CEOs of both companies again said approving ATT’s deal to buy DirecTV would have public benefits. DirecTV is disadvantaged in competing for consumers who want a broadband/video bundle and AT&T doesn’t currently promote stand-alone video “because the service is not profitable on that basis,” AT&T said in ex parte filings posted Wednesday in docket 14-90 (http://bit.ly/1jorVB7). They recount meetings this week with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, DirecTV CEO Mike White and all regular FCC commissioners. By achieving the anticipated deal synergies and enabling an effective bundle of broadband and video services in more areas, “the combined company will fill the gaps in each company’s respective service portfolios,” it said. The entity will remain “incented to provide both broadband and video on a standalone basis,” it said.

Microsoft urged the FCC to maintain a workable scope and apportionment of responsibility in any online video clip closed-captioning requirements. An order requiring IP clip closed-captioning rules is planned for the FCC meeting July 11 (CD June 18 p10). The company asked the FCC to adopt for video clips the same exemption that exists in the TV closed captioning rules for promotional material, it said Wednesday in an ex parte filing in docket 11-154 (http://bit.ly/1sFe1Ee). Promotional trailers have a short shelf life and limited economic value and “are of less utility to consumers,” it said. Microsoft backed the views of NCTA and NAB, which also lobbied the commission (http://bit.ly/TjCnTt), that the FCC shouldn’t regulate video clips on third-party sites and applications. The widespread distribution of clips and lack of central control “mitigates against regulating content on third-party distribution platforms,” it said: If the commission views this question differently, it should retain the current allocation of responsibility between video programming owners and video programming distributors established in the existing IP closed captioning rules. Industry commenters have yet to provide a definition for “time-sensitive” video clips “that might warrant a grace period for posting captions,” said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1pjNhaL). TDI reiterated its strong objections to any broad categorization of “time-sensitive” clips. The commission needs to limit the length of any grace period, “and to ensure that the period becomes smaller over time and eventually sunsets,” it said. No commenter offered a specific proposal for possible relief or any evidence to support concerns of potential impact of a clip-captioning requirement on small broadcasters, TDI said. The filing recounted a phone call with staff from Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office and from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.

The FCC laid out a tentative timeline for next steps as it prepares for the TV incentive auction. Gary Epstein, chairman of the Incentive Auction Task Force, promised last week more certainty was in its way (CD June 18 p1). Under the timeline (http://fcc.us/1ldB0fR), Q3 will be a busy time, with various public notices and auction related proceedings set to launch. In Q1 2015, the FCC is slated to adopt an auction procedures public notice, “establishing final auction procedures and providing detailed explanations and instructions for potential auction participants.” The auction would then occur in the middle part of the year. In an accompanying blog post Wednesday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler emphasized that the timeline offers broadcasters additional certainty. “Robust participation by broadcasters will be critical to the success of the auction,” he wrote (http://fcc.us/1pkjcbk). “The auction is a risk-free, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for broadcasters, but the decision of whether or not to participate is completely voluntary and confidential.” Wheeler “and the Auction Staff are being incredibly responsive to the information needs of broadcasters,” said Preston Padden, executive director of the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition, in an e-mail. A second broadcast industry lawyer said there’s “a long way to go between here and the auction.”

U.S. information and communications technology (ICT) spending grew in 2013 at a pace that was faster than that of overall global spending, beginning a trend likely to continue through at least 2017, said the Telecommunications Industry Association Tuesday in a report. The U.S. has also passed Europe in spending by region, ranking behind only Asia in that metric, TIA said. The U.S.’s rising rate of ICT spending stems from growing data usage on LTE networks, along with the growth of specialized services like cloud services, machine-to-machine communications and cybersecurity, TIA said. “It’s all about data -- building the infrastructure to handle it, managing it, storing it and protecting it,” TIA President Grant Seiffert said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1qHD33z).

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology seeks comment on its measurements of LTE interference with DTV receivers, said an OET public notice Friday (http://bit.ly/1nYA43l). OET wants comment on whether its measurements support conclusions about interservice interference, including that LTE interference with DTV stations will appear “nearly identical” to interference from other DTV stations. OET wants comment on the relevance of measurements associated with two outdated receiver models, it said. “OET anticipates that these receivers will no longer be commercially available and will be approaching the end of their useful lifecycle at the time of the wireless build out in the 600 MHz Band.” Comments are due July 11.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) was sharply critical of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposed changes to the federal E-rate program, unveiled Friday (CD June 23 p4). ISTE CEO Brian Lewis called the plan a “step backward” for the program. The proposal “envisions” a five-year program with $1 billion per year dedicated to build-out of wireless connectivity within schools and libraries, but it identified only two years of the funding needed “and no guarantee of more dollars after that,” Lewis said in a news release. “Let’s stop rearranging the deckchairs,” he said. “Let’s invest the funding that even the Commission knows the E-Rate needs to fully equip our students, educators and library patrons with the bandwidth necessary for improved education, employment and citizenship.” ISTE’s membership is made up of teachers. The proposal also had supporters. Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, said Wheeler is on the right track. “No modern business expects to function without access to high-speed Internet,” he said in a written statement. “So why should we expect it of our schools?”

