The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is creating a Digital Trade Working Group to target digital trade barriers and promote policies to advance digital trade efforts worldwide, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said. Deputy USTR Robert Holleyman will head the group, which includes USTR experts in e-commerce, telecom, services, intellectual property, innovation and industrial competitiveness, USTR said. “The Digital Trade Working Group is an important resource to help the United States maintain its 'digital trade surplus,' and allow companies and workers in every sector of the U.S. economy to use the Internet to deliver innovative, American-made products and services abroad,” Froman said. The group will focus on barriers to cloud computing, platform services and digital products trade, and will coordinate the negotiation and implementation of digital trade provisions in various bilateral and multilateral agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the Trade in Services Agreement, USTR said. Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman called for lawmakers to work with industry and USTR to create a chief digital trade negotiator position within USTR last week during a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing (see 1607130066).

More than half of U.S. broadband households will have a smart home controller by 2020, as more companies embed controllers into entertainment products, said a Monday Parks Associates report. Some 24 percent of broadband households will have an IP camera during the forecast period and more than 26 percent will have a home security system, said Parks. About a fifth of U.S. broadband households own a smart home device, and more than 40 percent plan to buy one before year-end, said the firm.

The Alaska Telephone Association said the FCC could begin a process in 2021 to address concerns that the group's 10-year "Alaska Plan" would provide broadband support for competing wireless networks. ATA, which represents General Communication and others, said it believes the plan remains the best way to bring LTE wireless service to remote Alaska, but acknowledged the potential for high-cost funds supporting overlapping networks could cause concern. "In the interest of seeking a resolution, ATA suggests that the Commission consider initiating a process at the end of year five of the Alaska Plan to identify overlapping supported LTE networks based on the FCC Form 477 submissions due March 1, 2021," said an ATA filing posted Wednesday in docket 10-90 summarizing discussions with FCC officials, including Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and aides to some other members. "The Commission also could adopt a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to seek comment on what steps, if any, the Commission should take to address any overlap. This approach provides time up front for Alaska Plan CETCs [competitive eligible telecom carriers] to invest in their networks in reliance on a known amount of high-cost support, and allows the Commission to address any overlap concerns informed by public comment as well as the deployment situation in Alaska, technology trends, and its own national policies regarding competitive overlap in other mobile contexts." ATA urged the FCC to adopt the Alaska Plan's 10 years of "frozen support," with CETCs receiving such support at 2014 levels unless and until the agency makes changes based on the proposed overlapping analysis and FNPRM, but with the total amount provided constant and no funds leaving Alaska. The commission is considering two draft Connect America Fund orders targeting Alaska's rate-of-return carriers and CETCs, and its price-cap carrier Alaska Communications.

A federal judge threw out evidence collected through StingRay surveillance by the Drug Enforcement Administration. A StingRay, or cell site simulator, is a type of surveillance equipment that mimics wireless towers, forcing nearby mobile devices to connect. The DEA used a StingRay to locate the apartment of defendant Raymond Lambis and search it for narcotics and drug paraphernalia. Lambis asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to suppress the evidence, claiming the use of StingRay violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy. In a ruling Tuesday, Judge William Pauley agreed with Lambis. “The DEA’s use of the cell-site simulator to locate Lambis’s apartment was an unreasonable search because the ‘pings’ from Lambis’s cell phone to the nearest cell site were not readily available 'to anyone who wanted to look' without the use of a cell-site simulator,” Pauley wrote. The use of a cell-site simulator constitutes a Fourth Amendment search, but was outside the scope of DEA’s warrant, he said. “If the Government had wished to use a cell-site simulator, it could have obtained a warrant. … Absent a search warrant, the Government may not turn a citizen’s cell phone into a tracking device.” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Nathan Wessler applauded the decision. “After decades of secret and warrantless use of Stingray technology by federal law enforcement to track phones, a federal court has finally held the authorities to account,” he said in an emailed statement. “The feds are now firmly on notice that when they hide their intent to use invasive surveillance technology from courts and fail to get a warrant, their evidence will be suppressed. This opinion strongly reinforces the strength of our constitutional privacy rights in the digital age.” The DEA didn't comment.

