The FCC said Tuesday that comments are due Jan. 17 on an NPRM seeking to require wireless carriers to disclose a list of towers they take out of service during emergencies. Replies are due Feb. 18 (http://bit.ly/1iAjPJS).

Version 4.0 of the Connect America Fund Phase II cost model is available, said the FCC Wireline Bureau in a public notice (http://bit.ly/IsNAfF). Comments are due Jan. 7 in docket 10-90 on whether the bureau should adopt this version of the cost model and its default inputs for purposes of calculating costs in price-cap areas.

Internet Broadcasting Systems signed an agreement with Hubbard Television to provide digital ad operations for its Minnesota TV stations, said the companies in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/18CyHn5). By partnering with IB, Hubbard will be able to grow its digital revenue and provide its sellers with access to a “broad spectrum” of digital ad products to “maximize” its advertisers’ outcomes, said the companies. IB will deliver nearly 30,000 ad campaigns in 2013, it said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is drafting legislation to fight fraudulent robocalls, she said in a press release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/19hFsVY). “While some legitimate questions still exist around the technologies that would help prevent these scams, it’s clear that the industry does not intend to pursue such technologies or other solutions to quickly address the issue of fraudulent robocalls -- a problem that has plagued consumers for years,” she said in a statement. McCaskill has questioned USTelecom and CTIA on technologies that would help solve the problem but expressed disappointment at their responses. She discussed the concerns at a hearing on the issue earlier this year: “In the face of their inadequate approach, I will start drafting legislation to provide regulators with a robust set of tools to fight these fraudsters and start gaining back ground for American consumers against robocallers.” CTIA Vice President-Government Affairs Jot Carpenter shot back in a statement. “We understand Senator McCaskill’s desire to crack down on robocallers, but the assertion that the wireless industry isn’t doing enough to help is simply wrong,” Carpenter said. “The wireless industry has a long history of working with the FCC and FTC to investigate and stop fraudulent robocalls and we stand by our record in this area. As we pointed out both in testimony and our follow-up correspondence, wireless companies and other common carriers are prevented by law from picking and choosing which calls to deliver.” USTelecom is “disappointed” McCaskill has “chosen to ignore the in-depth analysis USTelecom provided her,” Senior Executive Vice President Alan Roth said. “We thoroughly analyzed the issues surrounding proposed technological solutions to the problem of identifying and mitigating illegal robocalls. Our response clearly demonstrated that the services marketed thus far pose various technical, legal, and public policy problems.” Industry is working to solve the problem in various ways, he said.

The FCC Wireless Bureau identified 14 complete applications out of 34 applications to bid in the H block auction next month. Each of the 20 applicants with incomplete applications will receive overnight correspondence “indicating the information that is required to make its applications complete,” the bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1bgTpXd). Corrected applications must be filed by 6 p.m. ET Dec. 18, it said. PCS Partners, Teleguam Holdings and Lynch 3G Communications are among the companies which submitted incomplete applications, it said (http://bit.ly/IOx5Lo). NTelos, Triad 8, Puerto Rico Telephone Co. and others have filed complete applications (http://bit.ly/IsM8d7). With a sufficient number of bidders, the FCC confirmed that the auction will be Jan. 22, said Paul Gallant, a Guggenheim Partners analyst. The commission “is in a position to grant Dish’s request for the flexibility it wants to potentially convert its AWS-4 uplink to downlink spectrum,” he said in a research note. If Dish is granted this request by Dec. 22, then it agreed to bid about $1.6 billion i the auction (CD Nov 13 p5). “By ensuring the H block auction will happen, Dish will (if the FCC approves its waiver) lower its E block transmit power, which is a key step toward making Verizon and AT&T’s A and B blocks of spectrum more usable."

DirecTV invested in digital video developers LiveClips and i.TV, deepening its stake in second-screen applications, DirecTV said. The size of DirecTV’s investment in the two companies wasn’t disclosed. It has already deployed LiveClips for its NFL Sunday Ticket package. LiveClips, which raised $2.15 million from investors earlier this year, delivers real-time sports video clips to Internet-enabled and mobile devices, LiveClips said. Its video technology takes in live feeds from games and delivers searchable clips of every play to mobile devices within 10 seconds of live action, LiveClips said. LiveClips also has provided in-game video highlights for NCAA college football games, the company said. LiveClips received $1.15 million in December 2012 from Advantage Capital Partners and Ironwood Capital Connecticut, supplementing the $1 million investment made in 2011 by Amazing Grace Media, a firm headed by LiveClips CEO Lewis Bakes. I.TV, which developed a TV listings app for Apple’s store, designs and builds second-screen platforms for AOL, Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly and Nintendo. I.TV recently acquired GetGlue, the developer of a second-screen and TV check-in app that has more than 4.5 million registered users and 75 TV network partners, i.TV said. DirecTV’s investment in the two companies gives it “unique capabilities to embed in our products and the ability to influence roadmaps,” Tony Goncalves, DirecTV senior vice president of digital entertainment products, said in a statement. “In turn, these companies gain access” to DirecTV’s technology group and “subscriber scale."

