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.

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.

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.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom reached a multiyear renewal of their retransmission consent agreement. The agreement allows TWC and Bright House Networks “to continue delivery of the entire portfolio of Viacom networks to their subscribers and provides an enriched multiplatform experience to a vast library of popular on-demand content,” Time Warner Cable and Viacom said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1jFxb8i). The agreement enables continued carriage of Viacom’s channels and content across linear TV in both SD and HD, video on-demand, authenticated websites and apps, it said. As part of an expansion of the arrangement, TWC will make the entertainment network Epix available to its subscribers under the terms of the agreement, it said. Time Warner Cable sometimes negotiates carriage deals on behalf of Bright House.

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.

Communications Daily won’t be published Wednesday, Christmas Day. Our next issue will be Thursday, Dec. 26.

The Obama administration asked U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White to dismiss a case on the constitutionality of warrantless collection of data by the National Security Agency, arguing that a trial threatens national security. White is overseeing a case brought in San Francisco by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and others, Jewel v. NSA. Among the documents released by the government Friday was one that acknowledged that President George W. Bush authorized NSA’s bulk data collection on phones calls and the Internet in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (http://bit.ly/1gSAOFR). “President Bush issued authorizations approximately every 30-60 days,” wrote James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, in a post on the DNI’s Tumblr page. “Although the precise terms changed over time, each presidential authorization required the minimization of information collected concerning American citizens to the extent consistent with the effective accomplishment of the mission of detection and prevention of acts of terrorism within the United States. NSA also applied additional internal constraints on the presidentially authorized activities.” EFF criticized the administration’s claims. “Surprisingly, in these documents and in the brief filed with them, the government continues to claim that plaintiffs cannot prove they were surveilled without state secrets and that therefore, a court cannot rule on the legality or constitutionality of the surveillance,” EFF said in response (http://bit.ly/1jBE22C). “For example, despite the fact that these activities are discussed every day in news outlets around the world and even in the president’s recent press conference, the government states broadly that information that may relate to Plaintiffs’ claims that the ‘NSA indiscriminately intercepts the content of communications, and their claims regarding the NSA’s bulk collection of ... metadata’ is still a state secret."

The multiyear iPhone deal that Apple signed with China Mobile will also have “implications” for Sprint, Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said Monday. The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be available via China Mobile’s network of retail stores and at Apple retail stores across mainland China starting Jan. 17, Apple said Sunday in a news release. It’s “clearly a meaningful” announcement for Apple, said Fritzsche. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile operator, with more than 760 million customers, making it seven times larger than Verizon, she said. China Mobile, like Sprint, is deploying the TDD LTE 4G service on the 2.5 GHz spectrum, she said. Until now, the iPhone hasn’t supported the 2.5 GHz band, she said. With the “significant scale” that China Mobile “brings to the table, it is our understanding that future versions of the iPhone device will now support this band,” she said. That’s a “significant positive” for Sprint shares, she said. Apple, however, didn’t immediately comment on its plans. Of the “Big 4” carriers, Sprint is the only one using the TDD version of LTE, she said. The iPhone “continues to be the most embraced high end” smartphone in the U.S., so having the device support the spectrum band and the TDD LTE technology “should strengthen Sprint’s competitive position in future quarters,” she said. Sprint shares, however, closed 1.8 percent lower Monday at $9.68.

Members of the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Jan. 14 on the group’s recommendations for changing U.S. surveillance law, committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Sunday. The group’s set of 46 recommendations, released last week, included recommending that the government no longer store phone metadata on U.S. citizens (CD Dec 19 p4). The group’s recommendations “make clear that it is time to recalibrate our government’s surveillance programs,” Leahy said in a statement. “Momentum is building for real reform.” Several of the group’s recommendations align with Leahy’s USA Freedom Act (S-1599), the committee said.

Cable operator Cogeco’s Atlantic Broadband will launch TiVo-based mobile app and TV Everywhere services in early 2014 as it completes deployment of the Roamio DVRs across seven markets, Atlantic Chief Marketing Officer David Isenberg told us. Atlantic launched sales of Roamio in the Cumberland, Md., market in October and has since expanded it to Aiken, S.C., and Miami, and plans to add the Annapolis, Md., and Uniontown, Altoona/Johnstown and Warren/Bradford, Pa., areas by early next year, Isenberg said. The Roamio DVR marketed by Atlantic added a Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) connector and Atlantic is “in the final stages” of internal testing of both the TiVo-based mobile app and TV Everywhere offering, Isenberg said. Atlantic had 230,304 video customers Aug. 31, along with 177,108 customers for broadband and 78,246 for telephone, Cogeco said. Video subscribership was down 7,009 from a year earlier and the service had 44.5 percent penetration in Atlantic markets, Cogeco said. Cogeco bought onetime Charter Communications affiliate Atlantic for $1.3 billion in 2012. “We plan to knit together these services so that if you are a TiVo customer and TiVo knows what things you have set season passes for, the TV Everywhere platform will know that and serve you related content instantly,” Isenberg said. “It will lead to a much more personalized and consistent experience across platforms and will ultimately allow people to find the content they want to watch faster and easier.” The mobile app and TV Everywhere services will be offered free to subscribers to Atlantic’s existing TiVo bundles. Atlantic hasn’t disclosed how many TiVo customers it has. Isenberg said it has so far received a “great response” from new and existing customers. The Internet services, which were recently upgraded to 75/5 Mbps and 30/3 Mbps from 40/3 Mbps and 20/2 Mbps, have attracted many TiVo customers, Isenberg said. About 70 percent of Atlantic’s new subscribers choose the DOCSIS 3.0-based services, he said. Less than 50 percent of the total subscriber base get the DOCSIS 3.0 service, he said. While its parent Cogeco has deployed Rovi’s remote recording and XD tablet streaming services in Canada, Atlantic will retain TiVo in the U.S., Isenberg said. It also will continue to push TiVo with an install base that also includes Cisco and Arris’s Motorola Mobility set-tops, he said. Those customers subscribing solely for video will likely get Cisco or Motorola set-tops, Isenberg said. “What we market, sell and believe is the right platform to meet customer needs going forward is TiVo,” he said. “For us they are the only platform that offers the ability to stream live TV into the home and because they are cloud-based we can provide a multi-screen experience.” With TiVo readying both a cloud-based user interface and network DVR, an increasing number of functions will likely migrate to servers from a set-top, Isenberg said. The trend will start with “incremental storage and archiving and then over time I would expect to see more and more of the capabilities moving to a hosted platform,” Isenberg said.