There are nearly 262 million Internet connections over 200 kbps in the U.S., the FCC said Tuesday in its report on Internet access services (http://fcc.us/1gUSFfx). The report is based on Form 477 data submitted by ISPs, and includes data collected through 2012. At year-end 2012, there were almost 65 million fixed and 64 million mobile connections with speeds of at least 3 Mbps down/768 kbps up, the report said. That’s more than a 100 percent increase for mobile connections over the past year, it said. “Growth is particularly high in mobile Internet subscriptions,” the FCC said.

The Vermont Department of Public Service asked the FCC for a permanent waiver of Lifeline certification rules. The filing described how Vermont’s certification process works, and the department believes that process “meets the requirement of special circumstances that provide a proper basis for the granting of the permanent waiver,” it said (http://bit.ly/1hCj7rT). “The waiver will allow uninterrupted continuation of the current process in Vermont, which has demonstrated over a number of years to be successful in providing this valuable telephone service to eligible subscribers, while eliminating fraud and duplication of service, and also allowing Vermont subscribers to benefit from the state add-on program."

Opposing disclosure of “highly confidential information” to agents of Comcast/NBCUniversal about online video distributor (OVD) peer programming contracts, Disney executives on its and ESPN’s behalf also lobbied an aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on ensuring there’s sufficient wireless mic spectrum. Exchanging such highly confidential information as OVD contracts when an OVD invokes a benchmark condition in the FCC order letting Comcast buy control of NBCUniversal is “discouraged and prevented by competition and antitrust law,” said a Disney ex parte filing posted Monday to docket 10-56 (http://bit.ly/K07tLD). It noted an agency proceeding on a stay related to the deal condition, a delay which Disney and other content providers have backed (CD Dec 23 p16). The commission should ensure there’s sufficient spectrum for wireless mics after the incentive auction repacking, Disney said four executives also told Rosenworcel’s aide Dec. 18.

Members of the GPS community again said the FCC shouldn’t permit the operations proposed in LightSquared’s request to use its spectrum for a terrestrial network until technical interference concerns have been resolved. The concerns should be resolved in “transparent, public notice and comment rulemaking proceedings,” like the process involving Dish Network’s AWS-4 spectrum, the GPS Innovation Alliance said in an ex parte filing in docket 11-109 (http://bit.ly/1cPXT5e). The filing recounted a meeting last week with members of the Wireless Bureau and the Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis, it said.

There’s optimism multichannel video programming distributors will embark on a third stage of reducing power consumption by set-top boxes after an expanded voluntary agreement (VA) among MVPDs that now includes energy efficiency advocates ends Dec. 31, 2017, said two advocates. They said in interviews that they have some hope that a Tier 3 for further reductions in set-top energy, following the Tier 2 in the new voluntary agreement disclosed Monday (CD Dec 24 p1), could come to fruition, though they said further VA expansion would be a long way off. Jennifer Thorne Amann, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy buildings program director, is “guardedly optimistic” for a Tier 3, she said. “We've laid the basis for a relationship where we hopefully can get there,” and now she wants to see how the industry does with the new commitments, she said. “We'll be able to keep working with them to make continued progress,” because advocates are joining the steering committee overseeing the energy savings, said Amann. “It looked like a good opportunity for us certainly to capture a larger amount of savings” for set-tops than would have occurred absent the pact and waiting for the Department of Energy’s rulemaking process, she said. DOE said Monday it’s ending that process. The Environmental Protection Agency, which has targeted version 4 Energy Star specifications for set-top boxes, had no comment Tuesday on the amended VA. “Industry was very willing to work with us to make sure we had a seat at the table” and to make continued improvements, said Amann. Any Tier 3 could start Jan. 1, 2018, said Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz. Information on set-top boxes’ energy use had been in the public domain, and with the deal “now, through other forums, the information will be more readily available,” said Vice President Evan Groat of Arris, which is part of the VA. “If consumers are interested, it’s something they can look at.” At Cisco in recent years, it has “become clear that we can do better when it comes to reducing set-top-box energy consumption,” wrote Vice President Joe Chow, who runs the company’s Connected Devices unit, on the blog of the participating VA company Monday (http://bit.ly/19e9IV9). He said the amended VA is a win for saving consumers money, protecting the environment and providing “regulatory certainty for manufacturers and providers alike.”

