Industry welcomed two video proposals introduced in the House Thursday, both expected. House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., introduced the Video Consumers Have Options In Choosing Entertainment Act, to address retransmission blackouts, with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. And Reps. Steve Scalise, R-La., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo., introduced the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act. American Cable Association President Matthew Polka released a statement saying the Eshoo bill “will provide relief to consumers harmed by outdated retransmission consent rules that broadcasters’ [sic] relentlessly abuse, highlighted by a record number of TV signal blackouts and escalating price demands well in excess of inflation.” Public Knowledge praised Eshoo’s bill because it “puts forward a number of creative ideas that, if implemented, would move the video marketplace in a good direction,” Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer said in a statement. “Under the provisions of this bill, not only would viewers be protected from the effects of corporate contract disputes that black out channels from their TV lineups, but they would get more choice in what channels they subscribe to, and could see their monthly fees go down.” The Western Telecommunications Alliance also welcomed Eshoo’s bill, in a statement citing the high video programming prices rural video distributors face. The American Television Alliance, Dish and CenturyLink praised both bills. “While the bills reflect different approaches to reform, they show the ever-growing bipartisan support for immediate action to fix retransmission consent,” ATVA said. CenturyLink supports the efforts of all members behind the bills “to reform the 1992 Cable Act and to make sure consumers aren’t caught in the middle of video retransmission consent disputes,” it said. Dish Deputy General Counsel Jeff Blum pointed to different virtues of the bills, in his statements. The Scalise bill “recognizes that the video laws passed in 1992 no longer reflect the marketplace and are in dire need of reform,” he said. The Eshoo bill “proposes concrete legislative ideas to give consumers greater choice over their programming, tackles the growing problem of bundling of cable channels with network channels, and empowers the FCC with significant authority to curtail blackouts."

Spectrum is the “central issue” for smart automotive technologies, said Leo McCloskey, Intelligent Transportation Society of America senior vice president. “If you look at the progress of technology from where we are today to where we want to be, I think everyone in the room would put a show of hands up that if they could go and in jump in a vehicle that was driven by a robot and safely get to their destination, they'd gladly not drive the car, especially in D.C.,” he said at a Politico event. ITS America has raised concerns about an FCC proposal to use the 5850-5925 MHz band, already allocated for a Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) backbone, for Wi-Fi on a secondary basis (CD Jan 16 p1). “If the spectrum should disappear in such a way that precludes us, or hampers us in getting to autonomous transportation, which requires a lot of connectivity … we're being shortsighted,” McCloskey said Thursday. But Information Technology & Innovation Foundation President Rob Atkinson said that when the DSRC spectrum was allocated by the FCC in 1999, the world was a very different place. “The world back then was people got slices of spectrum for single purpose uses,” he said. But today spectrum is viewed as “a generalized pool and you get specialization in the application,” he said. “When you think about most interesting applications, they are going to run on the LTE platform or sharing that with some kind of Wi-Fi platform.”

Carriers that have already adopted IP technology, but that will continue to be required to interconnect with others that are still transitioning, should not “be penalized” by being “forced to bear excessive interconnect costs” to connect to TDM circuits, YMax told the FCC (http://bit.ly/1byJLvV). It’s “crucial” the commission “continue to regulate inter-carrier interconnection terms,” and work with states to ensure disputes can be arbitrated quickly, the VoIP provider said in a letter to the commission.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on a proposal to license TV incentive auction spectrum in smaller blocks than Economic Area licenses, which was proposed by the Competitive Carriers Association. CCA proposed use of Partial Economic Area licenses, bigger than Cellular Market Area licenses, but smaller than EAs. “Although a number of commenters support the Commission’s proposal to license the 600 MHz band on an EA basis, some commenters argue that EA licenses are too large for small and rural operators to obtain at auction or deploy,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/IRKmC0). “Larger carriers express concern that it is more difficult to acquire a national or regional footprint using smaller geographic area licenses.” There are 734 U.S. CMAs, with much smaller geographic areas than the 176 EAs. Comments are due Jan. 9, replies Jan. 23.

JetBlue launched in-flight high-speed Internet service using ViaSat’s Ka-band connectivity. During the beta period rollout of the service, Fly-Fi, JetBlue will offer free basic Web browsing onboard Fly-Fi equipped aircraft through June, the airline said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18FSAXR). The satellite system includes a LiveTV portal, aircraft Wi-Fi system and integration for JetBlue, ViaSat said in a press release. It’s capable of delivering 12 Mbps or more to each connected passenger, ViaSat said. The satellite-based system also can operate on the ground, it said.

