AT&T fiber expansion seems timed to support DirecTV Now, the telco’s over-the-top streaming TV service launching later this year, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche in a Wednesday note to investors. AT&T plans to bring 1 Gbps fiber service to 11 new metropolitan areas as part of a new umbrella brand, AT&T Fiber, the company said in a Tuesday news release. They are: Gainesville and Panama City, Florida; Columbus, Georgia; Central Kentucky; Lafayette, Louisiana; Biloxi-Gulfport and northeast Mississippi; Wilmington, North Carolina; Knoxville and southeastern Tennessee; and Corpus Christi, Texas. Including the new markets, AT&T plans to launch in 45 metro areas by the end of this year, it said. For AT&T, “the critical part of the bundle is wireless (where it has over 100MM subs) and the broadband pipe to the home (where users can use OTT video services),” wrote Fritzsche. “Ahead of the launch of these plans, there is a real incentive to illustrate to potential customers its commitment to spending on the broadband pipe.” Capturing the wireless and broadband user with one offering would mean stickier revenue for the company, she said.

Privacy rules for health apps and wearable devices are complicated and continually evolving, said panelists at a Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology event Wednesday. For instance, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's privacy and security rules apply only to health plans, healthcare clearinghouses and healthcare providers who electronically transmit health information, said Deven McGraw, Department of Health and Human Services deputy director-health information privacy. Health wearable makers may or may not be covered depending on whether they're working for a health plan or provider in whole or in part, she said. An app funded by a plan or provider may be covered, but it may not if bought by an individual, she said. The Future of Privacy Forum (see 1608170013) and Center for Democracy and Technology (see 1606100029 and 1606200027) issued best practices to help app developers and wearable manufacturers consider privacy implications and implement safeguards. Michelle De Mooy, deputy director for CDT's privacy and data project, said legal frameworks and policies are rapidly becoming outdated as individuals are being tracked ubiquitously by sensors. She cited issues with advertising and algorithmic bias, and said the concept of "dignity," which straddles privacy and ethics, should come into play by considering an individual's expectations. FTC attorney Cora Han said the agency's enforcement authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act overlaps with areas HIPAA covers but doesn't reach nonprofit entities and other areas. She cited a recent example of the agency's enforcement with electronic health record company Practice Fusion over publicly posting patient's sensitive personal and medical information on the internet without telling the individual (see 1606080010).

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn released a partial agenda for her Oct. 19 #Solutions2020 policy forum at the Georgetown University Law Center. Clyburn has been traveling to various parts of the U.S. as she explores big-picture communications issues, on what she calls her #ConnectingCommunities Tour. She plans panels on bridging the affordability gap, connected healthcare, 5G, digital inclusion and fighting inequality in the communications sector. The forum starts at 1 p.m. EDT. This week, Clyburn spoke in West Virginia at another broadband connectivity event, with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. (see 1610040039).

Nine wireless providers asked to become "Lifeline Broadband Providers" (LBPs) under the FCC's new federal process for designating carriers eligible for the low-income USF subsidy support program. Assist Wireless, Blue Jay Wireless, Easy Telephone Services, Free Mobile, i-Wireless, Karma Mobility, Telrite, TruConnect Communications and Ztar Mobile filed LBP applications posted Tuesday in docket 09-197. All of the applicants said they met the requirements for streamlined, 60-day treatment designating them as LBP eligible telecom carriers (ETCs). Lifeline's new broadband-oriented support begins Dec. 2 under rule changes the FCC adopted in March, the effective dates for which were announced Monday (see 1610030040). NARUC and individual states are challenging the FCC's LBP process -- which allows providers to become eligible in multiple states or even nationally -- as circumventing state ETC authority under the Communications Act (see 1606030053 and 1607010057). Meanwhile, USTelecom asked the commission for a limited waiver of certain rules in order to permit Lifeline providers to "continue enrolling consumers in the federal Lifeline program based on state-specific program and income eligibility criteria" in 25 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. The waiver should expire at the earlier of 18 months from its grant or 60 days after the state notifies the FCC and all ETCs in the state that it has aligned its eligibility criteria with the federal criteria, the ILEC group's petition said.

The FCC Media Bureau began a beta test of the Incentive Auction Broadcaster Relocation Reimbursement System and the forms it will require Tuesday, it said in a public notice in docket 12-268. “Television stations reassigned to new channels and MVPDs that carry those stations will file Form 399 to claim reimbursement from the $1.75 billion TV Broadcaster Relocation Fund for expenses they reasonably incur in connection with the post-incentive auction repack.” Beginning Tuesday, broadcasters will have access to “a test environment” where they will be able to become familiar with the reimbursement form, the PN said. Those who try out the form and the test environment should provide feedback by Nov. 4, the PN said. “The beta environment automatically will be open to all broadcasters with an active facility associated with their FRN and password in the Commission’s License and Management System (LMS) database.” A “quick start guide” is available here.

