In 2013, the FTC took its first actions involving mobile cramming and the Internet of Things, while filing a three-year FTC high of 18 advocacy and amicus briefs, according to the FTC’s 2013 annual highlights, released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1myAkav). It said the FTC obtained $297 million in consumer redress and $20 million in civil penalties. “The hallmark of our work has been, and will continue to be, our ability to adapt established tools -- law enforcement, policy initiatives and education -- to address economic challenges and technological advances that Congress could never have imagined when it created the FTC,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a statement.

Channel sharing on both a physical and virtual level can be done, said a technical report on a Los Angeles TV channel sharing project. The report, released Friday by CTIA and Los Angeles TV stations KLCS and KJLA, shared technical achievements and limitations of channel sharing. The report is a result of a pilot project to determine whether channel sharing can help free up spectrum in the TV incentive auction (CD Jan 29 p4). The stations have provided real world evidence that channel sharing presents a significant opportunity “for broadcasters to continue their existing business on shared spectrum and take home a check for spectrum they voluntarily relinquish in the incentive auction,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1gz5GdL). He said he hopes broadcasters will closely study the report. The report also found that all the TVs and tuners tested were able to receive and correctly parse all the required information, and that it’s technically feasible “for two 720p high definition streams to be combined into a single Advanced Television System Committee [ATSC] channel,” it said (http://bit.ly/1h0VciA). The report cautioned that careful thought must be put into the radio frequency transition, “whether for repacking or sharing, by the FCC and broadcasters to find a solution that will minimize viewer complaints,” it said. Because broadcasters have no control over the final display format at home, “it makes sense to use the most efficient encoding structure for final distribution over the air,” it said. The stations compared PBS Newshour episodes in the 720p and 1080i HD formats. In 720p, “we found a surprisingly better DMOS [Differential Mean Opinion Score] at approximately 50 percent of the bitrate of 1080i,” it said. With ATSC 3.0, the use of High Efficiency Video Coding codec is envisioned, it said. What isn’t known today is the bitrates that 4K and 8K will require in the future, it said. It also isn’t known whether 4K and 8K will be a viable business opportunity for a broadcaster “or will be delivered through alternate paths,” it said. Many technical issues identified in the report are very familiar to broadcasters “as part of the industry’s extensive experience with multicasting,” NAB said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1o8Gujr). NAB noted in a blog post that while Wheeler “is making a big channel sharing push,” he also is working to eliminate sharing arrangements through joint sales agreements (http://bit.ly/1h3JwLX). Wheeler is essentially saying he wants to see broadcasters share facilities “because that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but that broadcasters must unwind agreements they voluntarily entered, with commission approval, regarding sharing other resources, because that’s bad,” it said. The FCC is scheduled to vote Monday on an order that is expected to make JSAs attributable for ownership cap purposes (CD March 28 p1).

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the FCC to address various questions about Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules raised in a Jan. 31 petition by ACA International. “The Commission’s adoption of desperately needed updates, clarifications and revisions to its TCPA rules will allow covered communications to be governed by a clear, fair and consistent regulatory framework that protects the interests Congress contemplated in enacting the TCPA without impeding legitimate business operations,” ACA said then (http://bit.ly/1i099j9). The Chamber said the FCC should confirm that not all predictive dialers are automatic telephone dialing systems, that “capacity” under the TCPA means present ability and that prior express consent to make a call “attaches to the person who incurs a debt, and not the specific telephone number the debtor provides at the time of consent.” TCPA lawsuits are a growing problem for its members, the Chamber said. “TCPA lawsuits against businesses are skyrocketing,” it said (http://bit.ly/1iEIN8j). “There were 222 TCPA lawsuits filed in February 2014 compared to 159 in February 2013, an increase of 40 percent. There were 1,862 TCPA lawsuits filed in 2013 compared to 1,101 in 2012 and 825 in 2011, an increase of 69 percent and 126 percent, respectively."

A two-year international partnership will join experts from the U.S. and Europe to debate and research “the balance between security and freedom,” said a Wednesday news release (http://bit.ly/1m82kil) from New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. OTI, whose major funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the State Department, is joining with the Global Public Policy Institute, a Germany-based think tank, for the initiative. “At a time of significant transatlantic tension on this topic, it is especially important that we build pathways for reasoned, research-driven international dialogue on controversial issues such as Internet governance, fragmentation, and cybersecurity,” said Tim Maurer, OTI research fellow. The project will produce two policy papers, a conference in Washington and “regular policy breakfasts,” OTI said.

A Nov. 7 public symposium will celebrate the FTC’s 100th anniversary, with keynotes and panels on the agency’s history and future, the commission said in a Wednesday news release (http://1.usa.gov/1l41zXr). The FTC has created a website -- www.ftc.gov/100 -- where more information will be posted. People can also submit to the site comments about their FTC experiences.

The FCC should determine “the necessary substantive contours” of new net neutrality rules before deciding what Communications Act section to justify them under, longtime net neutrality proponent Marvin Ammori told Philip Verveer, senior counselor to Chairman Tom Wheeler, in a meeting Friday (http://bit.ly/1rAcEDM). A New America Foundation fellow, Ammori said his views expressed were “purely personal.” Beginning with Section 706’s “limitations” and then “crafting a rule that fits those limitations is putting the cart before the horse,” Ammori said. “At best, 706-first thinking could result in the appropriate network neutrality rule only by accident. At worst, this thinking could lead to the adoption of a rule devoid of the substance required to ensure an open Internet based on market evidence and theory.” The entire Internet ecosystem will be upset by the Comcast-Netflix paid peering agreement, Ammori said. If the biggest technology companies transfer money to ISPs to ensure a solid connection to end-users, “it will likely lead to less venture investment across the board in technology companies,” and will “weaken the acquisition market that fuels technology investment,” he said. ISPs would extract rents from smaller companies too -- not interconnection fees, but “access fees,” he said. Section 706 alone can go part of the way toward keeping the Internet open, but Title II reclassification is necessary for the strongest impact, public interest groups commented earlier this week on potential net neutrality rules, which CEA, CTIA and others said shouldn’t be restrictive (CD March 25 p9).

