The FCC proposed $44 million in fines against three Lifeline providers, an agency news release said Wednesday. That brings the total amount of proposed Lifeline fines to $90 million over the past three months. Notices of apparent liability were issued against three companies “that appear to have requested and/or received Lifeline support payments for individual customers who appeared on the companies’ Lifeline subscriber lists more than once,” the release said. Telrite Corp. was fined $22 million, Global Connection more than $11 million (http://bit.ly/J7g2DJ) and Cintex Wireless more than $9 million (http://bit.ly/J7g2DJ). “The carriers knew or should have known, based on their own internal data, that they were not entitled to support for these duplicates under Lifeline program rules,” the agency release said. Telright, a Georgia eligible telecom carrier that does business in nine states, was found by the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) to have improperly sought Lifeline support reimbursement from more than 4,000 “individual intra-company duplicate lines,” said the NAL (http://bit.ly/1fkR8Mu). USAC found that Global, a Georgia ETC servicing 10 states, was seeking reimbursement for more than 2,000 duplicate lines. USAC found Cintex, a Maryland ETC in four states, was seeking reimbursement for more than 1,800 duplicate lines.

"Robust competition” in the communications sector has changed how the FCC should act as a regulatory agency, but it “does not obviate the need for consumer-welfare-focused, economically-informed antitrust oversight where residual monopoly power remains,” wrote officials from the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and others Wednesday to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. They encouraged the FCC to continue to be involved in issues like consumer protection, public safety, spectrum management and universal service, but said market-based approaches to those issues would “lead to better policy outcomes.” The FCC shouldn’t make the Internet a “regulated industry” and should dispense with its net neutrality order in favor of an approach that would “permit new forms of contracting, and to police any abuses after the fact,” the stakeholders said. The commission should also “redouble” its use of market-based approaches to manage spectrum, particularly in the context of the upcoming incentive auction, their letter said (http://bit.ly/1fkSdUn).

The FCC received more than 54,000 complaints in Q2 on violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, showed figures released by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (http://fcc.us/1gq0nhx). That’s down from 66,000 TCPA complaints in Q1. It was by far the highest number of informal complaints tallied by the bureau, and was dominated by complaints about violations of the Do Not Call rules, prerecorded messages and abandoned calls. Next highest was complaints about wireless issues, such as billing and rate issues, and service problems, totaling nearly 6,000 in Q2. That was followed by complaints about radio and TV broadcasting, made up mostly of concerns over the content of programming.

Nearly half of all calls that 911 emergency centers in Oregon received from wireless phones in June didn’t include accurate location information, said the Find Me 911 Coalition in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/18UTCSH). Calls lacking the information has increased from 36.5 percent of all wireless calls in October 2010 to 45.8 percent in June 2013 based on data released by the FCC, said the coalition. Despite FCC regulations requiring accurate location data to be provided for all calls, 46,660 of 101,787 wireless calls received in June lacked accurate Phase II location information, said the coalition. The Oregon data release has similar findings to information on Phase II calls in California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah and North Carolina, and it “points to a growing national problem” in 911 location accuracy, it said. The FCC is scheduled to consider an order on steps to improve the reliability and resiliency of 911 networks nationwide at its Thursday meeting. Carriers have been locked in a fight with the coalition, which they say is funded by technology provider TruePosition and has been spreading bad information to states (CD Nov 19 p1). AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and the Northwest Wireless Association did not immediately comment.