Political pressure stirred up by the FCC net neutrality proceeding could lead to “negative spillover” for Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable, said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant in an email to investors Friday. That could lead to harsher deal conditions or an FCC challenge to the transaction, Gallant said. “We don’t believe that is the most likely outcome, but it is more likely today than it was five weeks ago when the FCC issued its net neutrality proposal.” Regulatory approval of AT&T/DirecTV is likely, “but not highly likely,” Gallant said. AT&T’s deal concessions seem “well-designed” to address concerns about pay-TV pricing and expand broadband availability, Gallant said. If Sprint and T-Mobile were to agree to combine and seek regulatory approval, it would likely be the first telecom deal to take the Department of Justice to court for not approving it, Gallant said. “Sprint/T-Mobile would actually have a decent chance of beating DOJ.” Such a win could then cause the FCC to approve the deal, he said. “It’s definitely still an uphill battle, but not the hopeless case some believe.” On peering, Gallant said it’s unlikely that the FCC would ban paid peering fees by Netflix and content delivery networks. Most investors don’t see Title II reclassification of broadband as likely to happen, Gallant said. But unlike the last net neutrality rulemaking process, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s Verizon decision narrows the other options available to the FCC, Gallant said. “We are thinking the movie ends well for ISPs this time as well, but right now we're not as confident as most investors we spoke with.” On the upcoming Aereo decision, Gallant said only a “complete victory” for broadcasting would be viewed as a positive for broadcasters. Other outcomes, such as a remand back to lower courts, are “likely to be read as at least mildly negative for broadcasters,” he said.

The FCC should designate a portion of its E-rate “down payment” to Priority 1 services, while it designates a large portion for Priority 2 services, the American Library Association told a Wireline Bureau official Thursday, an ex parte filing in docket 10-90 said Friday (http://bit.ly/1iQzJLM). In any future funding models, current Priority 1 services need to continue to be fully funded, ALA said. Priority 1 services, currently funded first, deal with telecom services and Internet access to a school or library building; Priority 2 focuses on internal connections. The commission should also review rules that may prohibit school-library partnerships in securing high-capacity broadband, ALA said.

Compelled disclosure of Internet interconnection agreements creates “anticompetitive risks,” said a paper by the Free State Foundation (http://bit.ly/1lSLuBo). The FCC’s recent announcement that the agency has requested copies of the agreements that Netflix has with ISPs Comcast and Verizon “has renewed calls for the Commission to make these agreements public,” wrote Boston College Associate Law Professor Daniel Lyons, a member of FSF’s board of academic advisers. “While transparency is often a laudatory policy goal,” proposals that all network interconnection agreements be filed with the commission and open to public inspection “is misguided and may ultimately harm the very competition that proponents seek to protect,” the paper said. The net neutrality rules requiring ISPs to disclose the terms upon which they sell broadband access to consumers are “very different from mandating detailed disclosure of specific, confidential business-to-business agreements negotiated between sophisticated parties in a highly competitive interconnection market,” said the paper, released Thursday. “It is a basic tenet of economic and industrial organization literature that sharing competitively sensitive information among rivals can facilitate tacit collusion."

Set-top boxes are responsible for “just 1.3 percent of a typical household’s energy use,” NCTA said in blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/UifNf4), responding to a recent Los Angeles Times article’s comparison of set-top energy use to a washing machine. A recent industry voluntary agreement on set-top energy use (CD Dec 24 p1) means the devices are improving faster in energy use than a Department of Energy proposed standard would have, NCTA said. Users can check set-top energy use for themselves (http://bit.ly/1iLOobc) by taking advantage of transparency requirements in the voluntary agreement, NCTA said. The L.A. Times article is “incredibly misleading” said NCTA. The L.A. Times stands by the story, its author, Ralph Vartabedian, told us in an email. With multiple set-top boxes to serve multiple TVs, the boxes can be the largest use of power apart from air conditioning, he said. He also disputed NCTA criticisms that the story equates set-top box energy use with a washing machine’s. “We never said the box consumes that much power. In fact, the very next sentence in the story says these [boxes] consume 35 watts continuously,” Vartabedian said. “We checked with other private and government energy organizations and they concurred with our research and say our story is accurate.”