Buyers, sellers and intermediaries in the digital advertising supply chain that meet stringent anti-fraud requirements can receive certification seals through a program launched Monday by the Trustworthy Accountability Group. More than 30 digital ad companies -- including comScore, Interpublic, News Corp., Omnicom Group, Publicis, WPP and Yahoo -- agreed to participate, TAG said in a news release. “Participants in the digital ad supply chain can now ask a simple question to tell if their partners have taken the necessary steps to fight ad fraud: ‘Are you TAG Certified Against Fraud?’ As more TAG anti-fraud seals are awarded, the cracks in our industry exploited by bad actors will also be sealed against their criminal endeavors," said TAG CEO Mike Zaneis. Direct buyers (advertisers and authorized ad agents), direct sellers (publishers and authorized publisher agents) and intermediaries (ad networks and indirect buyers and sellers) must go through a registration process, designate a TAG compliance officer and comply with the Media Rating Council’s invalid traffic detection and filtration guidelines to become certified, IAB said. Sellers also must adhere to domain list filtering, data center IP list filtering and publisher sourcing disclosure requirements, while intermediaries must follow the list filtering requirements and TAG's payment ID protocol. TAG was created in late 2014 by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau to fight ad fraud, malware and Internet piracy, and to promote transparency.

The FCC’s proposed privacy rules put too much emphasis on “opt-in approval,” which is “anachronous and ineffective,” said the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (CIPL), a think tank supported by industry, in comments filed at the FCC. “In the age of big data analytics, the IoT, cloud computing and other modern information practices and uses, overreliance on consent and individual control may result in significant impediments to putting personal data to beneficial and productive uses, thereby frustrating or slowing down economic and social advancements without countervailing benefits to privacy or to individuals, as other, more effective mechanisms and tools to protect individuals are available,” CIPL said. The think tank is based at law firm Hunton & Williams and is supported by about 40 companies, according to the filing. Meanwhile, the FCC posted more than 1,000 privacy comments Monday in docket 16-106. “Your so-called Internet privacy rules, which give a free pass to the Obama Administration’s biggest corporate supporter -- Google -- are a sham and an insult to my intelligence,” said one typical comment. “Google does more to stalk me than any company in the history of civilization. Google's Chairman even admits how little he cares about my online privacy.” Roger Reyes wrote that Google’s exemption from the rules is a “blatant example of cronyism.” Google didn't comment.

The FCC is overlooking and even undermining broadband network investment that spurs "real" competition and improvements in business data services (BDS), USTelecom said Monday. "More regulation to promote fake competition may be coming," wrote Diane Holland, vice president-law and policy, in a blog post headlined "What About Investment, Investment, Investment?" Holland said questions in a Further NPRM in docket 05-25 (see 1605030001) focus on the quantity and type of regulations needed to achieve the commission's stated objectives regarding competition, a technology-neutral framework, technology transitions and flexible regulation. "But there’s a glaring omission from that list: ensuring that providers keep investing in broadband infrastructure. Only facilities-based competition is real, sustainable competition," she wrote. Noting the FCC decision over a decade ago to focus on facilities-based competition in limiting wholesale "unbundling" discounts, Holland said the current commission had "seemingly all but abandoned increasing investment as a primary goal." She acknowledged the FNPRM mentions investment and technology transitions that implicate investment. "But the FCC’s tepid nod to increasing investment as if it would be a nicety rather than a central and essential component is alarming, and disheartening to the scores of providers that have prioritized investment over short-term profits," she wrote. Holland said "fake" competition is "built on a subsidized leasing house of cards" that is unsustainable. She said the FNPRM made "stunning prejudgments" suggestive of that course, "doubling down on accommodating competitive providers" relying on others' facilities rather than their own, which "removes incentives to invest." And she wrote the FCC finding that "best efforts" cable doesn't seems to be a competitive BDS substitute "sets the stage for finding a widespread lack of BDS competition, a necessary precursor to more regulation." She said "real competition and increased investment" are interdependent, not mutually exclusive. An FCC spokesman emailed: “The proposed framework envisions minimal regulation in markets where competition for broadband data services exists, which will preserve incentives for facilities-based investment. In markets where competition does not exist, the goal would be to ensure that businesses and institutions that rely on business data services -- including wireless providers -- can still compete and innovate, which will in fact encourage investment.”

