The Council of Governments applauded the FCC order to ensure reliable 911 service in a statement Friday (http://bit.ly/1bCrCNK). COG is a nonprofit association that deals with regional issues affecting the Washington, D.C., area. The FCC voted to approve an order Thursday that requires carriers to file annual audits on how they are following best practices for 911 connections (CD Dec 13 p7). The order was influenced by regional studies documenting “significant loss” of 911 service in northern Virginia during the June 2012 derecho storm, COG said. All phone companies that provide 911 service must now certify annually that they have implemented best practices including audits of their circuits, maintenance of central office backup power and reliable network monitoring systems, it said. The FCC proves the “power of regional collaboration,” said COG Executive Director Chuck Bean. “With this new rule, we are securing our infrastructure in metropolitan Washington,” he said. “The success with the FCC was built on solid analytics but the change happened because we spoke with a regional voice."

HTC is hailing the decision of a British appeals court lifting an injunction that has kept HTC phones from shipping in the U.K. amid allegations that they infringe a Nokia European patent (EP 0 998 024). As a result of the decision, “we will immediately resume shipment of all of our devices into the UK, including the entire HTC One family,” HTC said in a statement. “Similarly, our customers should feel confident in their ability to promote and sell all HTC devices. Even though we plan to aggressively appeal the validity decision of Nokia’s EP 0 998 024 patent, we will continue to work with our chip suppliers on alternative solutions to ensure minimal disruption to our business in the future.” Nokia hasn’t commented on the court’s decision. Although the patent at issue is full of high-level math, it boils down to a simple aim -- simplifying the filters used to get rid of interference noise in a multi-band cellphone designed for use in different countries, our patent search found. Conventionally, Nokia wrote in 1998 when the patent was first filed, many filters were used to cope with the varied frequency bands used by mobile networks in different countries. Nokia’s patent describes a single, switched, filter early in the signal path, so the phone can be made smaller and still work reliably on all frequencies in all countries. In the patent, Nokia claims very broad legal monopoly to this basic idea. This strategy makes it easier for Nokia to argue that competitors are infringing. However, the broad claim also makes it easier for Nokia’s competitors to argue that what the patent claims was not truly new when the patent was first filed in Finland in October 1998, thereby rendering the patent invalid.

EchoStar is no longer pursuing a joint venture with Vivendi’s GVT, EchoStar said in a press release (http://bit.ly/19mP4m6). The partnership had been aimed at launching direct-to-home service in Brazil (CD Nov 14 p23).

British-based AeroMobile, which supplies technology and services to nine global airlines that enable passengers to use their mobile phones in-flight for voice, texting and data, hailed the FCC’s approval of an NPRM seeking comment on modernizing rules to allow mobile wireless calls on commercial flights (CD Dec 13 p1) . “I'm pleased to see that common sense prevailed” at the FCC, AeroMobile CEO Kevin Rogers said in a statement Friday. “There is no reason to maintain a ruling that is no longer relevant -- the technology used to provide inflight GSM services is proven, and has been operational across Europe, Asia and the Middle East for more than five years.” AeroMobile supplies “hundreds of connected flights flying to and from the U.S. every day, but at the moment the service has to be switched off when we reach U.S. airspace,” he said. As proof there’s demand for in-flight calls from U.S. travelers, Rogers said that in November alone, about 25 percent of the passengers using the AeroMobile service on trans-Atlantic flights “connected from U.S. mobile networks.” AeroMobile wants to work with the FCC to demonstrate “the value of the service to both customers and airlines, based on our experience,” Rogers said. “I'm hopeful that sensible discussions can now take place about the practicalities of operating this service in the U.S. Ultimately, it will be up to individual airlines to decide on the right in-flight mobile connectivity package for their passengers, whether this is SMS only or the full service, including voice and data."

Almost 90 percent of participants in a Commtouch webinar said their organizations had an IP address appear on a blacklist during the past 12 months, said the Internet security technology provider. The Dec. 4 poll, conducted during the webinar, found that outbound spam was the most common reason an IP address ended up on a blacklist. Blacklisting can have a significant business impact, up to and including damage to a business’s reputation, Commtouch said. Nearly half of the respondents said their organization’s operations department was able to get an IP address removed from a blacklist through phone calls and emails, while another 38 percent said they “make it up as we go along.” Another 13 percent use automated processes to request removal from a blacklist, Commtouch said (http://bit.ly/1iZIvvO).

