The National 911 Program is seeking comment on a nationally uniform data system for 911 public safety answering point call data and local and state 911 system operations data, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. The NHTSA published a request for information June 30 in the Federal Register. The proposed data system “would provide essential information to assist strategic planning, governance decisions, and improvements to the 911 system and its operations at all levels of government,” NHTSA said. “These data would also be useful to private sector companies providing services to local and State 911 agencies.” Comments are due Sept. 28.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's telecom plan “expands handouts to political allies,” “increases government role in broadband,” “makes empty promises of less regulation” and “promises an open Internet, but delivers a closed one,” said American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communication and Technology visiting fellow Mark Jamison in a blog post Thursday. Clinton released her agenda last month (see 1606280071). “Despite this enthusiasm, there is much to worry about in this agenda as it provides a blueprint for diminishing US leadership in tech,” Jamison said. “The plan will expand subsidies from the federal government to cities, regions, and states to invest in dark fiber, broadband in recreation centers and transportation centers, and free public WiFi. Of course these programs will be wrought with political favoritism and waste.” The agenda is "particularly impotent on the most pressing digital issues," glossing over "critical topics such as the role of encryption for enhancing privacy and safety, and the critical need for greater transparency into how algorithms increasingly impact everyday lives," Pennsylvania State University Palmer Chair in Telecom Sascha Meinrath wrote in the Christian Science Monitor. "We need policies to drive universal access to low-cost, high-speed connectivity, and for the two-thirds of Americans already online, we need truth-in-labeling that addresses the quarter-of-a-trillion dollars in overpayments US consumers will make by 2025. The baby steps made thus far are necessary but insufficient to address both the digital and information divides that currently exist in broadband service provision." He cited priorities such as consumers having control over their data and laying the groundwork for intelligent transportation systems. Clinton's platform "ignores nearly all of the big problems," he said, noting her one remaining Democratic challenger, Bernie Sanders, and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump "haven’t released anything meaningful at all."

The FCC began a proceeding to revoke authorizations held by LDC Telecommunications for failing to pay delinquent regulatory fees to the commission, said an Enforcement Bureau "pay or show cause" order in Tuesday's Daily Digest. The order directed LDC to pay the fees plus any penalties, collection charges and interest payments in a 2014 commission demand letter, or show cause why the payments are inapplicable or should otherwise be waived. LDC, which was granted authorizations to provide facilities-based and resold international telecom services in 2008, couldn't be reached for comment.

FCC-proposed privacy rules are based on a “fundamentally flawed premise” that ISPs rather than edge providers are “uniquely able to see and harvest users’ ‘very sensitive and very personal’ data,” said Larry Downes, project director of the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, in replies. “Thanks to a highly successful encryption campaign accelerated in large part by fears of government abuse of such information, broadband providers are now effectively blind to data traveling between users and the Internet.” Because the FCC has jurisdiction over ISPs, it ignores edge providers like Facebook or Netflix, he said. “They alone have the capacity to use that information not just for commercial purposes but for the kinds of nefarious uses the Commission worries may be the latent intent of access providers.” But Downes also said the “happy reality” is that FCC concerns “are almost entirely hypothetical.” The FTC, through “extensive and assertive oversight” of data practices has kept problems from developing, he said in comments posted Tuesday in docket 16-106.

The 2016 Democratic Party draft platform advancing to a full platform committee consideration this week includes language on net neutrality, broadband infrastructure and data localization requirements. The full 187-member platform committee will review the 39-page document during a meeting in Orlando Thursday and Friday and, once approved, the platform will be submitted for ratification at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia later this month. “Democrats support a free and open internet at home and abroad, and will oppose any effort by Republicans to roll back the historic net neutrality rules that the [FCC] enacted last year,” said the draft platform, released Friday. Democrats will “continue to support the expansion of high-speed broadband networks” and the creation of an independent national infrastructure bank to provide loans and other funding for broadband infrastructure investment, it said. The draft platform also said: “We will protect the intellectual property rights of artists, creators, and inventors at home and abroad. … Democrats will fight against unfair theft of intellectual property and trade secrets. We will also increase access to global markets for American intellectual property and other digital trade by opposing quotas, discriminatory measures, and data localization requirements.” A section on cybersecurity pledges Democrats will protect industry, infrastructure and government from cyberattacks, with strengthened security and an effort to “establish global norms in cyberspace” with “consequences on those who violate the rules,” all “while protecting the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.” Republicans haven't released their 2016 platform.

Correction: Former FCC Chief Economist Tim Brennan has no clients involved in the net neutrality fight (see 1606290036).

AT&T completed an acquisition of over-the-top video partner Quickplay Media from private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, the telco said in a news release. The deal was announced in May (see 1605160025). Quickplay is the platform provider for AT&T U-Verse and its TV Everywhere and will support DirecTV streaming services to be introduced later this year, AT&T said Tuesday.

A third of smart home owners experience problems with smart home devices, said Parks Associates, and nearly 10 percent report problems connecting a smart home device to the home network router. Nascent technologies increase the likelihood of problems with setup, interoperability and user error, said analyst Patrice Samuels. The number of connected products is expected to rise significantly this year, with half of broadband households intending to buy at least one smart home device in the next 12 months, and the most popular setup experience for these devices is plug-and-play, she said Tuesday: "The fewer the number of steps that consumers have to take to get their device up and running, the better."

The net neutrality order wasn’t exactly an “economics-free zone,” but the economic support for the order was suspect, said former FCC Chief Economist Tim Brennan in a Free State Foundation paper. Brennan said Tuesday his “economics-free zone” comment was widely reported and even referenced in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding the order. “Economics was in the Open Internet Order, but a fair amount of the economics was wrong, unsupported, or irrelevant,” the paper said. “Even if broadband providers have market power because subscribers are slow to switch broadband services, as the FCC claims, the FCC incorrectly found such providers lack an incentive to provide high-quality service,” Brennan wrote. “Broadband providers, in the FCC’s scenario, will raise their prices up to where subscribers will consider switching.” In reality, ISPs will offer customers what they want, ‘including content ‘neutrality,’” he said. The FCC ignored potentially better alternatives to net neutrality rules, he said. If ISPs advertise content-neutral practices, they should be held accountable, but that’s a job the FTC could do as well as the FCC, Brennan said. He's professor of public policy at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Brennan told us he has no clients involved in the net neutrality fight.

Writing rules of the road for autonomous vehicles is more akin to the Declaration of Independence than the Constitution, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday. Responding to a question about driverless cars during a live-streamed event, he said the agency needs more practical experience with driverless cars to ensure it isn't caught "flat footed." This also means thinking about the roles of state governments and industry in relation to the issue, he said. "We’re trying to write the equivalent of the Declaration of Independence with autonomous cars," Foxx responded. "We’re not trying to write the Constitution yet because we don’t know what we don’t know. So there will be more granularity over time. But we can build a basic framing around which that granularity comes into existence." Foxx, who spoke at the Department of Transportation's Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Volpe National Transportation Research Center, generally talked about the role of transportation in the U.S. and legacy of technology, including some comments about autonomous vehicles. Early in his speech, he asked whether drivers even need to be licensed since autonomous vehicles would be performing more of the driving. "So the question is who licenses this? Do we, in the course of approving the physical car, also approve the operational aspects of the software and does that take the place of what the states used to do? Do you need a driver's license to operate an autonomous car? These are questions that are coming faster ... than any of us know." He said the country needs to start making decisions about such transportation-related issues.