There may be delays between when Hulu puts videos online and when captioning’s available, lawyers for the website told front-office FCC staffers of the Consumer & Governmental Affairs and Media bureaus. “In many cases Hulu must manually synchronize captions to video programming in a process that is highly labor-intensive and time consuming,” said a filing Friday in docket 11-154 (http://xrl.us/bnbhun). The website, which consists primarily of broadcast TV shows and is owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Disney and News Corp., said it “dedicates significant resources to ensuring the precise synchronization of the caption files and video programming that it ingests.” The website’s understanding of commission captioning display rules is they can be satisfied if video programming distributors that provide apps or plugins implement a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers timed text format, the filing said. Hulu said engineers for the website will discuss with agency officials at their request its apps and tools for syncing video programming and captioning files.
Dish Network teamed with Qualcomm to enable support of satellite-based communications in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 platform. The collaboration will allow development of mobile handsets and devices for Dish “that can operate in both terrestrial and satellite modes in the 2 GHz/AWS-4 band,” the DBS company said. Dish awaits an FCC decision on proposed rules that would allow the company to use its spectrum for ground-based wireless broadband (CD June 5 p9).
Infofree.com said it will soon have more than 102 million cellphone numbers available as part of its database, which it sells to marketers. “As more people and businesses are dropping land lines, cell phones are the wave of the future,” said founder Vin Gupta. “Infofree will be the first database company to get 102 million cell phone numbers appended to its business and consumer databases."
Internet ad revenue hit an all-time high for Q1, which at $8.4 billion is 15 percent higher than Q1 2011, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said Monday, citing a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers which it commissioned. “Marketers and agencies are clearly -- and wisely -- investing dollars to reach digitally connected consumers,” said IAB President Randall Rothenberg. The report includes data on online ad revenue from websites, commercial online services, free email providers and “all other companies selling digital advertising,” IAB said. The full report hasn’t been publicly released. A spokeswoman told us the group only releases “break out reports” for half-year and full-year figures.
The FCC sought comment on a proposal (http://xrl.us/bnbhma) by the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition that the agency adopt new rules for fixed microwave service in the 41-42.5 GHz band, which could mean more use of the band for wireless backhaul (http://xrl.us/bnbhmk). “Back in 2004, the FCC proposed service rules for the 42-42.5 GHz segment that would have relied on area-wide auctions, much like those at 39 GHz. The FCC never followed through,” said Mitchell Lazarus of Fletcher Heald in a blog entry (http://xrl.us/bnbhnj). “Now the FWCC urges it not to, pointing out that the 39 GHz band is severely underutilized, in large part because the auction-related renewal requirements, although intended to encourage rapid build-out, in actual practice have had the opposite effect of deterring construction. Instead, the FWCC favors link-by-link licensing with frequency coordination, a decades-old approach that has shown great success in the 11, 18, and 23 GHz bands, among others.” Lazarus represents the FWCC. Comments are due July 9, replies 15 days later. “The Commission has repeatedly recognized the growing need for broadband spectrum, particularly for backhaul operations that carry data between a wireless provider’s network facilities and the towers that relay the data to and from an end user’s mobile device,” the FWCC said in its petition. “The 42 GHz band is ideally suited to handling broadband backhaul over the relatively short distances encountered in urban and suburban environments, where the demand for wireless broadband service tends to be highest."
Flaws in the “One-Per-Household” Lifeline worksheet and the Universal Service Administrative Co. pre-screening tool will lead some eligible Lifeline beneficiaries to conclude they're ineligible, General Communication Inc. told the FCC in a letter Monday (http://xrl.us/bnbhkd). The worksheet and tool incorrectly inform a prospective Lifeline subscriber they're ineligible whenever they share income and expenses with at least one other adult at their residence, and when at least one other adult at their residence already receives Lifeline benefits. This is “not always the case,” GCI said. “The Worksheet fails to contemplate the possibility that the prospective subscriber shares income and expenses with one adult at his or her residence, while a third adult, with whom the prospective subscriber does not share income and expenses, is a Lifeline subscriber,” the Alaskan cable operator and telco explained. “In this case, the residence has at least two households, but the prospective subscriber’s household does not include any other Lifeline subscribers and thus the prospective subscriber is eligible for Lifeline.” An eligible telecom carrier using those forms “runs the risk of denying Lifeline service to a qualifying low-income consumer, in violation of Lifeline rules,” GCI said, asking the commission to direct USAC to implement fixes. GCI said it plans to use its own modified version of the worksheet that corrects the flaw.
