The FCC proposed to change hearing aid compatibility (HAC) rules for both wireline and wireless handsets. The commission in an NPRM released Friday proposed in the wireline arena to: (1) adopt an industry standard developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association that "appears likely" to help people with hearing loss select phones “with sufficient volume control to meet their communication needs and provide greater regulatory certainty for the industry”; and (2) apply the agency’s phone volume control and other HAC requirements “to handsets used for VoIP services, pursuant to the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA).” For wireless, the FCC sought comment on a proposal to set a standard for handset volume control “to ensure more effective acoustic coupling between handsets and hearing aids or cochlear implants.” The commission also proposed to require manufacturers to use exclusively a 2011 wireless standard developed by an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee “to certify future handsets as hearing aid compatible; and eliminate the power-down exception if manufacturers are required to test and rate handsets exclusively" under that standard. Finally, to implement a CVAA provision and simplify the process for achieving handset compliance with HAC requirements, the FCC sought comment “on a process for enabling industry to use new or revised technical standards for assessing hearing aid compatibility compliance, prior to Commission approval of such standards.” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said he supported most of the notice but partially dissented due to concerns that FCC proposals to implement CVAA Section 701(c) on standard setting and HAC compliance “may lead to an overly expansive interpretation of the statute,” permit “inappropriate Commission intervention in the standards process” and allow “excessive delegation to Commission staff.”

While the American Civil Liberties Union disagrees with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to deny a motion for a preliminary injunction (see 1510290070), the group said all Americans should celebrate that bulk collection of call records ends in a few weeks. The injunction would have barred the government from collecting call records under the phone metadata program, required it to quarantine call records already collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and prohibited it from querying metadata obtained through the program using any phone number or other identifier associated with them. It’s now “up to the district court to address to what extent the government must purge the call records it collected unlawfully,” ACLU attorney Alex Abdo, who argued the case, said in an emailed statement to us. “In the meantime, the government still needs to rein in other overreaching NSA spying programs," he said.

An FCC order giving VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers was published in the Federal Register Thursday, triggering a Nov. 30 effective date. The order, which was approved by a 5-0 vote June 18, allows interconnected VoIP providers to obtain phone numbers directly from numbering administrators, rather than going through telco intermediaries (see 1506180060 and 1506220032).

GOP presidential contender Carly Fiorina slammed the FCC’s net neutrality order Wednesday during a debate among Republican candidates. “Government causes a problem, and then government steps in to solve the problem,” said Fiorina, former CEO at Hewlett-Packard and a former AT&T executive. “This is why, fundamentally, we have to take our government back. … Government trying to level the playing field between Internet and brick-and-mortar creates a problem. The FCC jumping in now and saying ‘we’re going to put 400 pages of regulation over the Internet’ is going to create massive problems. But guess who pushed for that regulation? The big Internet companies. This is what’s going on. Big and powerful use big and powerful government to their advantage.”

The FCC and the University of Colorado-Boulder Interdisciplinary Telecom Program will co-sponsor a summit on cybersecurity issues in the communications and public safety sectors Dec. 7, the agency said Tuesday. “The event will feature industry, public safety, academic and government thought leaders in the field of cybersecurity in a series of moderated panels, considering technical, practical, and policy issues related to the cybersecurity threats facing our commercial and public safety networks,” said a notice from the commission. The event will be in Boulder. More details are to follow.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy advocates opposed to encryption back doors reached their goal Tuesday of receiving more than 100,000 signatures needed on their White House petition (see 1510260029). The groups will now receive an official White House response on their petition, which demands secret doors not be incorporated into technology.

A court order issued at the FTC’s request bans Consumer Collection Advocates and Michael Robert Ettus from selling advance fee recovery services and from telemarketing, an FTC news release said Monday. The court order resolves a 2014 FTC complaint that alleged the defendants illegally collected money from consumers, many of them elderly, in fraudulent telemarketing recovery scams, it said. The final order prohibits the defendants from misrepresenting any product or service, collecting payments for any recovery service, selling rights to collect for such service, profiting from customers’ personal information, and failing to properly dispose of customer information, it said. The order also imposes a judgment of more than $2.8 million, it said. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued the final order of permanent injunction Sept. 28 after granting the FTC’s motion for summary judgment Sept. 9. The defendants have appealed the court’s decision, it said.

Incompas joined by the Competitive Carriers Association opposed a USTelecom request joined by ITTA to extend the comment periods in the FCC special access rulemaking. USTelecom and ITTA apparently are trying to simply delay the proceeding, Incompas (formerly Comptel) and CCA said in their opposition Friday in docket 05-25. USTelecom and ITTA had asked that the current comment and reply deadlines of Nov. 20 and Dec. 11 be pushed back to Jan. 19 and Feb. 18. They said some incumbent telco outside counsels hadn't yet been cleared to see massive amounts of confidential industry data collected by the agency, and time was running out to review the data and file comments without an extension (see 1510220069).

Tyco is working with Nest Labs to develop “useful integrations” between Nest products and Tyco’s “expanding smart home product portfolio,” it said Thursday. Tyco has “multiple projects” under development and Nest’s Weave communication protocol will connect “disparate devices in the home,” said Tyco. Tyco’s participation in the Works with Nest program reflects the company’s commitment to the home automation market, it said. Tyco provides security products and interactive services in more than 5 million homes worldwide, it said.

Juniper Research is forecasting consumer spending of $43 billion for smart home devices this year, jumping to $100 billion by 2020. Entertainment services including Netflix and Spotify are enlarging the smart home market on “universal appeal” and low-cost service, Juniper said, but emerging segments including home automation will begin to catch up, driven by falling hardware prices and growing consumer awareness. To date, numerous home automation subscription services, such as AT&T's Digital Life, “have struggled to address the mass-market,” Juniper said. Unit product purchases, rather than systems, are the most likely entry point to the smart home for consumers, Juniper said. It cited Nest and SmartThings as companies that have “successfully added subscription services to their hardware sales in order to generate lifetime value.”