Verizon Wireless federal regulatory executives touted during a meeting with FCC staff Wednesday the carrier’s improvement in delivering timely location information for public safety answering points. The executives told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and staff from the Public Safety Bureau that the carrier is “part of the solution” and was taking steps to continue improving the location information it sends to PSAPs, Verizon Wireless said in a filing. Those steps include making caller location information available within an average of 12-15 seconds, and within 25 seconds for 99 percent of all 911 calls where info is available. Verizon Wireless said it’s also working with E911 vendors to improve chipset sensitivity to GPS signals and working on enhancements to its A-GPS location accuracy solution for voice over LTE. Verizon Wireless also “remains on track” to make text-to-911 available to PSAPs by a voluntary May 15 deadline. The carrier will offer PSAPs three text-to-911 options, including two that are already available. The third option will be ready in Q1, Verizon Wireless said. Each of the options will include bounceback message capability (http://bit.ly/1lamshL).

Meredith Corp. signed a definitive agreement to buy the broadcast assets of TV stations in Phoenix and St. Louis from Gannett and Sander Media. Gannett also completed its acquisition of Belo. The agreement with Meredith stems from a Department of Justice consent decree, which required Gannett to divest a St. Louis station to get approval for its Belo acquisition (CD Dec 17 p6). The stations -- KTVK Phoenix, KASW Phoenix, and KMOV St. Louis -- will be sold for $407.5 million, Meredith said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1hzeX3R). “At the closing, Meredith will simultaneously convey KASW-TV to Sagamore Hill of Phoenix, LLC, which, through its affiliates, owns and operates two television stations in two markets,” Gannett said in a separate press release (http://ganne.tt/1c2USgP). The purchase of Belo “nearly doubles Gannett’s broadcast portfolio and creates the largest independent station group of major network affiliates in the top 25 markets,” it said (http://bit.ly/1cNF4zr).

Two mid-size cable operators are integrating Wi-Fi hotspots, part of a nationwide effort by several operators to provide connections in regions served by their systems to broadband subscribers of any participating company. (See separate report above in this issue.) Most broadband subscribers of Bright House Networks and Cox Communications “can now enjoy even more access to CableWiFi, the nation’s largest WiFi network,” said the operators in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1cstWgA). It said “the new hotspots are strategically located to serve areas where customers are most likely to benefit from Internet access” out of their households, with thousands of hotspots in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and other markets.

Sony agreed to sell Gracenote to Tribune Co., ending a five-year effort to broadly deploy the music database service and position its automatic content recognition (ACR) software as part of a proposed Internet-based alternative to cable TV. Sony also had planned to use Gracenote to “enhance and accelerate” its digital content. The agreement is for $170 million, less than the $260 million Sony paid for Gracenote in 2008. The Gracenote sale will result in a gain of about $60 million to Sony’s operating income, Sony said. The Gracenote deal is expected to close in Q1, Tribune said. ACR software was designed to enable hardware to recognize the channel, program and advertisement that was playing on a screen. It was developed around an audio technology that was originally created to compare a song’s characteristics, or waveform “fingerprints,” with an archive of music fingerprints. Gracenote also developed the eyeQ interactive program guide (IPG), which it once positioned to compete with Rovi’s TotalGuide IPG. The eyeQ could well play into Tribune’s base of TV and movie metadata, which will be expanded with the addition of Gracenote’s base of 180 million music tracks. “This transaction extends and complements” Tribune’s metadata business while also “deepening” its “slate of subscription services,” said Tribune CEO Peter Liguori in a statement. The acquisition includes Gracenote’s portfolio of 90 patents as well as a business that provides data and information on 1 million TV programs and movies to 30 countries and is installed in 50 million vehicles. Gracenote counts Apple iTunes, MTV and Amazon among its customers.

The Senate Commerce Committee sent S.Res. 157 to the full Senate Thursday. The bill, which the committee cleared in late July, would express the sense of the Senate that phone service must be improved in rural areas and that no entity may unreasonably discriminate against users in those areas. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who introduced S.Res. 157 with Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., has expressed concerns that call completion issues persist despite FCC action (CD July 31 p1).