Forty-six percent of U.S. broadband households own a connected health device, blogged Parks Associates Monday. "Eighty percent of U.S. broadband households report at least one health management challenge," said analyst Jennifer Kent. Parks said six in 10 U.S. broadband households are interested in remotely interacting with medical professionals, seeking real-time communication. Forty percent are interested in communicating with medical professionals via phone or online voice chat, a third are interested in online video chat, and a third in communicating via secure email.

Sprint asked the FCC to reconsider its new IP captioned telephone service rate for provider compensation, which was cut from $1.95 per minute to $1.75 July 1 and will drop to $1.58 July 1, 2019 (see Notebook at end of 1806070021). The commission failed to rely on an updated record and fully assess reasonable IP CTS costs in setting "unreasonably low interim rates," said a petition posted in docket 13-24, one of several filings posted Monday and Friday on telecom relay service issues. Sprint urged the FCC to freeze the rate at $1.95 until it resolves fundamental questions. Advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing largely backed a previous Sprint petition to clarify or reconsider an accompanying IP CTS ruling authorizing automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology (see 1807100066). "The Commission is putting the cart before the horse by allowing ASR-based IP CTS services without developing standards and metrics for the provision of IP CTS to ensure that consumers receive robust service from all providers," said the Hearing Loss Association of America, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI) and others. "Grant in significant part" the petition and lay out "the contours of a framework ... as a baseline for evaluating pending applications and others that are submitted," they advised. TDI, the National Association for the Deaf and Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization backed video relay service providers' petition (see 1806210011) for a limited waiver to serve new users or those ported from other providers, while verification is pending through a TRS user registration database, said the groups' filing in docket 10-51. ZVRS, parent of CSDVRS and Purple Communications, petitioned for a retroactive waiver of a requirement to file written notifications "of a change in a call center's location, including the opening, closing, or relocation of any center, at least 30 days prior to any such change."

That Intel celebrated its 50th birthday July 18 is “a big deal in an industry that never stops evolving,” said Robert Swan, chief financial officer and interim CEO, on a Thursday earnings call, the first since Brian Krzanich resigned as CEO last month for violating a “non-fraternization” policy (see 1806210008). Under Krzanich’s watch, Intel “set a course five years ago to transform the company” from a PC-centric microprocessor supplier to a data-centric industry leader, said Swan. “We made investments to enhance and extend our core microprocessor business along with a series of bold bets to compete and win in new markets. Our thesis was that Intel is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the world's insatiable need to process, store and move data.” The results have been a “dramatic” success, said Swan, who publicly thanked Krzanich, because “the investments he made set us on a course for transformation.” Intel's board is “making good progress” in finding Krzanich’s successor, said Swan. “While there is no timetable, the board is working with a sense of urgency, and the identification of candidates, both internal and external, is well underway.” Shares closed 8.6 percent lower Friday at $47.68on investors' fears that Advanced Micro Devices was eating into Intel's leadership share in the lucrative data-center business, despite generally positive Q2 results in that sector for Intel. Revenue in Intel's cloud business, its largest data center segment, grew 41 percent year over year in Q2, as "hyperscale" capital expenditures expanded "to handle the explosive need to transmit, store and analyze data," said Swan on the call.

The Rural Utilities Service seeks comment by Sept. 10 on a $600 million e-Connectivity Pilot program, established in the FY 2018 omnibus spending bill. It will pay for the construction, improvement and acquisition of facilities and equipment for broadband service in eligible communities, says a notice to be in Friday's Federal Register. The program targets communities where at least 90 percent of households don’t have access at least 10 Mbps downstream/1 Mbps upstream. “Applications for eligible rural areas are prohibited from over-building or duplicating broadband expansion efforts made by any entity that has received a broadband loan from" RUS, the agency said. Among questions are “whether affordability of service should be included in evaluating whether an area already has ‘sufficient access’” and “what equates to consumers’ costs being so high that [services] are effectively rendered inaccessible to rural households?”

Unions in former FairPoint territory may strike against new owner Consolidated Communications, said Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers officials. Unions voted Wednesday to authorize a strike if no agreement is reached. Consolidated Communications seeks to reach agreement with CWA and IBEW in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, Consolidated Vice President-Human Resources Ryan Whitlock said in a statement. “We have been negotiating in good faith for months with union leaders in a mutually respectful manner to secure labor agreements that provide flexibility to effectively and efficiently meet our customers’ needs,” Whitlock said. “We are hopeful to negotiate contracts that will allow us to more effectively and efficiently serve our customers, benefit our employees and ensure we are a sustainable and competitive Company.” It has a contingency plan to minimize potential service disruptions, he said. Consolidated “is pursuing subcontracting flexibility to allow for the use of additional labor resources to expedite the repair, maintenance and installation of services for customers” but “has proposed no IBEW-represented employee will be laid off as a result of using subcontracted resources,” Whitlock said. Consolidated “offered to hire additional IBEW represented jobs to assist in overseeing the quality and safety of these resources.” An "overwhelming majority" of the 1,000 workers represented by CWA and IBEW voted to authorize the strike if talks fail on the contract that expires Aug. 4, the unions said in a Wednesday news release. “Despite more than three months of bargaining, we are still far from an agreement that protects consumers and good jobs in our communities,” said IBEW Local 2327 Business Manager Peter McLaughlin. “Management continues to insist on outsourcing work, and we strongly believe that will hurt consumers and the hard-working employees who support, build, and maintain Northern New England’s critical telecommunications infrastructure.”

Comments are due Aug. 23, replies Sept. 7 on text-enabling of toll-free numbers, said an FCC proposed rule in Tuesday's Federal Register. Comments on proposed information collection requirements under the Paperwork Reduction Act are due Sept. 24. Commissioners June 7 unanimously adopted an NPRM and declaratory ruling (here) in docket 18-28 aimed at preventing fraud in toll-free texting (see Notebook at end of 1806070021). An FCC notice in Tuesday's FR seeks PRA comments by Aug. 23 on two proposed extensions of currently approved information collections: one on information used by the agency to select Universal Service Administrative Co. board members and ensure requests for review are properly filed at the commission; another flowing from a 2005 order imposing E-911 requirements on interconnected VoIP providers. Information on location registration, provision of automatic location information, customer notification, records of customer notification and user notification is estimated annually to take a total of 1.5 million hours and cost $253.3 million.

The FCC set pleading cycles on two IP captioned telephone service notices attached to an order and declaratory ruling (here) approved in June (see Notebook at end of 1806070021). Comments are due Sep. 17, replies Oct. 16 on an NPRM, and Oct. 16 and Nov. 15, respectively, on a notice of inquiry, said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau public notice Monday in docket 13-24.

Butterfly announced a portable virtual private network router said to turn a public Wi-Fi hot spot into a secure VPN.

Verizon workers could get wage increases if they OK a tentative agreement between the company and unions, Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers said Thursday. Verizon and the unions reached tentative agreement on a four-year extension to a contract that had been set to expire in August 2019. The deal builds on the unions' pact with the company after 2016’s seven-week strike (see 1605310032), and would provide an 11.2 percent wage increase over the additional four years covering about 34,000 Verizon call center workers, central office employees and field technicians, the unions said. “Since the end of the 2016 strike, we have seen a marked improvement in the relationship between CWA and Verizon,” which is reflected in the agreement, said CWA District 1 Vice President Dennis Trainor. CWA members plan to vote on the pact “in the next few weeks,” the union said. Verizon didn’t comment.

NTIA should collect and release data on broadband availability to anchor institutions such as libraries and schools, commented the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition. Rather than determining only if a community is served, "focus on the quality (speed, latency, jitter, etc.)" of the connection, with "a sliding scale that evaluates whether the quality of the connection is sufficient to accomplish the user’s goal," SHLB said in a filing it released Tuesday. "Anchor institutions typically need between 100 Mbps and multi-gigabit connections." Others suggested ways NTIA could improve broadband data quality and accuracy, after the agency sought comment on how to spend $7.5 million to improve related mapping (see 1807170052).