There’s optimism multichannel video programming distributors will embark on a third stage of reducing power consumption by set-top boxes after an expanded voluntary agreement (VA) among MVPDs that now includes energy efficiency advocates ends Dec. 31, 2017, said two advocates. They said in interviews that they have some hope that a Tier 3 for further reductions in set-top energy, following the Tier 2 in the new voluntary agreement disclosed Monday (CD Dec 24 p1), could come to fruition, though they said further VA expansion would be a long way off. Jennifer Thorne Amann, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy buildings program director, is “guardedly optimistic” for a Tier 3, she said. “We've laid the basis for a relationship where we hopefully can get there,” and now she wants to see how the industry does with the new commitments, she said. “We'll be able to keep working with them to make continued progress,” because advocates are joining the steering committee overseeing the energy savings, said Amann. “It looked like a good opportunity for us certainly to capture a larger amount of savings” for set-tops than would have occurred absent the pact and waiting for the Department of Energy’s rulemaking process, she said. DOE said Monday it’s ending that process. The Environmental Protection Agency, which has targeted version 4 Energy Star specifications for set-top boxes, had no comment Tuesday on the amended VA. “Industry was very willing to work with us to make sure we had a seat at the table” and to make continued improvements, said Amann. Any Tier 3 could start Jan. 1, 2018, said Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz. Information on set-top boxes’ energy use had been in the public domain, and with the deal “now, through other forums, the information will be more readily available,” said Vice President Evan Groat of Arris, which is part of the VA. “If consumers are interested, it’s something they can look at.” At Cisco in recent years, it has “become clear that we can do better when it comes to reducing set-top-box energy consumption,” wrote Vice President Joe Chow, who runs the company’s Connected Devices unit, on the blog of the participating VA company Monday (http://bit.ly/19e9IV9). He said the amended VA is a win for saving consumers money, protecting the environment and providing “regulatory certainty for manufacturers and providers alike.”

Open interconnection and a “healthy transit market” for Internet traffic are important, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and aides in what agency records show was a rare commission lobbying meeting for the company. Those two factors are “prerequisites to scaling the Internet as a global content distribution platform,” an ex parte filing, released Monday in docket 09-191 (http://bit.ly/1boC0ce), recounted Hastings as saying during the Dec. 18 meeting. Hastings cited the online video distributor’s Open Connect program and explained it to Wheeler and aides including Senior Counselor Phil Verveer, wireline aide Daniel Alvarez and media aide Maria Kirby. Open Connect is a content delivery network that locates Netflix’s content closer to ISPs, said a blog post that the ex parte filing referenced (http://nflx.it/1c3FPHa). Netflix last lobbied the FCC in an ex parte meeting 13 months ago, according to agency records (http://bit.ly/19e0bNM). A company spokesman declined to comment further.

The FCC should issue a declaratory ruling that “equivalent functionality” for end office switching does not require a CLEC or its VoIP partner to provide the loop facility to the called party under the VoIP symmetry rule, XO said in an ex parte filing Monday (http://bit.ly/1eCBTl6). “AT&T’s interpretation of access charges applicable to VoIP-PSTN traffic turns the VoIP symmetry rule on its head, increasing carrier disputes where AT&T has withheld payment of end office access charges that do not meet AT&T’s criteria,” XO said. XO agrees with other CLEC commenters that the core function of an end office local switch “cannot and should not rationally be defined by the lines to which it connects, but by the functions it actually performs on the network,” it said, quoting a letter by Level 3 and Bandwidth.com.