Broadband customer premise equipment (CPE) shipments are expected to surpass 147 million at the end of 2013, said ABI Research Thursday (http://bit.ly/1hP9tVi). CPE shipments are expected to grow to 150 million in 2014, said the industry research firm. These devices include modems, wired routers and gateways, it said. In 2014, DOCSIS 3.0 CPE devices will account for more than 89 percent of cable CPE shipments at 50 million, but total DSL CPE shipments are likely to be around 2 percent lower than total shipments in 2012 due to slower subscriber net additions in DSL broadband service, said ABI. Higher speed VDSL shipments are growing stronger, and ABI said it expects these shipments to account for more than 25 percent of DSL CPE device shipments in 2014. ZTE topped the broadband CPE shipments list in Q3 with a 13 percent market share, said ABI. Arris jumped to second place in the market share after acquiring from Google Motorola’s Home Division in April, and combined shipments of Arris and Motorola now represent 12 percent of the market compared to Huawei’s 11 percent market share, said ABI.

The EU and media industry launched a pilot to enable more use of digital content, they said Thursday. The Rights Data Integration (RDI) project will implement work by the Linked Content Coalition on a technical framework to help copyright owners and users manage and trade rights for all kinds of usage of all types of content and protected works in all media, they said. That will move the content industry closer to figuring out how to assert ownership and communicate copyright terms and conditions in the digital arena in a way machines and people can understand, they said. RDI is an early pilot for the “copyright hub” strategy under development in the U.K. and under consideration in Europe and the U.S., they said. It will use a “hub and spoke” architecture that lets users find and access information from rightsholders via a central transformation hub, they said. The hub will transform the data into a common format and then into a format accepted by exchanges that provide the interface for users, they said. RDI doesn’t directly affect copyright laws and agreements but makes it possible to process the results of those contracts in a more highly automatable way, they said. The project will run for 27 months, they said. Media participants include Elsevier, Getty Images and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations.

Raytheon completed the integration of its second Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which will fly on the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) spacecraft from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The integrated sensor is now entering testing, on track for delivery in 2015,” Raytheon said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18G7RrK). The second VIIRS is scheduled to launch on board the JPSS-1 satellite mission in 2017, Raytheon said.

The Georgia Public Service Commission should reverse a $5 fee imposed on about 785,000 state residents on the federal Lifeline program in late October (CD Oct 18 p18), consumer advocacy groups urged the PSC in a joint statement Thursday (http://bit.ly/condemningGAPSC). Consumer Action, the Community Action Partnership, League of United Latin American Citizens, Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, National Consumers League and National Grange urged the PSC to “reverse this punitive, anti-consumer fee.” The new fee “flies in the face of the goals” of the Lifeline program, which was created to ensure that “qualifying Americans have the opportunities and security that phone service brings,” said the groups. The federal Lifeline program doesn’t use funds from the states, and any possible savings “from squeezing low-income consumers out of the program” wouldn’t impact state-level taxpayers, it said. No other state charges its Lifeline consumers this fee, and the monthly fee “of this sort” was rejected by the FCC when it was considered, said the groups. There’s no factual basis or evidence that this kind of fee will result in reduced fraud or less abuse of the program, or that it will result in better sales practice conduct on behalf of the Lifeline providers, said the letter. It said the National Lifeline Accountability Database is going online in five states this month to help carriers identify and resolve duplicate claims for Lifeline-supported service, and Georgia will begin participating in the database in January. The coalition urged other states to not follow Georgia in “attacking the pocketbooks of low-income Americans in this misguided fashion.” The Georgia PSC didn’t respond to request for comment.

Prometheus Radio Project urged the FCC to delay opening an FM translator filing window for AM stations until all LPFM applications have been resolved. Limited signal coverage remains a significant threat to the success of the low-power FM service, said the LPFM advocate in an ex parte filing in docket 99-25 (http://bit.ly/1kDklm5). Raising the maximum effective radiated power from 100 watts to 250 watts for LPFMs and holding an FM translator window exclusively for LPFM licensees “would significantly unburden LPFM stations while remaining faithful to the word and intention of the Local Community Radio Act,” it said. The filing recounted meetings with Peter Doyle, Media Bureau Audio Division chief, and staff from the offices of commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel.