AT&T’s comment in the Communications Act Section 706 notice of inquiry that wholesale obligations could deter it from making broadband investments is an “absurd argument,” Comptel said in a reply filed in docket 14-126 at Friday’s deadline. AT&T argued in Sept. 4 comments (http://bit.ly/1Af6UAO) that legacy regulations, like the wholesale obligations in sections 251 and 271, “may require carriers to maintain legacy TDM-based networks even after their IP networks are in place.” The claim that the obligations deter broadband investment “has never been proven,” Comptel said. The commission found in the IP transitions order that in the 15 years before deregulation in 2001, “the industry experienced ‘a torrent of new investment deployed over 200,000 miles of trenches and approximately 18 million miles of fiber -- enough fiber to circle the equator 750 times,'” Comptel said. AT&T’s claim of being required to maintain two networks “is nonsense,” Comptel said, because “the same physical infrastructure that has supported TDM-based services over the decades supports IP-based services.” The commission failed to provide “adequate support” for its proposal to increase the broadband download speed threshold to 10 Mbps, AT&T said in its reply made available Monday. The proposed increase “is not based on a reasonable analysis of how customers’ actually use broadband services,” said AT&T, which also criticized Public Knowledge and Netflix’s backing of a 25 Mbps benchmark. Public Knowledge’s comments were “based on a hypothetical average household that watches three HD movies simultaneously while using other basic device and online services,” while Netflix’s was “based on streaming super and ultra HD content,” AT&T said. There is no evidence “latency prevents consumers from using the applications listed in section 706, and thus there is no basis for the Commission to include it in evaluating broadband,” AT&T said. Replies filed Friday hadn’t been posted on the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System by our deadline. But major wireline players which filed initial comments -- including Fiber to the Home Council Americas, NCTA, Netflix, NTCA, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom and USTelecom -- told us they did not file replies. Some industry observers said the absence of filings in a proceeding that asked questions on topics such as increasing the broadband speed benchmark (CD Aug 6 p5). There’s a sense that the commission intends to move ahead regardless of the comments, said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka, a view shared by some others. That telecom attorneys are “completely overwhelmed by the absurdly intense series of deadlines the Commission has imposed” played a role, Szoka and others said. Spokespeople and attorneys for some of the groups said a sense the commission plans to move ahead with its proposal, including raising the broadband speed benchmark, was not a factor in why they did not file. They were too busy meeting a spate of deadlines on such other proceedings as on net neutrality and E-rate modernization, and felt their initial comments expressed their viewpoint, the sources said.

Several parties that urged the FCC to reject Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable support AT&T/DirecTV with conditions, noted a Guggenheim Partners analyst. Analysts expect both deals to be approved, but the AT&T/DirecTV comments may suggest a more manageable approval path for that deal than for Comcast/Time Warner Cable, said analyst Paul Gallant. Dish Network, Public Knowledge and Netflix took a more even-handed position on the AT&T transaction than they did the Comcast deal, he said Friday in a research note. “This is noteworthy and suggests to us that AT&T/DirecTV is likely to face less strident opposition than Comcast/TWC.” Those entities will probably be among the “leading voices” at the Department of Justice and FCC on both deals, he said. Their moderate tone on AT&T/DirecTV “is incrementally positive for that merger and introduces an additional note of caution on Comcast/TWC,” he said. Initial comments in the AT&T/DirecTV proceeding were due Tuesday (CD Sept 19 p3).

Correction: The name of the Department of Defense facility that partnered with Cascade County, Montana, on a land-use study map was Malmstrom Air Force Base (CD Sept 18 p19).

The FCC received more than 800,000 net neutrality comments in the six days before the Sept. 15 filing deadline, including 244,374 on Sept. 11, and another 169,847 on the last day to file, the agency said on its blog (http://fcc.us/1o6JKam). “Throughout the two rounds of public comment, and despite the age of the Commission’s IT systems, the FCC IT team worked around the clock and implemented workaround solutions to scale the large volume of comments in order to keep the system up and running, ensuring the public could submit feedback to the Commission leading up to Monday night’s comment deadline,” said FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray in the post.