The sixth Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellite from Boeing was delivered on orbit for the U.S. Air Force, Boeing said in a press release (http://bit.ly/JaOo8Y). Australia’s funding of the satellite provided the Australian Defence Force with immediate access to the WGS network, Boeing said. “Four additional WGS satellites are in production in El Segundo, Calif., under the program’s Block II follow-on contract.”

Broadband customer premise equipment (CPE) shipments are expected to surpass 147 million at the end of 2013, said ABI Research Thursday (http://bit.ly/1hP9tVi). CPE shipments are expected to grow to 150 million in 2014, said the industry research firm. These devices include modems, wired routers and gateways, it said. In 2014, DOCSIS 3.0 CPE devices will account for more than 89 percent of cable CPE shipments at 50 million, but total DSL CPE shipments are likely to be around 2 percent lower than total shipments in 2012 due to slower subscriber net additions in DSL broadband service, said ABI. Higher speed VDSL shipments are growing stronger, and ABI said it expects these shipments to account for more than 25 percent of DSL CPE device shipments in 2014. ZTE topped the broadband CPE shipments list in Q3 with a 13 percent market share, said ABI. Arris jumped to second place in the market share after acquiring from Google Motorola’s Home Division in April, and combined shipments of Arris and Motorola now represent 12 percent of the market compared to Huawei’s 11 percent market share, said ABI.

EU law requiring storage of e-communications traffic data seriously interferes with citizens’ fundamental right to privacy and should be suspended until it’s fixed, said European Court of Justice (ECJ) Advocate General (AG) Pedro Cruz Villalón Thursday in an opinion (http://bit.ly/18nKR2G). The ECJ isn’t bound by its advisors’ opinions but generally follows them. The case involves challenges in Ireland and Austria to those countries’ versions of the EU data retention directive, which their respective high courts referred to the ECJ. Taken as whole, the measure is incompatible with the requirement in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights that any limitation on the exercise of such a right must be provided for by law, the AG said. Use of retained data could make it possible to create a faithful map of much of a person’s conduct or even a complete picture of his private identity, and it could also increase the risk that the data may be used for unlawful purposes, he said. The directive doesn’t require that the data be retained in the territory of an EU country, so it could be held anywhere in cyberspace, he said. Given its serious impact on privacy rights, the legislation should have defined the fundamental principles on which access to the data collected and held would be based, instead of leaving that task to each individual country, he said. Another problem is that the law requires EU members to ensure that data is kept for up to two years when evidence showed here’s insufficient justification for such a long period, the AG said. Instead of advising the ECJ to strike down the law, however, he recommended that it be suspended until the EU remedies the problems. Digital Rights Ireland (DRI), which brought one of the challenges, said it’s happy with the opinion but would have preferred that the AG find the directive unlawful in principle, which he didn’t do, Chairman TJ McIntyre told us. If the ECJ upholds the opinion, it will strike down the directive, he said. The AG wants governments to have a grace period in which to change their laws, but DRI hopes that, given the political climate surrounding former U.S. NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations, there’s enough political opposition to data retention for the law to die, he said. When DRI launched its challenge seven years ago data storage wasn’t a big issue, but the political scene is different now, he said.

The EU and media industry launched a pilot to enable more use of digital content, they said Thursday. The Rights Data Integration (RDI) project will implement work by the Linked Content Coalition on a technical framework to help copyright owners and users manage and trade rights for all kinds of usage of all types of content and protected works in all media, they said. That will move the content industry closer to figuring out how to assert ownership and communicate copyright terms and conditions in the digital arena in a way machines and people can understand, they said. RDI is an early pilot for the “copyright hub” strategy under development in the U.K. and under consideration in Europe and the U.S., they said. It will use a “hub and spoke” architecture that lets users find and access information from rightsholders via a central transformation hub, they said. The hub will transform the data into a common format and then into a format accepted by exchanges that provide the interface for users, they said. RDI doesn’t directly affect copyright laws and agreements but makes it possible to process the results of those contracts in a more highly automatable way, they said. The project will run for 27 months, they said. Media participants include Elsevier, Getty Images and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations.

Raytheon completed the integration of its second Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), which will fly on the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) spacecraft from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “The integrated sensor is now entering testing, on track for delivery in 2015,” Raytheon said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18G7RrK). The second VIIRS is scheduled to launch on board the JPSS-1 satellite mission in 2017, Raytheon said.