One of Ligado's next aims is setting up a trial network to demonstrate terrestrial and satellite shared use of mid-band spectrum, CEO Doug Smith said in a blog post Monday. "This would be one of the earliest American demonstrations of an advanced next-generation network and could kick-start our mission to serve the information explosion that comes in 5G," Smith said on the day of the deadline for comments in the public notice on Ligado's proposed license modifications that would have it abandon any planned 1545-1555 MHz terrestrial downlink use (see 1604250019). With FCC approval of Ligado's plans for mid-band spectrum, "We can create a model of at least a partial 5G network -- a next-generation, hybrid satellite-terrestrial network -- that will enable 5G use cases and mobile applications that require ultra-reliable, highly-secure and pervasive connectivity," Smith said. Those modifications and power limits are among the steps Ligado has taken "to ensure satellites using other mid-band spectrum can still successfully send signals to smartphones, GPS devices and specialized industrial equipment that rely on that data," Smith said on the blog. The company said the parameters and power limit agreement struck with Deere, Garmin and Trimble point to GPS users and manufacturers not facing any Ligado interference. "Significantly, cellular devices and consumer devices representing the vast majority of the GPS market are not adversely impacted by our planned deployment," Smith said. Ligado's license modification proposal is seeing some opposition. "We have a major concern that the receivers out in the field will be affected by the Ligado signals close to L1 band as they are from our receiver point-of-view in-band interference," especially minus surface acoustic wave (SAW) filtering, U-blox America said in a filing Friday in the docket. The global navigation satellite system component maker also volunteered to provide GPS receivers for more testing involving passive antennas, no external SAW and OEM receivers without integrated SAW. It also is receiving some outside backing. James Kirkland, Trimble Navigation general counsel, called Wireless Bureau Associate Chief Charles Mathias to talk about Trimble's support of Ligado's LTE plans, said an ex parte filing Friday in docket 12-340. According to Trimble, Kirkland said Ligado has agreed to technical parameters and other conditions that are "a reasonable compromise relative to the important competing policy considerations raised by Ligado's previous proposals."

NTIA will host a June 15 meeting for participants trying to hammer out a best practices document for the commercial use of facial recognition technology, said a notice in Friday's Federal Register. The process, which began more than two years ago, has been controversial, with several privacy and consumer protection advocates walking out last summer. They have said that any resulting voluntary code of conduct wouldn't provide adequate protections for the public. The remaining, mostly industry participants have inched closer to producing a document. Stakeholders met in late March in an NTIA-hosted meeting and then a subset group was developing a document that is expected to be discussed at the June meeting (see 1603290023). The 1-5 p.m. meeting, which is open to the public, will be held in the American Institute of Architects boardroom, 1735 New York Ave. NW.

The FCC Disability Advisory Committee will meet June 16, starting at 9 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. The committee was established in December 2014 to make recommendations to the FCC “on a wide array of disability matters within the jurisdiction of the Commission, and to facilitate the participation of people with disabilities in proceedings before the Commission,” a public notice said. In February, the group approved a resolution (see 1602230066) calling on the FCC to issue a rulemaking on phasing out text technology in favor of real-time text, a step taken by the agency in April (see 1604280055).

Stakeholders in the planned FCC local number portability administrator (LNPA) transition from Neustar to Telcordia/iconectiv are invited to two outreach and education events scheduled by PwC, the transition oversight manager, said a Wireline Bureau notice in docket 09-109 listed in Friday's Daily Digest. PwC will hold an interactive webinar Wednesday 3-4 p.m. and will be available to meet with parties June 13 and 14 at the Marriott Indianapolis Downtown hotel adjacent to where a National Emergency Number Association meeting is being held. Parties should register for the webinar here. Parties don't have to register or schedule appointments for the in-person meetings but can express a time preference or ask questions here.

