FairPoint Communications assured a lawmaker it hasn't been uncooperative in dealing with its striking employees. "We have made numerous formal and informal efforts to reach agreement with our unionized workforce, all without success," it said Wednesday in a letter from FairPoint CEO Paul Sunu to Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. But the good faith efforts weren't reciprocated, FairPoint said. It doesn't appear the unions are serious "about addressing FairPoint's need for substantive reform to the company's benefit costs," it said. Sunu responded to a letter from Pingree last week expressing concern about the strike. A representative for the union didn't return a request for comment.

Tech groups and public interest groups urged Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to forgo subpoenas and legal action aimed at determining whether Google profits from ad sales linked to drug sales, piracy and other illegal acts offered online. The enforcement tools that Hood is seeking “would harm free expression and Internet security,” said Erik Stallman, general counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology. They also would threaten the successful legal framework “that has made America the leader of the Internet economy,” he said in a blog post. Hood’s letters to Google and the subpoena “ignore this legal framework, and federal preemption in the area of copyright, entirely,” Stallman said. Instead, they seek to give attorneys general and rightsholders “the authority to curate and control web content and especially search results,” he said. Google filed a lawsuit last week against Hood claiming that he tried to censor the Internet by filing a subpoena (see 1412190045). The letter was signed by 13 organizations, including CDT, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Press.

The FTC urged a children's mobile app developer to evaluate its app and determine whether it violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The commission said it appears that the app, BabyBus, collects precise geolocation information about users, it said Monday in a news release. The China-based company doesn't get parents' consent before collecting children's personal information, it said. Because "you are collecting precise geolocation information, which is considered 'personal information' under the rule, you must provide notice and obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting, using, or disclosing this information," the letter said.

The FCC is stopping its 180-day shot clock for the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal because TWC didn’t produce requested documents in time, the FCC announced in a letter Monday. The clock is stopped until Jan. 12, the letter said. The documents in question were part of the FCC’s August information request, it said. Responses to the request were due Sept. 11. The missing information includes “in excess of 7,000 responsive documents [that] had been withheld based on an inappropriate claim of attorney client privilege” and weren’t given to the FCC until Dec. 8 and 9, and “in excess of 31,000” documents that weren’t produced because of “vendor error,” the FCC said. Though TWC initially said the latter documents would be produced Dec. 30, the FCC said it has recently learned that the documents and a revised privilege log will be produced Monday. “The effect of these late disclosures has been to slow down the Commission’s review of the Comcast/TWC/Charter transaction, in particular because sections of the review that staff had thought were complete now must be reopened to take account of the additional documents,” the FCC said. FCC staff has also been “hampered” in reviewing TWC’s initial privilege log because it's incomplete and contains errors, the order said. “The magnitude of the errors, with respect to both the document production and the privilege log, is material and the delays in rectifying them were substantial so that the tardy productions have interfered with the Commission’s ability to conduct a prompt and thorough review of the pending applications,” the order said. The pleading cycle remains active and reply comments are still due Tuesday, the FCC said. "We already have provided the FCC more than five million pages of documents and we will continue to provide the FCC everything that they need to review this transaction,” TWC said in an email.

DirecTV launched Yaveo, a Spanish-language over-the-top streaming entertainment service available to anyone in the U.S. with an Internet connection. Yaveo features programming from the U.S., Latin America and Spain, DirecTV said Monday in a news release. Customers will have the ability to stream live sports and entertainment channels, like beIN Sports en Español and Hola! TV, it said.

The FCC proposes to modernize its definition of multichannel video programming distributor in a rulemaking notice adopted Friday. It proposes to interpret the definition of an MVPD "to include providers that make multiple linear streams of video programming available for purchase, regardless of the technology used to distribute the programming," it said in a news release. This approach would ensure that nascent, Web-based video programming services "will have access to the content they need to compete with established providers," it said. “Video is no longer tied to a certain transmission technology, so our interpretation of MVPD should not be tied to transmission facilities,” Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement. Under the proposal “any providers that make multiple linear streams of video programming available for purchase would be considered MVPDs, regardless of the technology used to deliver the programming,” he said. The NPRM asks for comment on an alternative interpretation that would require an MVPD to have control over a transmission path, and whether the proposals "would affect the regulatory status of IP-delivered video services by cable operators and [direct broadcast satelite] providers." Comments and replies are to be due 30 days and 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Cox Communications launched more than 1,700 additional Wi-Fi hot spots for Cox high-speed Internet customers in the Phoenix and Las Vegas areas this month. Cox WiFi service is now in six markets, with many more planned for 2015, "including hundreds of hotspots in San Diego after the first of the year," Cox said in a news release. Subscribers to the company's Preferred, Premier, Ultimate and Gigablast Internet packages "will have free access to Cox WiFi, via WiFi hotspots, as part of their service," it said.

Internet advertising revenue reached $12.4 billion in the third quarter of 2014, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Internet Advertising Revenue Report said. It's the highest quarter ever, IAB said Thursday in a news release. The figures show a year-over-year uptick of 17 percent from the $10.6 billion reported for Q3 2013, it said. The figures also are up 6.5 percent from Q2 2014's $11.7 billion, it said. IAB did the research with PwC, it said. Data was compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising on the Internet, IAB said. The survey includes data on online advertising revenue from websites, commercial online services, free email providers "and all other companies selling online advertising," it said.

Comcast launched Xfinity in UHD, an Ultra HD on-demand programming app for Samsung Ultra HD TVs, Comcast said in a Thursday announcement. Debuting with full current seasons of TV shows from NBC and USA Network, the Xfinity in UHD app library will continue to expand with on-demand programming "across multiple networks and studios and is completely free to Xfinity TV customers whose video subscription includes participating networks," Comcast said. Xfinity TV customers who own 2014 Samsung UHD TVs can download the app, log in and immediately begin streaming episodes of Chicago Fire (NBC), and Suits and Covert Affairs (USA), with Parks and Recreation (NBC) to debut in February, it said. The Comcast deal is Samsung’s second exclusive partnership on Ultra HD content delivery in as many months, following its mid-November agreement with DirecTV on the launch of 4K VOD content (see 1411130039).

The TVStudy software is necessary to conduct the incentive auction and Sinclair lacks standing to challenge the repacking process, the FCC said in a legal brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in response to Sinclair and NAB’s petition for review against the incentive auction order. The congressional requirement that the FCC use the OET-69 methodology is not violated by the commission’s plan to use TVStudy, the FCC said in response to NAB. “Software and data are not methodology,” the agency said. The commission also responded to NAB’s argument that the order violated its legislative mandate by failing to preserve broadcast contours. The order preserves the coverage area and populations served of repacked stations by trying to ensure that a station's signals after the auction will reach “substantially the same geographic area at the same signal strength” and the same viewers as it did before, the FCC said. Sinclair, separate from NAB, challenged the FCC’s 39-month deadline for stations to cease broadcasting on their old channels after the auction. However, since Sinclair doesn’t yet know if it has stations that will be affected by the repacking, it doesn’t have standing to challenge that aspect of the rule, the FCC said. FCC rules give new licensees 36 months to build a new station, the FCC said. “The modifications that existing stations will have to make to their facilities following the auction are, at worst, no more complicated than those faced by new licensees constructing new stations,” the commission said. The petitions for review should be denied, the FCC said.