecurity is an issue of vital national importance ... I call on my friends from both sides of the aisle to come together to get it done,” she wrote.
Google is cutting 20 percent of its Motorola Mobility employees and moving its focus away from phones, the company said Monday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (http://xrl.us/bnkjxg). It said two-thirds of the reduction will happen outside U.S. borders as it closes or consolidates a third of Motorola’s 90 facilities. Motorola will be “shifting the emphasis from feature phones to more innovative and profitable devices,” Google said, attributing the decision to revenue. “These changes are designed to return Motorola’s mobile devices unit to profitability, after it lost money in fourteen of the last sixteen quarters,” Google wrote to the SEC. “That said, investors should expect to see significant revenue variability for Motorola for several quarters. While lower expenses are likely to lag the immediate negative impact to revenue, Google sees these actions as a key step for Motorola to achieve sustainable profitability.” The company will provide what it calls “generous” severance packages for the 4,000 terminated workers and estimates a cost of no greater than $275 million as a result. It said that cost “will be largely recognized in the third quarter, with the remaining severance-related costs recognized by the end of 2012.” Google bought Motorola in May.
The effective date for FCC rules on more efficient use of the 76-77 GHz band is Sept. 12. In early July, acting on a request from Toyota, the FCC agreed to change the limits for radiated emissions in the band to allow more use of “stop and go” adaptive cruise control and rear pre-collision systems in the cars it manufactures for sale in the U.S. (CD July 6 p3). The FCC also amended its rules to allow the operation of fixed radars at airports for detecting foreign object debris on runways and monitoring aircraft and service vehicles on taxiways. The notice was published in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bnkj6b).
Former FCC Chief Economist Leslie Marx, a Duke University economist, questioned the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s emphasis on sharing as a means of addressing the nation’s spectrum crunch, in a blog posted Monday. “In summary, I worry that the PCAST report will divert attention away from the more difficult but potentially much more valuable task of clearing and auctioning clean spectrum for commercial use,” Marx wrote (http://xrl.us/bnkjx9). “It falls on the White House to take the leadership role to ensure the efficient use of government-held spectrum, and the PCAST Report’s solution of merely offering incentives for sharing the spectrum falls acutely short of that goal.” The AWS-1 auction showed that sharing works, Marx said. “Clearing and reallocation of Federal spectrum is something that was done as part of the FCC’s AWS-1 auction, with a net surplus to the government,” she said. “This shows that clearing is not only possible, it is fiscally responsible. Furthermore, one can design the auction, as the FCC knows how to do, so that spectrum is only cleared if the value generated exceeds the cost. With this auction design in mind, the cost of clearing becomes less important. So, although the PCAST report raises the issue that ‘relocation costs may even exceed the likely revenue raised by auctioning the band to commercial users,’ they may not, and an auction could be designed with reserve prices so that Federal users would not be asked to clear the spectrum unless the revenue did exceed the relocation costs.” PCAST released its report last month (CD July 23 p1).