The FCC Public Safety Bureau will introduce a new version of the FCC Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) for "testing and, ultimately, operational use,” over the next two months, the FCC said Monday in a public notice. The new version of NORS is to be online as early as Tuesday, the notice said. Part 4 of the FCC’s rules require providers of voice and paging communications providers to report significant disruptions or outages to their communications systems. The FCC is to consider an order on changes to NORS at its May 25 meeting, along with a rulemaking on expanding the requirements to cover broadband providers (see 1605050053). “The new platform contains improvements that will enhance the overall security and reliability of NORS and allow future evolution to best support new communications technologies and analytic methods,” the notice said.

Broadband and information communications technologies (ICT) produced $1.02 trillion in value to the U.S. economy in 2014, or about 5.9 percent of gross domestic product, but that likely understates the impact, said a study issued Thursday by the Internet Innovation Alliance. Broadband and ICT companies employed 4.93 million workers (full-time equivalents), with an average annual compensation of $104,390, said the study by Kevin Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar, and Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon, an economic advisory firm. “The large economic gains associated with the broadband and ICT sector have flourished in an environment of light federal regulation,” said Hassett and Shapiro. They said recent FCC regulatory moves targeting "broadband ISPs and their service offerings would stifle broadband/ICT sector investment, growth and employment, negatively impacting the American economy.”

Broadband adoption will reach 84 percent of U.S. households this year, up from 50 percent in 2006, said a Parks Associates report Wednesday, while ownership of smart home products grew from 16 percent to 19 percent of U.S. broadband households in the past year. Some 44 percent of households without a smart home device plan to buy one in 2016, and by 2020 half of North American broadband households will be smart homes, it said. "Adoption of the connected lifestyle continues to expand” as supporting technologies mature and consumers better understand the value of connected devices, said analyst Brad Russell. Increased access to fixed and mobile broadband and improved interoperability between “collaborative, though fragmented" communications networks will facilitate smart home adoption, he said. Russell cited efforts by big players including Amazon, Apple and Facebook and said their leadership positions and ecosystems will “help accelerate growth in established categories and emerging technologies such as wearables, smart fabrics, and virtual and augmented reality."

Billing Services Group (BSG) agreed to pay $5.2 million to resolve FTC contempt charges that the phone-billing company and its business entities violated a 1999 court order that had settled cramming charges, the commission said in a Wednesday news release. Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the proposed stipulated final order filed in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio. The FTC said the company must make 10 payments of $520,000 each, the first due in 30 days, followed by an equal payment every 90 days, to satisfy the judgment, but if BSG fails to make a payment a $17 million judgment will be imposed. The 1999 order with the FTC had barred BSG defendants from "unauthorized billing, misrepresentations to consumers, and billing for vendors who fail to clearly disclose the terms of their services." The commission said the defendants operated as a phone billing aggregator for years, and placed third-party charges on consumers' telephone bills without authorization. In the proposed settlement, BSG and its business entities admit to violating the 1999 order, and failing to vet charges before processing them and to investigate consumer complaints about unauthorized charges, FTC said. Defendants would also be banned from placing charges on consumer phone bills for enhanced services like email or voicemail and barred from placing unauthorized charges on any type of consumer bill, the commission said. "In the defendants’ current business, which involves providing wireless intermediary services to telephone companies and Wi-Fi providers, the proposed order will require them to monitor their servers’ traffic for possible fraud," the commission said.

Nokia will enter the e-health market with an agreement to acquire Withings, Nokia said Tuesday. The cash deal, which combines two European companies, values Withings at 170 million euros -- or nearly $192 million. Withings makes digital health products including thermometers, activity trackers and blood-pressure monitors. The deal is expected to close in early Q3 and is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Digital health is a “large and important market,” and the deal strengthens Nokia’s business position for the IoT, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said in a statement.

A dozen civil liberties and open government groups expressed support Monday for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's effort to get intelligence agencies to consider changes in how they classify and declassify information in a move toward more transparency. In a letter to Clapper, they wrote "far too much information" is unnecessarily classified, and also for far too long and at too high a level. The groups, including Access Now, Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, Electronic Frontier Foundation and New America’s Open Technology Institute, said Clapper's March 23 memo directing intelligence chiefs to consider some changes such as "implementing a proactive discretionary declassification program" could be successful "if strongly promoted and sufficiently resourced."

Verizon deployed OpenStack network function virtualization (NFV) in five data centers, the carrier said in a news release Monday. The project started in 2015, and additional deployments are underway in other domestic data center and aggregation sites, Verizon said. The carrier plans to deploy NFV internationally over the next several months, and in edge network sites by year end, it said. Verizon partnered with Big Switch Networks, Dell and Red Hat to develop the OpenStack pod-based design. It went from concept to deployment of more than 50 racks in five production data centers in less than nine months. The NFV project is a step toward building Verizon’s next-generation network, said Adam Koeppe, vice president-network technology planning.

The FCC's Connect2Health Task Force plans a May 18 meeting in Houston on how broadband technologies can improve mental healthcare and related policy issues. "Policymakers, industry leaders, health technology innovators, consumer advocates, clinicians, rural health organizations, and others interested in leveraging technology to help address and improve mental health" are invited, a Friday public notice said. Among those slated to attend are FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, University of Houston Law Center Dean Leonard Baynes, former astronaut and CEO of Vesalius Ventures Dr. Bernard Harris, and Francisco Fernandez, dean of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, whose school's efforts will be highlighted. The event is part of the task force's "Beyond the Beltway" outreach initiative. Further details will be posted at the task force's webpage.

Parties supported a temporary waiver of a "first-come, first-served" rule for allocating toll-free numbers, which was sought by Somos (formerly SMS/800) for numbers controlled by its help desk (see 1604060037). Somos wants to restrict "Responsible Organizations" (RespOrgs), which manage toll-free numbers for others, to obtaining 100 numbers per day for a period of five days to prevent some entities from hoarding. In comments filed Thursday in docket 95-155, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions SMS/800 Number Administration Committee said it agreed with Somos that there's "widespread and intense interest" in toll-free 800 numbers, justifying a limited waiver to ensure "a wider and fairer distribution" than "first-come, first-served" allocation. Inteliquent, a new RespOrg, agreed the Somos proposal was the best way to allocate the 96,000 toll-free 800 numbers Somos says it took back from another RespOrg for nonpayment. Inteliquent said when Somos made its last large allocation of 800 numbers -- 23,000 in 2008 -- more than 70% went to just two entities. Also supporting the petition is ATL Communications, another RespOrg, which said it had large backlogs of client requests for 800 numbers that haven't been available in "any significant number" for "many years."

The FCC Technological Advisory Council will meet June 9, starting at 12:30 p.m., the agency said Thursday, in the Commission Meeting Room. “The TAC is helping the Commission to continue the momentum spurred by the National Broadband Plan to maximize the use of broadband to advance national interests and create jobs,” the FCC said in a notice.