"Robust competition” in the communications sector has changed how the FCC should act as a regulatory agency, but it “does not obviate the need for consumer-welfare-focused, economically-informed antitrust oversight where residual monopoly power remains,” wrote officials from the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and others Wednesday to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. They encouraged the FCC to continue to be involved in issues like consumer protection, public safety, spectrum management and universal service, but said market-based approaches to those issues would “lead to better policy outcomes.” The FCC shouldn’t make the Internet a “regulated industry” and should dispense with its net neutrality order in favor of an approach that would “permit new forms of contracting, and to police any abuses after the fact,” the stakeholders said. The commission should also “redouble” its use of market-based approaches to manage spectrum, particularly in the context of the upcoming incentive auction, their letter said (http://bit.ly/1fkSdUn).

The FCC received more than 54,000 complaints in Q2 on violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, showed figures released by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (http://fcc.us/1gq0nhx). That’s down from 66,000 TCPA complaints in Q1. It was by far the highest number of informal complaints tallied by the bureau, and was dominated by complaints about violations of the Do Not Call rules, prerecorded messages and abandoned calls. Next highest was complaints about wireless issues, such as billing and rate issues, and service problems, totaling nearly 6,000 in Q2. That was followed by complaints about radio and TV broadcasting, made up mostly of concerns over the content of programming.

AT&T is now offering its U-verse with GigaPower service to all Austin, Texas, residents, said the company in a news release Wednesday (http://soc.att.com/18Uw7Jf). The all-fiber Internet network has initial speeds of up to 300 Mbps and is available starting at $70 a month. AT&T said it plans to increase speeds to one gigabit in 2014. Customers will also have access to the company’s TV services including a 1 TB of storage DVR and the ability to schedule DVR recordings and watch both live and on-demand TV shows on more than 30 smartphones and tablets, said the company. Customers who sign up for the 300 Mbps service will be upgraded to one gigabit speeds in 2014 at no extra cost, said AT&T. Google Fiber also plans to offer gigabit service to Austin residents starting in 2014 (CD April 10 p10).

Several public interest groups asked the FCC to clarify that Section 222 of the Communications Act forbids selling “anonymized” but “non-aggregate” call records, as those constitute customer proprietary network information (CPNI). “Phone carriers regularly share -- or reserve the right to share -- customers’ records in an ‘anonymized’ form with third parties,” wrote Public Knowledge, the Center for Digital Democracy, Common Cause and others (http://bit.ly/1gZTGQw). All four major wireless carriers say they may share the information with third parties, the petition said, citing New York Times reports that AT&T has been selling call records to the CIA. “Even when carriers have ‘anonymized’ or ‘de-identified’ call records by removing personal identifiers from them they still constitute individually identifiable CPNI,” the petition said. That’s because under Section 222, all CPNI that’s not aggregate is individually identifiable, “as such records can be linked to a single person,” it said. It said what carriers refer to as “anonymized” records might still be vulnerable to “re-identification.” Carriers will say they're not violating the law, but they are, said Public Knowledge staff attorney Laura Moy in a blog post explaining the petition (http://bit.ly/1gZYIN6). “Even if anonymizing records before sharing them were enough under Section 222, masking a few digits of some phone numbers is just not enough to truly render records anonymous.” An AT&T spokesman told us that “in all cases, whenever any governmental entity in any country seeks customer information from us, we ensure that the request and our response are completely lawful and proper in that country.” AT&T has rejected government requests for customer information many times, the spokesman said. “Wherever we serve our customers, we maintain those customers’ data and information in compliance with the laws that apply in the country where that service is provided. It has been our experience that, no matter the country, laws related to government requests for customer information apply equally to all privately owned telecom providers. Like all telecom providers, we routinely charge governments for producing the information provided.” The spokesman declined to comment more specifically: “We do not comment on questions concerning the national security of any country.” A T-Mobile spokesman said the carrier “appreciates the concerns expressed by Public Knowledge in its petition.” T-Mobile “follows all laws” governing CPNI, “and provides annual reports to the FCC regarding regulatory compliance in this area,” the spokesman said. “We do not sell personally identifiable CPNI data to third parties except in three cases: 1) we obtain the user’s consent; 2) we provide it in aggregate form; or 3) we anonymize the data.” Sprint, Verizon and CTIA had no comment.

The FCC proposed $44 million in fines against three Lifeline providers, an agency news release said Wednesday. That brings the total amount of proposed Lifeline fines to $90 million over the past three months. Notices of apparent liability were issued against three companies “that appear to have requested and/or received Lifeline support payments for individual customers who appeared on the companies’ Lifeline subscriber lists more than once,” the release said. Telrite Corp. was fined $22 million, Global Connection more than $11 million (http://bit.ly/J7g2DJ) and Cintex Wireless more than $9 million (http://bit.ly/J7g2DJ). “The carriers knew or should have known, based on their own internal data, that they were not entitled to support for these duplicates under Lifeline program rules,” the agency release said. Telright, a Georgia eligible telecom carrier that does business in nine states, was found by the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) to have improperly sought Lifeline support reimbursement from more than 4,000 “individual intra-company duplicate lines,” said the NAL (http://bit.ly/1fkR8Mu). USAC found that Global, a Georgia ETC servicing 10 states, was seeking reimbursement for more than 2,000 duplicate lines. USAC found Cintex, a Maryland ETC in four states, was seeking reimbursement for more than 1,800 duplicate lines.

