President Barack Obama signed the E-Warranty Act (S-1359) into law Thursday. “To remain competitive in the era of the Internet of Things, we must be able to streamline and modernize redundant regulations,” said Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., the bill's author, in a statement Friday. “The E-Warranty Act is a bipartisan success because it brings common-sense solutions to outdated rules.” She had introduced the legislation with Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla. “Consumers and businesses will now have the ability to take advantage of new and improving online technologies to help with their commerce,” Nelson said in a statement Friday.

Free market tech advocacy group Lincoln Labs approves of the direction of Jeb Bush’s regulatory proposals, which would include rolling back the FCC net neutrality order if elected president (see 1509220058). Bush is seeking the GOP presidential nomination and is a former Florida governor. “We believe that if we can reduce the number of out-of-date and harmful rules, we can unleash this country's entrepreneurial spirit and kick start economic growth,” said Lincoln Labs Chief Technology Officer Chris Abrams in a statement Wednesday. “Each candidate should weigh in regarding their ideas for reducing the regulatory burdens faced by entrepreneurs, including reforms to the broken patent and copyright systems." Lincoln Labs highlighted Bush’s broader desires for regulatory overhaul, including limited deference to agencies on rulemaking and congressional approval of major regulations.

The FCC Disability Advisory Committee will meet Oct. 8, starting at 9 a.m., in the Commission Meeting Room, said a notice in the Federal Register. The DAC is expected to take up a recommendation from its Communications Subcommittee on ways to address the needs of people with disabilities in new and emerging technologies and a report on the activities of its Emergency Communications Subcommittee, among other business, the FCC said Wednesday.

The FCC Wireline Bureau denied a motion to extend the reply deadline in its Lifeline USF rulemaking, leaving the date at Sept. 30. In an order issued Wednesday in docket 11-42, the bureau noted it had already granted one extension and said a further extension was "not warranted under the present circumstances." The extension was requested by the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and other consumer groups (see 150918005).

AT&T representatives explained the importance of a waiver the carrier is seeking of an FCC requirement that it support text telephony (TTY) “during the pendency of the real-time text (RTT) rulemaking and until RTT is fully deployed.” The discussion came in a meeting with Amy Bender, aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. Limitations in the operation of TTY “may impair or altogether prevent TTY message delivery over Wi-Fi networks,” AT&T said in a filing in docket 15-178. TTY is the technology historically used by the deaf and hard of hearing, but it is expected to be phased out in favor of RTT (see 1508250063). “Instead of retrofitting TTY for next-generation networks and services, AT&T plans to surmount these accessibility challenges by deploying RTT,” it said. Until RTT is fully deployed, AT&T faces a dilemma, the carrier said. It can either “not offer Wi-Fi calling and other new VoIP services, which would put AT&T at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis other wireless providers that are currently offering W[i]-Fi-calling, or seek a waiver of Commission rules requiring the provision of TTY,” AT&T said.

The recommendations on deployment from the White House’s Broadband Opportunity Council, released Monday (see 1509210053), send “a clear and vital message: access to broadband means access to opportunity,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement Tuesday. “The FCC remains committed to working with government and private-sector partners to harness the power of broadband to grow our economy and improve the lives of American people.” TechFreedom lashed out at parts of the report. The document “stops short of saying what should be uncontroversial: Federal money shouldn’t fund government-owned broadband networks before the Dig Once approach has been tried,” President Berin Szoka said Tuesday. “Letting private providers bid to lease Dig Once conduits and deploy their own networks gives private companies an opportunity to upgrade their networks -- or deploy new ones, as Google Fiber has started doing. If no private providers come forward, state and local governments can still deploy their own networks in that conduit. But at least they won’t have wasted taxpayer dollars building networks that private capital would have paid for.” PCIA lauded elements of the report, such as its focus on creation of “an online inventory of data on Federal assets, and maintain the points of contact tasked with overseeing broadband build-out.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is scheduled to speak at a "Presidential Series" breakfast Friday sponsored by the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) and CEA. The event begins 7 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Virginia. Walker scheduled a 6 p.m. EDT news conference Monday, where he was expected to announce his withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination. NVTC representatives didn't comment Monday on how Walker's withdrawal might affect Friday's event.

The FCC Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Point Architecture will take up a final report from its working group on optimal resource allocation at a meeting next week at commission headquarters. The meeting starts at 1 p.m. Sept. 29, the FCC said.

Neustar asked a federal court to overturn an FCC order giving Telcordia conditional rights to be the next local number portability administrator (LNPA). In a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit filed Monday, Neustar argued that the commission violated the Administrative Procedure Act "by failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking." The agency's review of competing proposals was "arbitrary and capricious" and its selection of Telcordia was based on a cost assessment that contained "an unsupported and erroneous assumption about transition costs," said Neustar, the current LNPA. Neustar also said the FCC "provided no reasoned explanation for refusing to consider" its best offer. The case is Neustar v. FCC, No. 15-1080.

Video relay service users will be able to communicate directly with each other starting in May because of accessible communications for everyone (ACE) software, said an ITU blog post Thursday by Peter Hayes, CEO of VTCSecure, a tech company focused on serving those with disabilities. Hayes said the open-source software addresses the lack of robust interoperability that the FCC identified as a major problem for deaf and hard-of-hearing users of VRS and other telecom relay services. "Reaching VRS and [TRS] services using their existing mobile phones (Android and iOS) and computers (Windows and Mac OSX), users will be able to engage in simultaneous real-time video, text and voice communications," he said, noting ACE uses ITU and Internet Engineering Task Force standards. "The FCC has committed to updating code to operate with newly released operating systems, meaning that developers around the world will be able to design reliable communications applications based on ACE that will work with widely available consumer devices, now and in the future. This solution could mean global relay services for all, and is already linked with Sweden, France and other European countries." Because ACE is open source, it can be modified for those with other disabilities, Hayes said: "The possibilities are endless. One modification already in the works is Video Remote Assistance (VRA) which is designed to assist blind individuals. It sends real-time video to the next available visual interpreter in a call center who then tells the blind user what the phone’s camera is seeing. This allows a blind user to get help reading documents or navigating inside a new building."