Small- and mid-sized telecom operators provide broadband in rural areas, competition and choice in urban areas, and services to community institutions and businesses in underserved areas, the American Cable Association said in a white paper (http://bit.ly/1mL3L9s). The study, released Wednesday, was done by Cartesian. ACA members’ broadband footprint covers nearly 8 million homes in small cities and rural areas, “covering nearly 20 percent of the population in these areas,” it said. But ACA members face specific challenges due to their size, it said. Local and regional cable operators “must compete against large telephone companies receiving government subsidies to provide broadband to unserved areas.” They also are disadvantaged in negotiations over interconnection with the networks of Tier 1 Internet service providers, it said. ACA estimates that 1.6 million homes in its members’ territories are considered “high cost,” it said. Of these homes, about 842,000 would be eligible to receive government broadband funding “if not for the presence of ACA members,” it said.

End all bulk collection of data about individuals, said 44 organizations in a letter to the White House and congressional leaders (http://bit.ly/1s3nUbM). “We strongly urge swift markup and passage of the USA FREEDOM Act (HR-3361), which would enact appropriate surveillance reforms without sacrificing national security.” Monday’s letter was to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. Attorney General Eric Holder also received a copy. Organizations ranging from privacy advocates (including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Cyber Privacy Project, Electronic Frontier Foundation) to civil liberties advocates (such as American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice, Human Rights Watch) and technology companies (like Reddit) signed the letter. The groups urged the recipients to not focus legislation simply on Patriot Act Section, which applies to the “bulk collection of any records that reveal relationships between individuals.” Bulk collection should also be prohibited under Section 214, which the NSA has used to authorize bulk collection of Internet metadata through pen/trap authority, said the groups. “The USA FREEDOM Act addresses each of these reforms, as well as others, by aiming to prohibit bulk collection of all data under Section 215 and 214.” The White House has backed a proposal shifting bulk storage of metadata away from the government, instead looking to the phone companies to hold on to any necessary metadata (CD March 28 p10).

The FCC plans to form a task force to deal with Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday at a news conference after the FCC’s monthly meeting. Even though nothing has been filed by the companies, “we've begun to think about how we want to organize,” he said. “If we're presented with something, then we'll announce how we'll handle it.” The commission will assign someone within the agency “who has experience in previous similar activity” to run the task force, Wheeler said. More details will be forthcoming, he said.

The FCC should “clarify” that IP interconnection with incumbent local exchange carriers for managed VoIP service is governed by Section 251 of the Communications Act, Cablevision and Charter officials told FCC Acting General Counsel Jon Sallet Tuesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1pk3Gs7). “ILECs are currently unwilling to provide IP interconnection on commercially reasonable terms (if at all),” they said. “Because the inability to obtain IP interconnection harms competition and is a significant barrier to the industry-wide transition to IP facilities, we ask the Commission to move expeditiously in clarifying ILECs’ IP interconnection obligations.”

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.

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.