Comcast is adding partners to SEEiT, its platform to connect social conversations and promotion around content to the actual viewership of TV shows, movies and sports, it said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1bw0ujx). The new partners expected to join include ABC Entertainment Group, A+E Networks Group, AMC Networks, Cablevision’s Optimum TV, Charter Communications, Crown Media, Discovery Communications, Fox Networks Group and Time Warner Cable. ABC, Fox, FX Networks, A&E, Discovery, Fox Sports 1, Hallmark Channel, National Geographic Channel and WE tv are among networks expected to join NBC, NBC Sports Network, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, SyFy, Bravo, Oxygen, E!, Esquire Network and Golf Channel in promoting content via SEEiT. SEEiT will enable subscribers of Time Warner Cable, Charter and Cablevision’s Optimum to tune into live TV or start an on-demand show on their set-top box, watch shows online or on their mobile devices through participating partners and set their DVRs, said Comcast. SEEiT is developed and operated by Comcast and launched by Twitter, said Comcast. It started as a “preview” on Nov. 22 on SyFy shows Haven and Naked Vegas, and it has now expanded to additional NBCUniversal programs, said Comcast.

Samsung licensed the Reference Design Kit (RDK) from RDK Management to accelerate the set-top box and gateway device development cycle, said the companies in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1d8nIPb). RDK is a pre-integrated software to provide a common framework for powering IP or hybrid set-top box and gateway devices, and is licensed for consumer electronics manufacturers, system-on-a-chip vendors, other software developers, system integrators and TV service providers, they said. The RDK was developed to accelerate the deployment of next-generation video services and to prevent software fragmentation by providing speed-to-market collaboration and standardization, said the companies. RDK Management was formed in a joint venture between Comcast Cable and Time Warner Cable to administer the RDK, they said.

Global Eagle Entertainment and Southwest Airlines began a messaging service designed to work in all stages of flight. It allows passengers with Apple devices operating on iOS 5 or later “to iMessage gate-to-gate for the introductory price of $2 per day,” said Global Eagle in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1f7DnQk). On-board, customers can access the service while their device is in airplane mode, it said. For customers that prefer to do more than text, Wi-Fi is still available for $8 all day per device, “and texting is included in that price automatically,” said Global Eagle, owner of inflight broadband connectivity and entertainment company Row 44. “Android-friendly messaging apps will be added early in 2014,” the release said.

Google’s YouTube will gross $5.6 billion in global ad revenue in 2013, netting $1.96 billion, estimated digital marketing researcher eMarketer Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1f6YSB4). YouTube will have a 1.7 percent share of all global ad revenue, which includes non-video related ads, and a 21 percent share of the U.S. video ad market, worth $4.15 billion overall, it said. YouTube’s net revenue will be up 66 percent from 2012, it said. YouTube’s global ad revenue share will be larger than that of Twitter, AOL, Amazon, Pandora and LinkedIn, it said.

Comments on a petition for rulemaking from the Alabama Educational Television Commission to change the channel of WBIQ Birmingham are due Jan. 10. Replies are due Jan. 27, the FCC Media Bureau said in a Federal Register notice Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/18V8BvJ). AETC seeks a waiver of the FCC’s freeze on filing petitions by TV stations seeking a channel substitution (CD Nov 7 p16). AETC, licensed to Channel 39, wants to return to its previously allotted Channel 10.

Broadcasters’ legal attacks against Aereo are “the first battleground” for “control of the cloud,” said CEO Chet Kanojia at a Computer & Communications Industry Association’s event Tuesday. The Cablevision decision -- which established the legal precedent behind Aereo’s arguments that it doesn’t need broadcasters’ permission to stream their content -- also created the legal window for cloud computing services like Google Drive, said Kanojia. Broadcaster repudiations of Cablevision in their arguments against Aereo are an attack on the “commonsense” principle that consumers who buy information and content still own it when it’s stored in the cloud, he said. Kanojia said consumers are entitled to view their broadcast content streaming over the Internet if they choose. “The things I buy belong to me,” said Kanojia. He said the idea for Aereo was born out of one of his previous companies, which gathered information from customer’s cable boxes. Kanojia said he noticed that though customers paid to receive hundreds of channels, they typically only watched the same eight or 10. That showed “an imbalance between value and price,” and led to Aereo being created to address that imbalance, he said. “Bringing choice to the marketplace is absolutely critical for moving the marketplace forward.”