The FCC has “broad authority” to address public interest harms and resolve disputes that stem from the current retransmission consent regime, said a joint ex parte letter from Public Knowledge, the New America Foundation, American Cable Association, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Charter Communications and Dish Network. Statutory language from Congress on the commission’s oversight of retrans “not only permits the Commission to adopt rules designed to ameliorate the demonstrated consumer harms associated with unreasonable fee demands and programming blackouts, but affirmatively requires the Commission to do so,” said the letter. Broadcaster tactics in retrans negotiations, including sharing arrangements, “cannot be squared with the outcomes that would occur in a genuinely competitive marketplace,” said the letter. Along with retrans rules, the commission’s authority over such negotiations also comes from the FCC’s responsibility to ensure that broadcast licensees act to further the public interest, the letter said. This means the commission is empowered to adopt new rules for retrans negotiations and obligated to “protect consumers from broadcasters’ unreasonable fee demands, tying practices, and programming blackouts,” said the filing. It said the commission also has the authority “to require interim carriage pending the resolution of a retransmission consent dispute,” and should “promptly exercise that authority to protect consumers and restore congressional intent."

Broadcasters’ legal attacks against Aereo are “the first battleground” for “control of the cloud,” said CEO Chet Kanojia at a Computer & Communications Industry Association’s event Tuesday. The Cablevision decision -- which established the legal precedent behind Aereo’s arguments that it doesn’t need broadcasters’ permission to stream their content -- also created the legal window for cloud computing services like Google Drive, said Kanojia. Broadcaster repudiations of Cablevision in their arguments against Aereo are an attack on the “commonsense” principle that consumers who buy information and content still own it when it’s stored in the cloud, he said. Kanojia said consumers are entitled to view their broadcast content streaming over the Internet if they choose. “The things I buy belong to me,” said Kanojia. He said the idea for Aereo was born out of one of his previous companies, which gathered information from customer’s cable boxes. Kanojia said he noticed that though customers paid to receive hundreds of channels, they typically only watched the same eight or 10. That showed “an imbalance between value and price,” and led to Aereo being created to address that imbalance, he said. “Bringing choice to the marketplace is absolutely critical for moving the marketplace forward.”

AT&T’s backing of “fair” rules in the upcoming incentive auction “points to the likelihood that the FCC will adopt some new limits on carriers, but a fight remains over the specifics,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Christopher King Wednesday in an email to investors. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said Tuesday that he was in favor of some limits on bidding in the incentive auction, but only if they applied to all parties (CD Dec 11 p6). Joan Marsh, AT&T vice president-regulatory affairs, said at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday that the carrier would prefer an unrestricted auction but that any rules should apply equally to all parties (CD Dec 11 p3). “We suspect the FCC might prohibit any carrier from buying more than one-quarter or one-third of the converted broadcast spectrum, perhaps with wrinkles,” King wrote. “A 10x2 pair would fit within either limit if the FCC is able to sell off 84 MHz of licensed spectrum, but would only fit within the one-third limit if it sells off just 60 [megahertz]. … We would expect Sprint, T-Mobile, and others to continue arguing for a broader limit on spectrum below 1 GHz that restricts AT&T and Verizon more than others because the Bells already have about 80 percent of that spectrum."

Samsung licensed the Reference Design Kit (RDK) from RDK Management to accelerate the set-top box and gateway device development cycle, said the companies in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1d8nIPb). RDK is a pre-integrated software to provide a common framework for powering IP or hybrid set-top box and gateway devices, and is licensed for consumer electronics manufacturers, system-on-a-chip vendors, other software developers, system integrators and TV service providers, they said. The RDK was developed to accelerate the deployment of next-generation video services and to prevent software fragmentation by providing speed-to-market collaboration and standardization, said the companies. RDK Management was formed in a joint venture between Comcast Cable and Time Warner Cable to administer the RDK, they said.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent letters to five wireless carriers asking for information on their decision to prohibit Samsung from pre-loading an opt-out “kill switch” application on approved smartphones, he said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1bvQMNS). The kill switch feature would enable “legitimate” smartphone users to “brick” their stolen phones remotely and “render them permanently inoperable when they fall into the wrong hands,” said Schneiderman. In the letters to the CEOs of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon, Schneiderman wrote that the industry’s parallel rejection of Samsung’s kill switch proposal is problematic (http://bit.ly/IPS1Rh). “First, smartphone robbery is rampant nationwide, posing a serious risk to the safety and well-being of your customers,” said Schneiderman. Since carriers have not accepted a Samsung proposal or offered an alternative kill-switch technology, Schneiderman said he finds this “troubling.” In his letters, Schneiderman asks each company for information on: Whether they have communicated or entered into an agreement with phone insurer Asurion, CTIA or any competing wireless carrier on the Samsung proposal or other kill-switch technologies; the nature and extent of such agreements or communications; and each company’s business rationale for rejecting the Samsung proposal while approving phones featuring Apple’s Activation Lock. Schneiderman is asking all five companies to respond by Dec. 31. CTIA General Counsel Michael Altschul said Schneiderman’s allegations are inaccurate. “Any assertion that CTIA and its member companies have done anything other than move as quickly as possible to work with the FCC, law enforcement officials from major cities, and other policymakers to develop the proactive, multifaceted approach of databases, technology, consumer education, legislation and international partnerships to remove the aftermarket for stolen phones is false,” said Altschul. “We encourage consumers to use currently available apps and features that remotely wipe, track and lock their devices in case they are lost or stolen, and our members are continuing to explore and offer new technologies to address these crimes while not inadvertently creating a ’trap door’ that hackers and cybercriminals could exploit. We also support Senator [Chuck] Schumer’s, [D-N.Y.], legislation that would impose tough penalties on those who steal devices or illegally modify the unique device identifiers since it would help dry up the market for those who traffic in stolen devices."