Parties will have more time to respond to the FCC further notice on inmate calling, said a Wireline Bureau order (http://fcc.us/19HSoVb). Comments in docket 12-376 will now be due Dec. 20, replies Jan 13. The bureau said it found “good cause” to grant the request by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for a “modest time extension for all parties.” The Ohio DRC had argued the additional time would allow for “a more complete factual and legal record in this proceeding."

More than 30 countries, including the U.K., have enacted resale royalty provisions since 1992, said a Copyright Office report released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1bCreia). “We believe that Congress may want to consider a resale royalty, as well as a number of possible alternative or complementary options for supporting visual artists, within the broader context of industry norms, market practices, and other pertinent data."

EchoStar is no longer pursuing a joint venture with Vivendi’s GVT, EchoStar said in a press release (http://bit.ly/19mP4m6). The partnership had been aimed at launching direct-to-home service in Brazil (CD Nov 14 p23).

Time Warner Cable petitioned to be exempted from municipal-video rate regulation in six California communities. The Media Bureau should find the operator’s systems in Indio, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage and elsewhere face sufficient video competition because of rival services from both U.S. DBS companies and Verizon, said the request posted Thursday in docket 12-1 (http://bit.ly/1kGQV6H). It said the communities had about 90,000 occupied households total as of the 2010 census.

The Council of Governments applauded the FCC order to ensure reliable 911 service in a statement Friday (http://bit.ly/1bCrCNK). COG is a nonprofit association that deals with regional issues affecting the Washington, D.C., area. The FCC voted to approve an order Thursday that requires carriers to file annual audits on how they are following best practices for 911 connections (CD Dec 13 p7). The order was influenced by regional studies documenting “significant loss” of 911 service in northern Virginia during the June 2012 derecho storm, COG said. All phone companies that provide 911 service must now certify annually that they have implemented best practices including audits of their circuits, maintenance of central office backup power and reliable network monitoring systems, it said. The FCC proves the “power of regional collaboration,” said COG Executive Director Chuck Bean. “With this new rule, we are securing our infrastructure in metropolitan Washington,” he said. “The success with the FCC was built on solid analytics but the change happened because we spoke with a regional voice."

The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is “reserving judgment” on the White House’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies report on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, said OTI Policy Director Kevin Bankston. The report is due this weekend, but The Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/JesFgv) and The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1fblhgr) published advance looks at the report Friday. OTI Policy Director Kevin Bankston said in an email statement that the report “recommends some important, common sense reforms, like separating the NSA’s code-making and code-breaking missions to avoid a dangerous conflict of interest, introducing a public advocate into the processes of the secret surveillance court, and establishing some level of privacy rights for people outside the United States.” But the review group “as we feared would be the case ... has urged that the NSA continue with its bulk collection and analysis of American phone records, just with the companies rather than the NSA holding the data,” Bankston said.

While a voluntary agreement on cellphone unlocking (CD Dec 13 p3) is an important step, more work needs to be done, said Gene Sperling, assistant to the president for economic policy, in a blog post (http://1.usa.gov/1fbV69l). “The FCC and carriers are doing their part,” wrote Sperling, who also directs the White House National Economic Council. “Now it is time for Congress to step up and finish the job by passing the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, which was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee this summer, and its companion in the Senate. We know this is an important issue to many of you. The Administration will continue to watch it closely in the coming months.” Sperling noted that last March more than 114,000 signed an electronic petition on the White House’s “We the People” platform in support of mobile phone unlocking. Fletcher Heald lawyer Mitchell Lazarus said in a blog post Friday the agreement only goes so far. “While a definite improvement, CTIA’s action solves only part of the problem,” Lazarus said (http://bit.ly/IUf6lN). “If I buy a subsidized phone from Carrier A, I certainly owe them two years of payments on the phone. But I should be able to keep up just the phone payments, and stop paying Carrier A for service as well, if I want to take the phone to Carrier B for service. CTIA’s position does not allow this. T-Mobile is the only major company so far that properly separates the phone and service payments. We hope the others follow its lead.” The agreement also must be adopted into the “CTIA Consumer Code for Wireless Service” and doesn’t mean that a subscriber will be able to readily use a phone on a second network, he said. “CTIA’s letter points out the technical limitations on ‘unlocking': ‘[U]locking’ a device will not necessarily make a device interoperable with other networks -- a device designed for one network is not made technologically compatible with another network merely by ‘unlocking’ it. Additionally, unlocking a device may enable some functionality of the device but not all (e.g., an unlocked device may support voice services but not data services when activated on a different network)."

British-based AeroMobile, which supplies technology and services to nine global airlines that enable passengers to use their mobile phones in-flight for voice, texting and data, hailed the FCC’s approval of an NPRM seeking comment on modernizing rules to allow mobile wireless calls on commercial flights (CD Dec 13 p1) . “I'm pleased to see that common sense prevailed” at the FCC, AeroMobile CEO Kevin Rogers said in a statement Friday. “There is no reason to maintain a ruling that is no longer relevant -- the technology used to provide inflight GSM services is proven, and has been operational across Europe, Asia and the Middle East for more than five years.” AeroMobile supplies “hundreds of connected flights flying to and from the U.S. every day, but at the moment the service has to be switched off when we reach U.S. airspace,” he said. As proof there’s demand for in-flight calls from U.S. travelers, Rogers said that in November alone, about 25 percent of the passengers using the AeroMobile service on trans-Atlantic flights “connected from U.S. mobile networks.” AeroMobile wants to work with the FCC to demonstrate “the value of the service to both customers and airlines, based on our experience,” Rogers said. “I'm hopeful that sensible discussions can now take place about the practicalities of operating this service in the U.S. Ultimately, it will be up to individual airlines to decide on the right in-flight mobile connectivity package for their passengers, whether this is SMS only or the full service, including voice and data."

Verizon ended test sales of Lowe’s Iris home control system through 118 stores without expanding the trial, Verizon spokeswoman Debra Lewis said. Verizon stores along the East Coast and in Georgia and Alabama carried the Iris safety and security package and comfort and control bundle. Verizon planned to extend the Iris products to other stores if they sold well (CED March 5 p4). Verizon also demoed a home control system from 4Home at CES 2011 but never moved it to stores. “We rotate the products/accessories in our stores all the time, and our new destination stores and updated smart stores will have many home-based products for sale,” Lewis said. Lowe’s officials didn’t comment.

Mediacom urged the FCC to invite interested parties to update the record in the retransmission consent proceeding. The price for retrans keeps rising at extraordinary rates, wrote Mediacom General Counsel Joseph Young in docket 10-71 (http://bit.ly/18H2Rjt). Broadcasters are immune to the price discipline ordinarily imposed by consumers in a truly competitive market, he wrote. Subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors “are the ones who ultimately pay for retransmission consent,” said Young. FCC rules and TV programming owners’ practices “force distributors to offer, and subscribers to buy, programming in bundles over which distributors have little or no control,” he said.