Medley Global Advisors has decided to end telecom, media and technology policy coverage, said analyst Jeffrey Silva. The move is “part of streamlining efforts to better rationalize resources for its core macro policy intelligence service,” Silva said in an email. Friday is Silva’s last day with the company, he said. The Medley Global telecom shutdown comes one month after Stifel Nicolaus also ended its telecom coverage, former analyst David Kaut said. He and former Stifel analyst Christopher King were let go last month, “along with several other telecom analysts,” King told us.

It’s time to “provide clarity” on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said in a blog post Tuesday (http://fcc.us/1ixwgDA). The TCPA, which restricts automated telemarketing calls, has been a “general success,” O'Rielly said, but over time the rules have become “complex and unclear” after new agency and judicial interpretations and changing business models. “The rules are creating situations where consumers might not receive notifications and offers that they want and expect, and where new and innovative services and applications that help friends and family members communicate with each other could be restricted,” O'Rielly said, pointing to lawsuits and a growing backlog of FCC petitions as evidence of the problem. “There are several dozen petitions asking the FCC to declare or clarify that a particular service or method of communicating would comply with the TCPA. It is very troubling that legitimate companies feel they have to ask the government for its blessing every time they need to make a business decision in order to avoid litigation,” he said. “The FCC needs to address this inventory of petitions as soon as possible.”

The Communications Workers of America criticized Sprint Monday for its recent decision to lay off about 1,550 call center employees and reduce operations at six call centers, saying in an emailed statement that the move shows that a Sprint bid for T-Mobile US could “prove costly for American workers and consumers.” CWA has called a potential Sprint/T-Mobile a “non-starter” that “raises deep concerns about what is in the best interests of U.S. consumers and workers at T-Mobile’ (http://bit.ly/OWWlS0). Sprint disclosed the layoffs last week, citing a reduction in the number of calls coming into the centers. The carrier also said in March that it would be laying off 330 technical consultants, closing 150 service and phone repair centers and would close 55 of its worst-performing stores. A Sprint spokeswoman said the carrier is “committed to growing its business and will also continue to look for ways to operate more efficiently and to offer customers options for managing their accounts without assistance from a customer service agent. Over the last five years, calls to our customer service call centers have dropped by 60 percent.” Sprint said in January that it planned to make additional cuts following a Q4 net loss of $1.04 billion. Sprint has laid off or announced plans to lay off more than 2,700 call center workers since Japanese telco SoftBank bought the carrier in July, said CWA. The employees laid off last week were to continue working through Tuesday, which CWA said violated federal law, which requires at least 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs. One of the affected call centers was in Elmsford, N.Y., where state law requires at least 90 days’ notice before mass layoffs, said the union. Sprint is “constantly assessing its workforce to meet the needs of our ever-changing, competitive landscape,” the Sprint spokeswoman said.

The Verizon board would issue a report by October detailing how the company “is responding to regulatory, competitive, legislative and public pressure to ensure that its network management policies and practices” promote net neutrality and an open Internet, under a shareholder proposal that’s up for a vote at the telco’s annual meeting May 1 in Phoenix. The board is urging that it be voted down. The Nathan Cummings Foundation, a think tank that owns just under 6,000 Verizon shares, is sponsoring the proposal, said the telco’s SEC proxy statement filed March 17 (http://bit.ly/1h2dEvG). “We are not seeking a report on legal compliance or the details of network management,” the proposal said. “Rather, we seek to ensure that shareholders have sufficient information to evaluate how Verizon manages this significant policy challenge,” including how the company “takes into account that network management decisions could potentially affect future regulatory developments,” it said. Verizon as a company has not been as transparent with the public as it should about its open Internet policies, the proposal said. Urging shareholders to vote the proposal down, the Verizon board “strongly disagrees” with the contention the company “has not provided its customers with evidence” of a commitment to open Internet policies, the proxy said. “As a leader in developing an open architecture for accessing and using the Internet, Verizon’s position on all aspects of the ‘network neutrality’ debate has been consistently and publicly conveyed in mainstream and industry-related media, through legislative and agency fact-finding processes and in applicable agency and court filings.” Verizon recently published on its website a statement of the company’s “commitment to broadband customers to support the Open Internet and to provide them with Internet access and use of the lawful online content, applications and services of their choice, regardless of their source.” Verizon in December sought but failed to gain SEC approval to strike the investor proposal from the annual meeting’s agenda on the grounds that the company, under Security Exchange Act rule 14a-8(i)(10), already has “substantially implemented” what the shareholder proposal is asking for in a net neutrality report by the board. The Nathan Cummings Foundation objected. In February, the SEC denied Verizon’s request to strike the proposal from the agenda. “It does not appear that Verizon’s public disclosures compare favorably with the guidelines of the proposal,” Norman von Holtzendorff, attorney-adviser in the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, told Verizon in a Feb. 7 letter.