Telephone fraudsters posing as IRS agents stole more than $50 million from tens of thousands of consumers, warned the FCC Enforcement Bureau and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In a public notice Monday, the agencies “said they’re committed to quashing the scam, prosecuting the individuals behind the scam, and protecting consumers from future fraud and harassment.” In the scam, callers pretend to be IRS officials and demand payment in gift cards, prepaid debit or credit cards, wire transfers, Western Union or MoneyGram, the agencies said. When victims hesitate to pay, the caller frequently claims the IRS will issue an arrest warrant for unpaid taxes, they said.
President Barack Obama lauded the notion of more competition, including in the telecom market, during his weekly address Saturday. “My administration has done a lot to keep the marketplace fair,” Obama said. “We defended a free, open, and accessible internet that doesn’t let service providers pick winners and losers.” He also touched on industry consolidation generally: “In an era when large corporations often merge to form even larger ones, our leaders have an even greater responsibility to look out for us as consumers.”
There's speculation Verizon could combine with a cable company, but any such deal would have to clear a regulatory hurdle and business issues like total debt loads and unfunded pension and possibly other post retirement benefit liabilities, Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins wrote investors Thursday. He said a quad-play offering may not have as many revenue benefits as hoped, though a combined network would have scale and synergy benefits. He said Verizon's 5G fixed wireless plans could be "a viable third pipe" that could compete with the wireline and cable broadband duopoly without any need for cable assets. Rollins said the expected tax law overhauls and rising interest rates are driving increased urgency for mergers and acquisitions.
The 2017 economic report released by the Obama administration Thursday included language touting its record on tech and telecom issues. “The Administration has worked to ensure that the technological infrastructure is in place, and the rules of the road are set, so that all Americans can benefit from technology,” said the 559-page report. “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provided funding to deploy or upgrade more than 114,000 miles of new broadband infrastructure, consistent with the President’s goal of enhancing consumer welfare, civic participation, education, entrepreneurial activity, and economic growth through greater access to broadband. The Recovery Act financed additional broadband projects totaling $2.9 billion, bringing high-speed Internet access to 260,000 more rural households, 17,500 businesses, and 1,900 community facilities.” It cited administration actions on freeing up spectrum and President Barack Obama’s backing for the FCC net neutrality rules. Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman led a White House blog post about the report.
Participants in NTIA's vulnerability research disclosures multistakeholder process released a provisional version Thursday of voluntary guidelines for multiparty disclosure coordination, a template for an “early stage” disclosure coordination policy and a study of attitudes to vulnerability disclosure practices. The guidelines that the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (First) issued via NTIA include six use cases. They include a compendium of current best practices, like building and maintaining trust among parties, maintaining communication and ways to minimize stakeholders' exposure as a result of a vulnerability. Comments are due to First by Jan. 31. The early stage disclosure policy template focuses on safety-critical industries but can be used by “any organization in taking the first steps toward a disclosure policy,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce-Communications and Information Angela Simpson in a blog post. The disclosure attitudes research report found that 92 percent of the more than 400 researchers surveyed engage in some form of coordinated vulnerability disclosure. Seventy-six percent of mature tech providers and operators have internal vulnerability handling procedures but only about 33 percent of all surveyed companies require their suppliers to have their own vulnerability handling procedures, NTIA report. The documents “will help many types of organizations better understand security disclosure, and develop their own strategies,” Simpson blogged. “NTIA will continue to work with stakeholders on outreach models and ways to educate key sectors and organizations, raise awareness of this important issue, and encourage adoption of practices that help improve security of the digital economy.”
The TeleManagement Forum has a variety of old members leaving and new members joining, said a DOJ Antitrust Division notice in Tuesday's Federal Register. Those leaving include Cox Communications, Facebook, NetBoss Technologies, Symantec, Verizon Telematics, Vitria Technology and many others. Among those joining were Alaska Communications Systems Holdings, Xavient Information Systems, MobileAware and Higher Logic, the telco industry service provider trade group said.
The FCC released the FCC Disability Advisory Committee's resolution on making the IoT accessible (see 1612060060). The resolution urges the next FCC to work with stakeholders to address possible accessibility issues in connected devices that may have limited user interfaces. The committee also asked the agency to consider seeking stakeholder recommendations on IoT accessibility issues falling within the regulator's purview.
Correction: The author of the Ernst & Young report on telecom merger-and-acquisition activity was Gaeron McClure (see 1611280016).
More than 226 million actively registered phone numbers are in the Do Not Call Registry as of Sept. 30, an increase of 3 million records from the prior fiscal year, said the FTC in a Friday news release. The commission released a data book that contains information about the registry for FY 2016. The agency said consumer complaints for unwanted telemarketing calls rose to 5.3 million calls last fiscal year, up from 3.6 million in FY2015, while monthly grievances to the FTC about telemarketing robocalls ranged from as low as 134,000 in November 2015 to nearly 266,000 lodged in August.
The FCC released details Thursday on a webinar on unwanted robocalls, to be hosted Wednesday by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. The one-hour session will start at 1 p.m. EST, the FCC said. The speakers are from CGA, the Enforcement Bureau and the Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis. “The webinar, which is free and intended for all consumers, will provide information about consumers’ rights and the steps they can take to prevent robocalls,” a notice said. “This info session will explain the FCC’s role in addressing this issue and the steps consumers can take to protect themselves from and/or decrease the amount of unwanted robocalls they receive.”