The FCC's undersea cable outage reporting order specified situations in which licensees must report outages. The order, released Tuesday (see 1607120084), said undersea cable licensees are required to report when there is: (1) "An outage, including those caused by planned maintenance, of a portion of a submarine cable system between submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) at one end of the system and SLTE at another end of the system for more than 30 minutes," or (2) "the failure or significant degradation of any fiber pair, including losses due to terminal equipment issues, on a cable segment for four hours or more, regardless of the number of fiber pairs that comprise the total capacity of the cable segment." The order said the reporting duties include: "a Notification within eight hours (to become four hours after three years) of the time of determining that a reportable outage has occurred; an Interim Report within 24 hours of receiving a Plan of Work (relating to repairs); and a Final Report within seven days of completing repair." The order clarified report content requirements to allow for situations where "not all requested information may be known when the reports are due."

The FCC updated its online maps site with a variety of new features as part of broader efforts toward better usability and performance of its information technology systems and easier public access to data, said Richard Mansfield, associate chief information officer-stakeholder relations in the Office of the Managing Director; Allison Baker, senior data analytics manager in the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis; and Perryn Ashmore, associate CIO-tailored platforms and data in OMD, in a blog post Tuesday. The FCC said the map site changes include better display through simplified page layout, better filter and search capabilities, better reliability through a cloud-based platform, integration with fcc.gov content management system "to maintain a common look-and-feel" and more streamlined publishing, and enabling of embedded externally hosted content. The agency said 53 maps "on topics ranging from nationwide LTE coverage to fixed broadband deployment data" have been posted on the site, including 15 this year.

The FCC Technological Advisory Council will meet Sept. 20, 12:30-4 p.m., in the Commission Meeting Room, said a notice scheduled to be published in Wednesday's Federal Register.

Polycom terminated its $1.96 billion merger agreement with Mitel after receiving a better offer, Mitel said in a news release Friday. Polycom agreed to $2 billion deal with Siris Capital Group, Siris said in a separate announcement. The change in plans occurred more than a month after the FTC OK’d Polycom’s buy of the Ottawa-based unified communications provider (see 1605190035). The deal was announced in April. Polycom gave Mitel the chance to match the new offer, as required in their agreement, but Mitel decided against it, the Canadian company said. As a result, Polycom will pay Mitel $60 million to terminate the deal, Mitel said. “The agreement announced on April 15 resulted from a detailed due diligence and negotiation process that we feel accurately determined fair value for Polycom,” said Mitel CEO Rich McBee. “We feel it would not be in the best interest of Mitel shareholders to adjust the existing agreement.” Polycom said it expects to close the Siris deal in Q3 after receiving stockholder and regulatory approvals.

“A small portion” of the U.S. job growth’s pickup in June “was due to the end of a strike of 35,100 workers in the telecommunications industry that temporarily lowered job growth in May,” said White House Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman in a statement Friday. He referred to the Verizon workers’ strike, an issue he cited a month ago when describing a dip in the job numbers (see 1606030028). The information services sector had “an increase of 44,000 jobs due in part to the bounce-back from May’s strike in the telecommunications industry,” Furman said.

PwC plans a local number portability administrator transition webinar July 20, 3-4 p.m., said the FCC Wireline Bureau. Officials from PwC, which is managing the planned LNPA transition from Neustar to Telcordia, will be available to meet with interested parties Wednesday, 1-5 p.m., at the Durham Convention Center in Durham, North Carolina. Registration is needed for the webinar; it isn't needed for the in-person meetings, nor do parties have to schedule appointments, but they can express a time preference, said a public notice in docket 09-109 listed in Thursday's Daily Digest.