The FCC set-top preceding was stalled by “major unresolved issues,” not just a lack of time, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said in a blog post Tuesday, saying “deliberations presumably will continue in coming weeks.” The set-top item was pulled from Thursday's commissioner-meeting agenda and is expected to take at least several weeks to be approved (see 1610030044). The set-top item is the perfect illustration of why the FCC should release the text of items to the public before they're voted, O'Rielly said. Proposals to replace commission oversight of licensing terms with monitoring and a later review period are still “highly objectionable,” O'Rielly said. “Beyond the Commission having no authority or expertise in this area, such interference could undo important protections enacted in those commercial agreements.” A provision in the draft item that would require multichannel video programming distributors to share entitlement and metadata information with third-party manufacturers to enable a universal search function “would allow an MVPD’s over-the-top competitor access to all the proprietary information needed to undercut the MVPD’s content pricing to consumers,” O'Rielly said. Since the rules would bind only MVPDs to share such data, it would discriminate in favor of over-the-top providers, O'Rielly said. The item shouldn't require pay-TV carriers to make apps for third-party platforms that require revenue sharing, and the FCC should create a safe harbor for “particular widely adopted and available consumer apps so that MVPDs can better manage their scarce software development and support resources,” O'Rielly said. The providers also shouldn't be required to provide apps to any third party that includes pirated content in search results, O'Rielly said. The FCC didn't comment.

Intervenors defended the FCC net neutrality order against petitions for rehearing a court panel's June ruling upholding the order. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit twice before disagreed with FCC net neutrality decisions and provided "valuable guidance" the agency "faithfully and correctly applied," said a joint response (in Pacer) Monday from Cogent Communications, Dish Network, Free Press, Incompas, Netflix, New America's Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge and other intervenors in USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063. Industry petitioners again attacked the rules even though the panel ruling doesn't conflict "with precedent or any issue of exceptional importance," they wrote. "As far as Intervenors can determine, this Court has not, in recent memory, ever granted rehearing to address such fact-bound and case-specific complaints." In another response (in Pacer), Full Service Network, which was denied in its challenge to FCC forbearance relief, asked the court to reconsider the panel ruling and precedents on which it relied. FSN said the ruling conflicted with other precedents and raised exceptional issues "because of the massive judicial expansion of agency authority inherent in that decision." Calling itself "the skunk at the party," FSN said the statute required the FCC to classify broadband as a telecom service under Title II of the Communications Act, but the commission decision to forbear from much ISP regulation was "unreasonable." The FCC and DOJ recently defended the order (see 1610030029).

Effective dates for numerous new FCC Lifeline rules were set after the Federal Register published a commission item Monday announcing Office of Management and Budget approval of related information collection. Some rules took effect Monday while others will take effect Dec. 2 and Jan. 1, the item said. Davis Wright attorney Danielle Frappier, who represents clients tapping Lifeline funding, told us most of the changes will become effective Dec. 2. She said a Lifeline budget (which the FCC set at $2.25 billion per year going forward) took effect June 23, that carriers can file applications as of Monday to become "Lifeline Broadband Providers" under the agency's new streamlined designation process, and that new recertification rules will take effect Jan. 1. The Wireline Bureau later on Monday issued a public notice in docket 11-42 further outlining the effective dates of particular rules. The Lifeline overhaul order adopted in March extended low-income USF support from voice to broadband service and streamlined program administration in various ways (see 1603310056).

Joan Marsh took over leadership of the regulatory team at AT&T, with the departure as expected (see 1608100041) of Jim Cicconi, she noted in a Monday blog post. Marsh, now senior vice president-federal regulatory, replaces Bob Quinn, who got Cicconi’s job. “This opportunity comes to me at an important inflection point for our company, our industry and our country,” Marsh wrote. “We are on the precipice of a Presidential election that will, in all events, herald change during a time when communications companies are increasingly scrutinized through the lens of a dated regulatory code that is more and more untethered from the realities of today’s modern networks. We have moved well beyond trying to fit a square regulatory peg into a round regulatory hole to fundamental questions about whether pegs and holes are an adequate regulatory framework at all.”

An FCC draft order on "numbering resource optimization" was sent to commissioners last week, according to the agency's circulation list, which was updated Friday. The order would take "the next step regarding a recommendation by the North American Numbering Council that the FCC consolidate the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) and Pooling Administrator (PA) contracts," a commission spokesman emailed Monday. The FCC sought comment on the recommendation in a 2013 public notice in docket 99-200.