A new standard that allows users of the IEEE 802 set of wireless standards from the IEEE Standards Association to effectively use the TV white spaces is available. IEEE 802.19.1 “is intended to help achieve fair and efficient spectrum sharing,” said the IEEE Standards Association Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1yi0Qvv). The standard is intended to specify a coexistence discovery and information server, specify a coexistence manager, and “define common coexistence architecture and protocols,” it said.

The Competitive Carriers Association filed a motion for leave to intervene in support of the FCC in the NAB’s court challenge of the TV incentive auction rules, CCA said Wednesday. “CCA supports the FCC’s decision to use updated software and data to implement the repacking process of the incentive auction, and is hopeful the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will quickly resolve this matter in the Commission’s favor,” the group said in a news release. NAB had said the commission’s use of the TVStudy software would unfairly disadvantage stations.

The FCC should have its Diversity Committee study “troubling” employment practices in the technology sector, said the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and all four FCC members Wednesday. The tech industry’s “abysmal failure” to employ African-Americans, Hispanics and women hurts the FCC’s ability to follow congressional directives to “regulate EEO and promote employment and ownership diversity,” said the MMTC of equal employment opportunity. “Industry convergence and stark employment gaps” should merit a technology sector investigation by the Diversity Committee, and a follow-up by the FCC, another federal agency or Congress, the letter said. The FCC should focus on the tech sector because with the rise of over-the-top video, cord cutters and streaming apps, “the media jobs of the future will look more like technology jobs than traditional TV/radio production, advertising sales, and on-air occupations,” MMTC said. The tech sector has addressed this change in the past by asking for lowered restrictions on bringing in overseas workers though H-1B visas, a move MMTC said may be premature without a stronger effort to recruit domestic minorities and women. “An inquiry by the Diversity Committee would shed light on the extent to which technology companies recruit on campuses with high minority enrollments, actively mentor minorities for careers in the technology sector, and select diverse candidates who are U.S. citizens or residents,” MMTC said. Because of media convergence, diversity within the tech sector will increasingly fall within FCC EEO authority, MMTC said. “The digital divide cannot be closed when a sixth of the economy so profoundly and uniformly excludes African Americans, Latinos and women from equal employment opportunity."

Sixty percent of U.S. consumers expect to have experienced a house that speaks or reads to them by 2025, said a study on the impact of technology commissioned by Intel’s McAfee. Seventy-seven percent of consumers think the most common device in 11 years will be a smart watch, and 70 percent believe overall wearable devices will be common personal accessories. Seventy-two percent of consumers expect connected kitchen appliances will be a household item by 2015, six in 10 expect their refrigerators to automatically add food to a running grocery list when items are running low, and 84 percent believe their home security systems will be connected to their mobile devices, McAfee said. Almost 70 percent of respondents expressed concern over the state of cybersecurity in 2025, with identity theft, monetary theft and fraud the leading issues. By 2025, 38 percent of U.S. consumers expect to unlock their mobile device by eye scan followed by a thumbprint, McAfee said. On mobile pay, a third of consumers believe they'll be able to pay for items using their fingerprint, while 22 percent expected to use their mobile device. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they planned to still pay by credit or debit card. The online survey was done Aug. 1-12 by MSI Research among 1,507 U.S. citizens ages 21-65, split evenly by age and gender.

Comments are due Oct. 16, replies Nov. 17, on a Further NPRM on text-to-911 rules, the FCC Public Safety Bureau said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1o0UhUw). The August FNPRM teed up questions including whether the FCC should extend a text-to-911 mandate to non-interconnected over-the-top text providers and on rules for determining the location of those sending the texts and making the system work for subscribers roaming on another network (CD Aug 11 p1).

AT&T explained the job functions of its employees and asked for clarification and modifications for an FCC information request. The Media Bureau asked AT&T and DirecTV for information on AT&T’s proposed takeover of DirecTV (CD Sept 11 p21). The AT&T employees were listed on organizational charts prepared to identify custodians of documents responsive to each document request, AT&T said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-90 (http://bit.ly/1u2Dio1). The meeting participants also discussed the FCC’s definitions, instructions and procedures for the form of AT&T’s responses to the requests, it said. DirecTV also presented information on job functions of its employees, said a separate ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/XcPoAg). Both filings are on meetings with FCC staff tasked with reviewing the acquisition.