The FCC is considering deploying a method known as “location by reference” to assist in providing accurate indoor location information to public safety answering points for 911 voice communications, said a Cisco ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnbhif). Company officials met with the FCC Thursday to discuss possible methods. In a “location by reference” system, home gateways and client devices could provide a URL to the PSAP, which in turn would query a service provider database for dispatch location. The groups also discussed an option where the user or service provider enters a location address that the home gateway could use to generate location information. Cisco didn’t take a position on these methods, but wants to work with FCC staff as consideration of indoor location progresses, the filing said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau seeks comment on several “threshold decisions” regarding the design of the forward-looking cost model for Phase II of the Connect America Fund, which will provide ongoing support to areas served by price-cap carriers, said a public notice released late Friday (http://xrl.us/bnbhde). The goal is to extend broadband to millions of unserved locations over a five-year period. The bureau seeks input on a wide range of issues, such as whether the model should presume “green-field or brown-field deployment”; whether it should estimate costs based on fiber-to-the-premises or DSL technology; how to distribute shared network costs; whether to calculate support to partially-served areas or to wholly unserved areas; and how to identify areas with costs that are outside the range required to receive Phase II support. The bureau said it’s “particularly interested in understanding how specific choices impact the model with respect to (1) precision (i.e., the granularity of the model at a geographic or other level); (2) accuracy (aligning modeled costs with the forward-looking costs of an efficient provider); (3) simplicity (reducing the computational complexity); (4) accessibility (ease with which the public can evaluate and comment on the model); (5) administrative feasibility (the burden on carriers, the Commission, or other interested parties and the time necessary to implement), and (6) the cost of implementation.” Comments are due July 9 in docket 10-90, replies July 23.
Smart meters will enable massive data collection that can track what members of a household do in their own home, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said Monday. Combining the data with information from other sources could pave the way for extensive data mining, it said. Patterns and profiles could be used for other purposes such as marketing, advertising and price discrimination by third parties, it said. The EDPS welcomed the European Commission’s plan to create a template for a data protection impact assessment. But the office said it regrets that the EC didn’t offer more specific, comprehensive and practical guidance in its recommendation on preparations for the rollout of smart metering systems. Assistant EDPS Supervisor Giovanni Butarelli urged the EC to consider whether further legislation is needed at the EU level to ensure adequate protection of personal data in smart metering systems, including at least a mandatory requirement that data controllers carry out data protection impact assessments and have to notify individuals of personal data breaches. The EDPS opinion also recommended: (1) More guidance on the legal basis of the data processing and the choices available to data subjects, including on frequency of meter readings. (2) Mandatory use of privacy-enhancing technologies and other best available techniques for minimizing data collection. (3) More guidance on data retention periods. (4) Giving consumers direct access to their energy usage data and disclosing to them their individual profiles and the logic of any algorithms used for data mining and information on remote on/off functions.
Before a TV programmer “tests the waters” by using interactive ads for kids’ shows, the FCC should approve “an enforceable rule” against it, youth advocates told agency staffers. “The Commission should clarify how its existing rules, such as the ‘web crawl rule,’ apply to new marketing techniques such as onscreen Twitter hashtags,” Children Now representatives reported telling Media Bureau officials and Deputy Public-Private Initiative Director Jordan Usdan. “Many programs today have associated Twitter hashtags that marketers can use to communicate with viewers.” The group lobbied last week for the agency to adopt a proposal in a 2004 rulemaking notice to bar children’s show interactivity unless parents opt in, as Children Now and the American Academy of Pediatrics asked in April (CD April 16 p2). “Websites operated by children’s media companies are in some cases providing inadequate separation between streaming programs and streaming commercials,” Children Now said. With the FCC’s cycle for TV stations to seek renewal about to start, the agency has “the first opportunity after the transition to digital broadcasting to assess whether the modified guideline was effective in increasing the availability of E/I programming for children,” the group said in docket 08-90 (http://xrl.us/bnbht8) of a 2004 rule that stations must air more educational and informational shows if they use multicast channels.