The FCC should hold a forum on low-power TV and the spectrum auction, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition in an ex parte filing addressed to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1aRHTUD). The coalition wants the session to be part of the commission’s series of LEARN (Learn Everything About Reverse Auctions Now) events intended to prepare the industry for the incentive auction. “All we want before the rule making is made is for our part of the broadcast industry to be able to share in an open forum how the auction process will affect us, both good and bad,” said coalition Director Mike Gravino. LPTV stations are 74 percent of all FCC broadcast TV licenses, and will be the “most affected party in the auction process” because of a “collective $1 billion unfunded mandate to move channels,” said Gravino. He said previous requests for an LPTV LEARN session had not been acted on by the Incentive Auction Task Force and then-acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn. “This is not about LPTV being able to be auction eligible,” said the filing. “Although if we were, we would provide substantial competition in the forward auction, and help to lower the price the government has to pay for the spectrum."
The Netflix ISP Speed Index remained constant for all providers in October, said the company in a blog post Monday (http://nflx.it/1fwHXZd). Google Fiber led the primetime performance rankings at 3.5 Mbps, followed by Cablevision-Optimum (2.7 Mbps), Cox (2.56 Mbps), Suddenlink (2.47 Mbps), Charter (2.37 Mbps), Time Warner Cable (2.23 Mbps), Verizon FiOS (2.22 Mbps), Comcast (2.07 Mbps), Bright House (2.04 Mbps) and AT&T U-verse (1.87 Mbps).
Newegg Chief Legal Officer Lee Chang is among the witnesses set to testify Thursday before the House Commerce Oversight Subcommittee on the impact patent assertion entities (PAEs) have on the U.S. economy and innovation. The hearing is set to focus mainly on the effect of demand letters that PAEs send in advance of potential litigation, the committee said Tuesday in a memo. Witnesses are expected to testify on how companies respond to demand letters, the typical details included in the letters, and how companies negotiate with PAEs prior to litigation, the memo said (http://1.usa.gov/1bAZeha). The Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee examined the effects of demand letters last week during a hearing meant to precede possible legislation (CD Nov 8 p13). Other witnesses set to testify include: Charles Duan, director of Public Knowledge’s Patent Reform Project; Jamie Richardson, White Castle System’s vice president-government and shareholder relations; Justin Bragiel, Texas Hotel & Lodging Association general counsel; and Robin Feldman, director of the University of California Hastings College of Law’s Institute for Innovation Law.
Mobile healthcare, education and consumer finance are all hot areas for investors, venture capitalists said during a webinar Tuesday sponsored by Mobile Future. “Mobile underpins so much of what we're seeing,” said Paul Gladen with Hellgate Venture Network. “Everything is being disrupted,” said Nick Efstratis, managing director of EPIC Ventures. “I look around and there’s opportunity everywhere.” Most venture capitalists are looking for the same thing, Efstratis said. “We want to hear that they're solving a big problem or a problem that will be big over time,” he said. “We want to hear that they've got domain expertise, meaning they know the players, they know the competition, they know the real pain points and then we want to hear what is their unfair advantage. What do they know that others in the market don’t?” Elizabeth Marchi, managing director of Frontier Angel Fund, said venture capitalists aren’t banks. “We are not about making loans,” she said. “We're about taking risks and putting equity into companies that have scale. I need to really understand what your market opportunity is."
Deciding the future of the 5 GHz band should not force a choice between Internet access and safer cars, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., plans to say Wednesday, at a hearing on that band (http://1.usa.gov/1fzL57r), scheduled to start at 2 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn. The event was originally scheduled to take places during the partial federal shutdown. “The 5 GHz ecosystem is teeming with existing uses,” Walden will say in his opening statement. “From critical government radar systems to commercial satellites, there are a host of licensed services that are already deployed in this band.” Walden will also say 5 GHz is being used for Wi-Fi and that “thanks to technical rules that limit power and require certain mitigation technologies, these systems are currently meeting our licensed and unlicensed needs without interfering with one another.” He called the intelligent transportation potential of 5 GHz “one of the promising, but unrealized, licensed uses of this band.” Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., will say in her opening statement that the FCC “should move expeditiously to harmonize existing rules and make more spectrum available for gigabit Wi-Fi.” The 5 GHz band “is complementary, not a substitute for low-band spectrum below 1 GHz,” she will say: “Simply put, the superior propagation factors found in the television band will unlock new unlicensed innovation, such as rural broadband access that would not be possible in higher bands of spectrum."
Correction: Free Press is concerned about the effect on localism of increased foreign corporate ownership of broadcasters, but doesn’t oppose a draft declaratory ruling on the issue (CD Nov 12 p6).
The FCC should extend the deadline for broadcasters to submit biennial ownership reports to Dec. 20, said the NAB in a filing Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1i6V6KJ). The current deadline is Dec. 2. The filing window for the reports was to start Oct. 1, but the commission’s online filing systems weren’t unavailable from Oct. 1 to Oct. 16 because of the federal shutdown, said NAB. The requested extension -- originally requested last week in a filing by Garvey Schubert attorney Melodie Virtue (http://bit.ly/1j2v4WB) -- would restore the 60-day filing window that was compromised by the shutdown. NAB also said technical problems have made it hard to file ownership reports since the FCC’s post-shutdown re-opening.
The Internet Security Alliance asked the White House to institute a “beta testing phase” for the Cybersecurity Framework, which the National Institute of Standards and Technology is developing in consultation with industry stakeholders. NIST is collecting feedback on a preliminary version of the framework it released late last month. The Department of Homeland Security is set to push for full-scale implementation of the framework once NIST releases the final version in February. The government’s difficulty in implementing online registration of healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act is evidence of the problems with “adhering to artificially determined deadlines and not doing adequate testing,” said ISA President Larry Clinton in a news release Friday. “We are simply proposing the federal government do what any private sector entity would do before it goes to a full launch of a new product or service -- you run a beta test with selected target audiences and generate data to refine the product before you go to full deployment.” Clinton said NIST has been unable to fully adhere to the guidelines in President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order, namely that the framework address cost effectiveness. Data gleaned from beta testing “can then be used to demonstrate what elements of the framework are cost effective for various types of organizations and what sort of incentives will be needed to encourage voluntary adoption of needed elements which are not determined to be cost effective,” Clinton said. Beta testing would also allow DHS to “work with the organizations on implementation, track the issues and costs and deploy the incentives provided to manage the costs,” he said. “If we can reliably report this data of cost effectiveness to the community we will have a much better chance to encourage voluntary participation of framework techniques on a sustainable basis."
The Supreme Court should grant broadcasters’ cert petition against Aereo to keep the streaming TV service and court decisions upholding it from threatening “the existence of the American broadcast industry as the nation has come to know it,” said the Media Institute in an amicus brief filed Tuesday (http://bit.ly/17S91CA). Aereo’s model for streaming broadcaster content is “a pretext of legal cover” allowing Aereo to traffic in copyrighted content, said the brief. “Aereo’s bizarre engineering, employing thousands of antennas to do the work of one, reveals to all what is really going on.” The brief criticized the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling denying a preliminary injunction against Aereo and asked the Supreme Court to reject it. “This Court should grant the petition to vindicate the clear intent of Congress to protect the copyright interests vested in broadcasters from unfair exploitation,” said the institute.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Tuesday on the Fox News’s Fox and Friends that he still has concerns about Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Jeh Johnson’s qualifications, but will give Johnson “the benefit of the doubt.” Johnson “does have good experience from the Department of Defense,” McCaul said. “He has cybersecurity experience.” Johnson is to appear before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Wednesday (CD Nov 7 p12).