Opponents of extending comment dates in the business data service (BDS) proceeding "completely miss the mark," said an NCTA filing Friday in docket 05-25 urging an FCC extension. Suggestions there's a "high bar" to extensions are wrong, the cable group said, noting its finding that the commission granted 85 percent of recent extension requests. Sprint opposed NCTA's extension request Tuesday (see 1605180028) and joint opposition was filed Thursday by the Competitive Carriers Association, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Free Press, Incompas, New America's Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge. NCTA disputed arguments that potential BDS regulation of cable has been within the scope of the proceeding since a 2012 Further NPRM. "The Commission captioned this proceeding 'Special Access for Price Cap Local Exchange Carriers' because it was considering changes to the rules that governed the rates for special access services provided by price cap local exchange carriers," NCTA said. It said the telco regulatory focus was consistent with FCC precedent under which new BDS entrants like cable are considered nondominant and generally aren't subject to rate regulation. FCC data collection from cable didn't mean cable was being targeted for regulation, but that the data could assist telco regulation, the group said. NCTA also disputed opposition to an extension based on industry having access to the data for months, which it called irrelevant to resolving many of the issues raised in the recent FNPRM (see Ref:1604280057]. It also said it was "disingenuous" for Sprint to argue that no other party was concerned about the proceeding's complexity, when even supportive FCC commissioners voiced such concerns. "It seems the only parties unwilling to acknowledge the complex nature of this proceeding are the CLECs, who apparently will continue pushing for as much rate regulation as possible, as quickly as possible, regardless of whether such regulation is warranted by the facts (like the fact that Sprint already has negotiated commercial Ethernet arrangements with cable operators and telephone companies that enable the company to cover 95 percent of the country)," NCTA said. Separately, CCA said that wireless industry ability to deploy 5G and IoT services depended on "fixing the broken BDS market" because of all the backhaul needed to connect tens of thousands of new cell sites.

The FCC cited practical, procedural and statutory arguments in defending its order allowing interconnected VoIP providers to obtain phone numbers directly from numbering administrators, which NARUC said the commission couldn't do without classifying VoIP as a telecom service under the Communications Act (see 1604050013). "The FCC took a common-sense approach to telephone numbering, allowing VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers, thus eliminating a needless middleman and helping to drive down costs, promote competition, and improve service," the agency told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a response brief Thursday in NARUC v. FCC, No. 15-1497. The decision also maintained VoIP and telecom provider duties to facilitate number portability, allowing customers to keep their numbers when they switch providers. "Because NARUC does not challenge the actual outcome of the proceeding, it is not injured and lacks Article III standing" under the Constitution, the FCC said. "Even if NARUC had standing, it could not show that the agency's interpretation of its authority under the Act is unreasonable." Phone numbers are essential to telephone service providers, and consumer ability to keep those numbers when switching providers is essential to competition, the commission said. Congress thus delegated "exclusive jurisdiction" over phone numbers to the FCC, which relied on this "plenary authority" to allow VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers while maintaining number portability duties, the agency said. Nothing in the law forbids providing nontelecom carriers direct numbering access, said the agency, which found its decision "would lead to increased competition, lower prices, and improved service." A brief from intervenor Vonage in support of the FCC order is due next Thursday; NARUC's reply brief is due June 9.

CTIA and member companies Friday offered the FCC a proposed framework for sharing the 28 GHz and 37-40 GHz bands between fixed satellite service licensees and new mobile broadband licensees. It "would allow the Commission to facilitate the rapid introduction of 5G services while also permitting the continued operation and expansion of satellite services,” CTIA said. “This framework will enable both terrestrial and satellite services to make intensive use of the 28 GHz and 37-40 GHz bands in a manner that fairly balances the rights of all affected stakeholders.” Broadband licensees would have primary status in the bands. FSS users would get “some protections without elevating their existing allocation rights,” CTIA said in the letter. In 28 GHz and 37-40 GHz bands, while there are international allocations for FSS, the agency has “consistently given priority to terrestrial uses of these bands,” CTIA said. “This prioritization should continue, especially in the most populated areas of the United States, to ensure that 5G mobile broadband services can be deployed.” The FCC is looking at the bands for sharing as part of its spectrum frontiers rulemaking (see 1603090057). Carriers see high-frequency spectrum as key to deploying new 5G services. Satellite Industry Association President Tom Stroup said satellite companies are working with the wireless industry “on a technical approach to provide true sharing on a co-primary basis” of the spectrum. “As has been noted repeatedly in these discussions, one of the major challenges is the introduction of mobility into the use of the bands currently shared by [local multipoint distribution service] and satellite operators,” Stroup said. “Since these bands are allocated for satellite use throughout most of the world, it is imperative that all involved address these tough technical issues to ensure continued growth of interference-free satellite services along with 5G technologies built for the U.S. market that are capable of operating globally. Only then can we ensure that the United States becomes the leader in 5G both domestically and abroad.”