Prometheus Radio Project urged the FCC to delay opening an FM translator filing window for AM stations until all LPFM applications have been resolved. Limited signal coverage remains a significant threat to the success of the low-power FM service, said the LPFM advocate in an ex parte filing in docket 99-25 (http://bit.ly/1kDklm5). Raising the maximum effective radiated power from 100 watts to 250 watts for LPFMs and holding an FM translator window exclusively for LPFM licensees “would significantly unburden LPFM stations while remaining faithful to the word and intention of the Local Community Radio Act,” it said. The filing recounted meetings with Peter Doyle, Media Bureau Audio Division chief, and staff from the offices of commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel.

The Mobile App Security Working Group, a nonprofit association of mobility, security and enterprise stakeholders, formed to “simplify and accelerate the deployment of secure mobile apps in all kinds of environments, on all kinds of devices,” said smart device security firm Mocana Thursday. That company, McAfee, FireEye, SAP and Wind River are among the group’s charter members. “It is absolutely necessary for the industry to come together and establish a strong common foundation for mobile app security,” said Chenxi Wang, McAfee vice president-market intelligence, in a Mocana news release. The group hopes to begin its work by creating a set of “common metrics that enterprise users and IT administrators can employ to compare the security postures of different mobile apps, independent of platform, developer or security vendor,” Mocana said.

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.

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.

Almost 90 percent of participants in a Commtouch webinar said their organizations had an IP address appear on a blacklist during the past 12 months, said the Internet security technology provider. The Dec. 4 poll, conducted during the webinar, found that outbound spam was the most common reason an IP address ended up on a blacklist. Blacklisting can have a significant business impact, up to and including damage to a business’s reputation, Commtouch said. Nearly half of the respondents said their organization’s operations department was able to get an IP address removed from a blacklist through phone calls and emails, while another 38 percent said they “make it up as we go along.” Another 13 percent use automated processes to request removal from a blacklist, Commtouch said (http://bit.ly/1iZIvvO).

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.”

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.

The “the unacceptable number of senior level vacancies” currently within the Department of Homeland Security are a “serious threat” to the department’s ability to complete its mission on issues that include cybersecurity, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told the House Homeland Security Committee Thursday. More than 40 percent of DHS’s senior leadership positions are vacant or are being filled by a temporary replacement. Nominees for some positions, including Homeland Security Secretary nominee Jeh Johnson, await confirmation in the Senate. The Senate could vote on Johnson’s nomination this week. Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said during the hearing that these vacancies “have a negative impact on mission effectiveness and employee morale.” The Government Accountability Office has found that morale is low across the agency’s departments. Morale within the National Protection and Programs Directorate, which leads DHS’s cybersecurity efforts, scored below the government-wide average, said David Maurer, GAO director-Homeland Security and Justice Issues. Ridge said the White House needs to “better anticipate” vacancies within DHS and vet possible candidates in a “thorough but timely manner,” while the Senate needs to consider nominees “in a timely manner” and not use the confirmation process for “political gamesmanship.” The hearing was a day after McCaul and committee ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., introduced the National Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (HR-3696), which would codify DHS’s existing collaboration efforts with the private sector, including information sharing regarding cyberthreats, but would not give the agency new powers. House Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Pat Meehan, R-Pa., and subcommittee ranking member Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., were original cosponsors of the bill (http://1.usa.gov/1gthI9g).

Britain’s communications sector compares favorably with that of 16 other nations around the world, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) said in its 2012 international communications report (http://xrl.us/bqaaxs). The study benchmarks the U.K. communications sector against other countries to see how it’s doing -- France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. The survey found that the sector’s total global revenue, including telecom, TV, radio and post, was around $2 trillion last year, up 2.5 percent from 2011, it said. TV subscriptions generated the biggest and fastest-growing proportion of the total revenue, it said. Fixed-line connections continued to fall, but were most resilient in the U.K., where many customers still get broadband services over fixed lines, it said. Mobile takeup continued to exceed population size in all the countries surveyed except China, it said. Excluding Japan, which has a very high takeup of advanced feature phones not readily available in other countries, the U.S. was the only one to report a smartphone adoption level of less than 50 percent in Ofcom’s online survey, it said. People in the U.K. are most likely to trust online retailers than those in the other countries, it said. In the TV and audiovisual area, Brazil, Russia, India and China continued to have the largest annual growth, it said. The U.K. leads the way in digital conversion and was one of only three countries to have 100 percent of all main TV sets switched to digital in 2012, it said. U.K. consumers are embracing value-added services, with HDTV and digital video recording penetration the highest among the European nations included in the research, Ofcom said. British consumers are more likely to watch catch-up TV on smart TVs, mobile phones and tablets, but scheduled linear TV is also still popular, with Britons watching four hours per day, the regulator said. Other findings included: (1) U.K. residents are the most frequent online shoppers and the most likely to access TV content over the Internet. (2) Social networks are still among the most searched-for terms on the Internet, with Facebook the most searched-for term for 14 of the 17 comparison countries. (3) Mobile Internet users in the U.S. and U.K. are the most active social networkers. (4) Radio revenue was up for the third consecutive year in the 17 countries analyzed. (5) The U.K. had the second-lowest proportion of total telecom revenue generated by data services in 2012, with Japan leading the way.

The White House must issue an official response to a petition asking for stronger email privacy protections, after the petition hit the necessary 100,000 signatures needed by Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1avKNbR). Digital 4th, an industry and advocacy coalition, filed the petition, attempting to restart debate over updating the 27-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CD Nov 14 p19). The group was formed in March to advocate for an ECPA modernization bill from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, which would protect electronic communications collected and maintained by third-party service providers (CD March 20 p10). The bill never made it out of committee. “Several bills in Congress would fix this by updating ECPA to require a warrant, but regulatory bodies are blocking reform in order to gain new powers of warrantless access,” said the petition. “We call on the Obama Administration to support ECPA reform and to reject any special rules that would force online service providers to disclose our email without a warrant."