Jimm Phillips

Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said MetroPCS shareholders should vote against the proposed merger with T-Mobile USA, arguing Wednesday in a report that MetroPCS shareholders would receive a “lower equity split than justified” and that MetroPCS could “continue to thrive” as a standalone company. Under the current deal, MetroPCS shareholders would receive $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the merged carrier (CD Oct 4 p1). The ISS recommendation will likely prompt T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom to modify the current deal terms in order to win approval when MetroPCS shareholders meet April 12, industry analysts say.

T-Mobile USA is “canceling our membership to the Wireless Carrier Club,” T-Mobile CEO John Legere said at a press conference Tuesday, saying the carrier will begin selling the iPhone 5 on April 12 and start a series of other steps to brand T-Mobile as the “Un-carrier.” T-Mobile said it will be selling the iPhone 5 for $99.99, plus a monthly $20 fee over the course of two years. The carrier will offer the iPhone 4S for $69.99 plus a $20-per-month fee over two years, and the iPhone 4 for $14.99 and a $15-per-month fee over two years. The fee is in addition to the cost of a customer’s voice, text and data plan. T-Mobile said it will offer other new smartphones on similar fee schedules (http://t-mo.co/ZqQaqh).

Broadband is the fastest-growing segment of Comcast’s business, but innovation will change Comcast’s traditional cable base “more in the next five years than it has in the past 50,” Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told the Washington Economic Club Thursday. When Microsoft invested $1 billion in Comcast in 1997, Roberts said Bill Gates told him then that Comcast’s business would expand far beyond delivering TV service. That prediction has held true, Roberts said. Comcast has about 22 million video customers and 20 million broadband customers, he said. “Those lines will cross some time in the next couple of years and we will have just as many -- if not more -- broadband customers than we have video customers,” he said. Comcast faces a “different broadband every year,” he said. “We change the speeds, the nature of it, so Wi-Fi is now … part of our definition of broadband. So we want to have the fastest Wi-Fi as well as the fastest pipe. We want to offer you access outside of your home."

States should increase their role as a partner with the federal government to address Internet privacy issues, said Steve Ruckman, Maryland assistant attorney general and director of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Internet Privacy Unit, at a joint FCBA-American Bar Association Forum on Communications Law event Wednesday. Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler has made Internet privacy protections a priority -- both in his in-state work and in his role as president of the National Association of Attorneys General NAAG), Ruckman said. Gansler was originally scheduled to speak at the FCBA event, but needed to testify at a Maryland General Assembly hearing.

There has been little movement in the debate over the Marketplace Fairness Act (HR-684, S-336) since it failed to pass the Senate in December, eBay Senior Director of Global Public Policy Brian Bieron told us. The Senate had rejected including the bill’s provisions as an amendment to the 2013 Defense Authorization Act. The bill would allow state governments to collect sales taxes when an in-state resident makes an online purchase from an out-of-state retailer. “It seems like the same people who were for [the bill] before are for it now, the same people who had objections to it before have objections to it now,” Bieron said. “It seems to be pretty much the same debate it’s been for some time now, only louder.” The bill effectively gives states a “new power” to tax people outside their own borders, he said during an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation event Tuesday. EBay has been an active opponent of the Marketplace Fairness Act -- the company organized a gathering of small business owners on Capitol Hill earlier this month to voice their concerns about the bill.

Congress should take its time in considering the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and other cybersecurity legislation that may involve information sharing, said Ryan Radia, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) associate director-technology studies, at a joint CEI-TechFreedom event Monday. Both groups were part of a free market-oriented coalition that opposed CISPA when it was being considered last year (WID April 24/12 p5). The bill passed the House then but did not get a vote in the Senate amid strong White House opposition. There has been pressure for Congress to move quickly on legislation to augment President Barack Obama’s recent cybersecurity executive order, but a slower process won’t make the situation “much worse off” than it is already, Radia said. “This is the time to do something, but let’s do something right. This is going to be on the books for a long time, and a problematic law … will create bad precedent.” Radia and other experts said they were concerned about the implications of information sharing provisions in the current version of CISPA.

The House Judiciary Committee is looking at “all possibilities” for addressing cybercrime as part of the greater push on Capitol Hill to address cybersecurity issues, said Sam Ramer, the committee’s senior counsel. Cybersecurity is a “top priority” for Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Ramer said at a Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee panel Friday. He noted the House Crime Subcommittee held a hearing Wednesday on cybercrime and possible reforms to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CD Mar 14 p1). There’s no singular “keystone” to addressing cybersecurity issues because those issues “affect so many different areas of our lives -- personal, commercial, R&D, medical,” Ramer said.

The U.S. needs to start resurrecting its image as a “great actor” in international telecommunications and highlight its good works on issues like cybersecurity, as it gears up for conferences after the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said Roxanne McElvane, senior counselor on International Development in the FCC’s International Bureau and the chair of the ITU’s Development Sector Study Group 1, at an International Telecommunication Advisory Committee (ITAC) meeting Tuesday to prepare the U.S. for the upcoming World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC). The WTDC, scheduled for March 31-April 11, 2014, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, is one of several ITU-led conferences scheduled for this year and next that will determine the future structure and policy actions of the ITU. The U.S. was one of 55 nations that did not sign onto a revised version of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) at WCIT; 89 nations signed the revised ITRs (CD Dec 17 p1).

It’s “vital” the FTC continue taking on major tech companies to protect consumers’ privacy, FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez said Friday at an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference. Under former Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who retired earlier this year, the FTC played an “instrumental” role in elevating the discussion over digital privacy, including more than 50 enforcement actions over the past three years, Ramirez said. The agency currently has consent decrees with Google and Facebook to improve their privacy practices. “We haven’t been shy about taking on the tech giants,” Ramirez said. “That has been just tremendous.” The FTC’s efforts have also shifted the focus on other privacy issues, including the trend of companies like Apple and Google issuing shorter and simpler privacy notices, she said.

The FTC’s notice and consent-based regulatory model has worked fairly well, but it has its limits, FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said Thursday at an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference. FTC Commissioner Julie Brill, in a separate event at the same conference, had discussed moving away from that model -- and toward a model that focuses on data use. “We've done pretty well with the deception-based model, and I wouldn’t want to give that up too easily,” Ohlhausen said. “With that being said, I think there is a role for unfairness. … But I think it’s important for us to follow the guidance Congress has set out in the statute for unfairness.” The FTC can declare a specific company action as deceptive or unfair -- and therefore unlawful -- under Section 5 of the FTC Act.