The bill text of the Department of Commerce and the Workforce Consolidation Act was posted online this week. This Senate legislation proposes to merge the Commerce Department and Labor Department; unsuccessful variations have been introduced in the past. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., introduced S-1836 Dec. 17, and it was referred to the Homeland Security Committee. “The goal of this legislation is twofold: to achieve cost savings by combining duplicative functions, and to improve the quality of our country’s economic policies by ensuring a coordinated approach,” Burr said in a document providing background information on the bill. It would save billions of dollars, he said, citing the potential consolidation of 35 offices into 12 and the killing or reducing of funds for seven programs or initiatives. The new cabinet agency the bill proposes to create would be called the Department of Commerce and the Workforce. In an envisioned organizational chart of the department, NTIA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology would report directly to the department’s secretary and deputy secretary. It would put the Small Business Administration within the Commerce Department and move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the Department of the Interior, a news release said (http://1.usa.gov/1c522RI). The bill has two co-sponsors, Dan Coats, R-Ind., and James Inhofe, R-Okla.

Members of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition made their case for unlicensed use of the TV bands following the incentive auction and channel repacking, in a meeting with Roger Sherman, FCC Wireless Bureau acting chief, and others from the bureau. PISC said the FCC should designate “an unlicensed and contiguous duplex gap (and/or guard band) of at least 20 MHz” and maintain two designated channels for wireless mics, opening “them for shared unlicensed use; shrinking the separation distances that limit wireless microphone use of locally-vacant, out-of-market TV co-channels; and requiring microphones to rely first on out-of-market TV co-channels that are not available to unlicensed devices,” said a filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/1eCAKdd). It said the FCC should also make Channel 37 available on a limited basis for unlicensed use and maintain “the status quo with respect to unlicensed access to 600 MHz spectrum, post-auction, in each local area until it is actually in use.” Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge and Matt Wood of Free Press were at the meeting for PISC.

Special access purchasers rely heavily on five- and seven-year special access plans, and AT&T’s attempt to eliminate them will lead to increased rates, Sprint and XO told officials from the FCC Wireline Bureau and Office of General Counsel Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1eCFvUf). The companies repeated the points they made in their petitions to suspend and investigate AT&Ts tariff filing, they said. The FCC Wireline Bureau suspended AT&T’s latest tariff revision Dec. 9 and has five months to investigate and determine whether it’s reasonable (CD Dec 10 p1).

Members of the GPS community again said the FCC shouldn’t permit the operations proposed in LightSquared’s request to use its spectrum for a terrestrial network until technical interference concerns have been resolved. The concerns should be resolved in “transparent, public notice and comment rulemaking proceedings,” like the process involving Dish Network’s AWS-4 spectrum, the GPS Innovation Alliance said in an ex parte filing in docket 11-109 (http://bit.ly/1cPXT5e). The filing recounted a meeting last week with members of the Wireless Bureau and the Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis, it said.

Japan’s SoftBank plans to make an offer of more than $19 billion for T-Mobile US, to merge it with Sprint, which the company already owns, Japanese news service Nikkei reported Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cm8kAO). The deal is likely as early as the spring, the report said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau dealt with various requests for more time beyond a Nov. 20 deadline for licensees along the Mexican border seeking 800 MHz rebanding reimbursement from Sprint to file cost estimates with the company. The order released Tuesday was part of the ongoing 800 MHz rebanding process. FCC rules say “extensions of time shall not be routinely granted,” the bureau said (http://fcc.us/JoldPC): “The import of that rule is especially relevant to 800 MHz rebanding where delay in rebanding by one licensee can cause a ‘domino effect’ delay in the rebanding efforts of other licensees that have met the Commission’s 800 MHz band reconfiguration deadlines, with a consequent delay of the overall program.” The bureau approved some extensions for licensees that “have shown that grant of the request will not unreasonably delay rebanding” while holding other requests in abeyance. Among those getting an extension were Tucson Electric Power Co. and the Glendale Police Department in Arizona and San Diego Gas and Electric Co. Some large licensees need to justify an extension, including Maricopa County, Ariz., Southern California Edison Co. and San Diego County, Calif., the bureau said. All licensees that won approval have promised to complete rebanding cost estimates by March 10.

Comments on the application of the IP closed captioning rules are due Jan. 27, replies Feb. 26, the FCC Media Bureau said in a Federal Register notice to appear Thursday. The bureau seeks comment on the extent “to which industry has voluntarily captioned” IP-delivered video clips, it said.