CES will have a few firsts in Las Vegas in January, including new exhibit space for artificial intelligence, a high-tech retail conference and exhibit area, and a design and source marketplace and conference program, said CEO Gary Shapiro at a CES Unveiled news conference (see 1711100003) in New York Thursday. The “booming” sports technology industry will have its own zone, reflecting growth projected to reach $76 billion by 2020, said Karen Chupka, CTA senior vice president-CES and corporate business strategy. Turner Sports is sponsoring that area. Responding to a question on possible security procedure changes at CES hotels, after last month’s mass shooting at a concert outside the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Chupka said the Las Vegas community is studying whether there are other measures organizers can take, with security measures already in place such as cameras in the casinos. She said the city has one of the few fusion centers that Department of Homeland Security describes as where many agencies including state and local ones trade threat-related information.

Liberty Interactive's buy of General Communications Inc. can go through without conditions, the FCC International, Media, Wireless and Wireline bureaus said in a docket 17-114 order Wednesday evening. They saw no potential harms with the deal, calls for conditions (see 1706200044) were speculative and the proposed conditions were unrelated to the transaction. The bureaus said GCI Liberty will be more diversified, helping insulate GCI from any Alaska-specific economic events. The FTC gave its nod in June (see 1706080024).

The FCC posted its 2018 calendar of monthly commissioners' meetings, it said Wednesday The biggest change from 2017 is the June meeting, which in 2018 will be held two weeks earlier, June 7, than it was this year.

ATIS President Susan Miller and others met with aides to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on efforts to counteract unwanted robocalls. ATIS discussed the signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) framework, said a filing in docket 17-59. “Tackling the challenge of illegal robocalls will require a structure that can be established quickly and that can evolve as necessary,” ATIS said. “It is equally important that the industry be able to gain operational experience in the near future to be fully prepared for wide scale SHAKEN deployment. ATIS is prepared to serve as the SHAKEN Governance Authority.”

Correction: Puerto Rico's AeroNet is a fixed wireless and fiber ISP (see 1711060013).

International Center for Law & Economics representatives offered reasons why the FCC should overturn the 2015 net neutrality rules, in meetings with Chairman Ajit Pai, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and aides to the other commissioners. “Congress is the proper place for the enactment of fundamentally new telecommunications policy, and ... the Commission should base its regulatory decisions interpreting Congressional directives on carefully considered empirical research and economic modeling,” said a filing in docket 17-108. The 2015 order was “a change in policy improperly initiated by the Commission rather than by Congress,” the group said.

Puerto Rico fixed wireless and fiber ISP AeroNet expects to have service 100 percent restored by early January, President Gino Villarini emailed us Friday. He said the company began re-establishing infrastructure immediately after Hurricane Maria and expects to be 90 percent restored by early December. He said damage was mostly broken antennas, wear damage, and damaged and cut fiber, plus 15 collocated towers fell down. Restoration will cost more than $3 million, he said. Communications network recovery in Puerto Rico has been hampered by lack of electricity (see 1711010012). Villarini said minus the power outage, about 70 percent of its customers would have service Monday, but actually about 50 percent do. He said that for the first four weeks after the hurricane, recovery efforts also were hampered by employee issues. "We had a lot of issues without housing, food and gas," he said, with employees staying at AeroNet facilities and the company providing meals and gas. He said the FCC expedited a company request for special temporary authority to operate backhaul radios in the 5.9 GHz band, with approval in about two days. As of Monday, 48 of 78 counties had more than 50 percent of their cellsites out of service, down from 49 the previous day, according to the FCC's latest Maria status report. It said 47.8 percent of cellsites in Puerto Rico and 38 percent of cellsites in the U.S. Virgin Islands were out. It said two Puerto Rico TV stations and 61 AM and FM radio stations are confirmed or suspected to be off-air.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is “quite confident” his company can achieve full “human-level autonomy” in self-driving cars with Autopilot “computing hardware,” he said on a Wednesday earnings call. The question is “what will be acceptable to regulators?” he said. “Regulators may require some significant margin above human capability in order for a full autonomy to be engaged,” said Musk. “They may say, ‘It needs to be 50 percent safer, 100 percent safer, 1,000 percent safer,’ I don't know. I'm not sure they know, either.” Tesla will have “more to say on the hardware front soon, we're just not ready to say anything now,” he said. “But I feel very optimistic on that front.” A truck driver’s failure to yield the right of way and the “inattention” of the Tesla Model S driver “due to overreliance on vehicle automation” in the car's Autopilot mode were the “probable cause” of a 2016 crash near Williston, Florida, that killed the Tesla driver, the National Transportation Safety Board reported (see 1709120050).

Crown Castle completed its buy of Lightower's 32,000 route miles of fiber (see 1710050059), the buyer said in a Wednesday news release.

Treating VoIP as an information service is good public policy, said phone, cable and VoIP industry associations in amicus briefs at the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in docket 17-2290. In a joint brief (in Pacer), USTelecom, the Voice on the Net Coalition, AT&T and Verizon supported FCC comments that allowing the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to regulate VoIP as it seeks to do for Charter Communications would be bad for the market (see 1710300036). “Preemption of state common-carrier, public utility regulation does not give VoIP providers an unfair advantage in the marketplace, but instead puts VoIP providers on an equal footing with wireless providers and over-the-top or nomadic VoIP providers, both of which are exempt from such regulation,” the phone and VoIP providers said. Pre-empting states wouldn’t harm VoIP customers because the FCC "repeatedly held that VoIP providers remain obligated to comply with a robust array of statutory consumer protections, including 911 access, universal service contributions, and accommodations for subscribers with disabilities,” they said. NCTA also urged (in Pacer) the 8th Circuit to uphold the lower court’s ruling that VoIP is an information service. “While the FCC’s light-touch framework has been instrumental to the successful roll-out of VoIP," said the cable association, "the application of state regulations designed for traditional local exchange services … would stymie the competition and innovation Congress and the FCC set out to foster."