Tennis Channel filed a cert petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s decision on the channel’s carriage complaint against Comcast, Tennis Channel said Wednesday. “The lower court strayed from longstanding federal discrimination law to invent an arbitrary and unfair standard for deciding cable carriage complaints,” said Tennis Channel in a news release. “The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has spoken emphatically and unanimously that Comcast did not discriminate against the Tennis Channel,” said a Comcast spokeswoman in an email. “We are confident that this ruling will continue to be upheld.” The D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC -- which had decided in favor of the Tennis Channel complaint and was the defendant in the D.C. Circuit case -- had failed to show that Comcast unlawfully discriminated against the channel, and said the defendants hadn’t presented evidence to refute Comcast’s contention that the decision not to offer Tennis Channel on a sports tier wasn’t based on financial analysis (CD May 29 p1). Tennis Channel had sought an en banc review of the D.C. Circuit decision, but that request was denied in September. The ruling “misstated and misapplied” discrimination law, and “fundamentally changed” the future standard for discrimination cases, said Covington & Burling attorney Stephen Weiswasser, who represents Tennis Channel, in an interview. “Congress expressly charged the FCC with the responsibility to establish procedures and decide carriage discrimination complaints,” said the Tennis Channel release. “The court’s decision not only failed to recognize where that responsibility lies, but also rewrote a vital portion of Congress’ 1992 Cable Act and federal discrimination law.” Weiswasser said the cert petition also points to cases in the jurisdiction of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals where a different discrimination standard was applied, and argues that this means there is a split between the two circuits. A circuit split would make it more likely for the Supreme Court to get involved, said Fletcher Heald appellate attorney Harry Cole, who isn’t involved with the case. Both Cole and Weiswasser said the odds are long for any one case to be granted cert by the high court. “We think we have an important legal principle involving federal discrimination law and an important point of competition,” said Weiswasser. “But it’s always hard to know what’s going to happen.”

The FCC should allow package bidding in the spectrum incentive auction if it adopts the Competitive Carriers Association’s proposal that the commission use Partial Economic Areas (PEAs) as a geographic licensing area for the auctions, AT&T said Tuesday in a filing (http://bit.ly/1cXfv0H). CCA argued that PEAs would be a beneficial midpoint between smaller Cellular Market Area licenses and larger Economic Area (EA) licenses (CD Nov 29 p17). It’s “all the more imperative” that the FCC allow package bidding if it uses PEAs as its licensing regime because it would “address the even greater exposure risks that would be created by more disaggregated license areas,” AT&T said in its filing. “As AT&T has previously shown, package bidding is necessary, even under an EA licensing regime, to avoid a bid-suppressing exposure problem that is well-recognized both in Commission precedent and in the auction literature. Shrinking the license areas only exacerbates that problem and accentuates the need for package bidding.” If the FCC doesn’t allow package bidding, “a carrier might well get stuck ‘winning’ unwanted licenses because it would have to bid separately for licenses in every geographic area within its footprint,” AT&T said.

"Everything everybody thinks about clean energy is wrong,” and in “the same way that they were wrong about telecom 20 years ago, when I became the FCC chair,” said Reed Hundt, discussing what his new e-book, Zero Hour, says about building so-called clean power. Twenty years ago, many underestimated the impact of the Internet on long distance and other types of phone and telecom service, he said in an interview Wednesday. “All these statements were wrong for the exact same reason that everyone underestimates what will happen with clean energy,” in that Moore’s Law will apply to power generation too and will lower costs, said Hundt. “The power platform is where the knowledge platform was in 1993,” said the e-book (http://amzn.to/1jmDSJO). “From approximately that date, digitization, regulatory reform, and low cost capital changed the platform of all modes of information consumption in less than a decade.” Hundt, an FCC chairman under President Bill Clinton, now is CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital.

The FCC’s pending media ownership proceedings don’t prevent it from intervening in Sinclair’s proposed buy of New Age Media’s TV stations, said the American Cable Association in comments filed Wednesday (bit.ly/1cbE2gy). Sinclair and other companies have argued that ACA and public interest objections to mergers raise issues that should be hashed out in larger rulemakings rather than in individual transactions (CD Oct 28 p15), but ACA said that’s not the case. “It is well established that the Commission may choose to proceed either by adjudication or rulemaking and need not tackle all instances of a problem associated with particular behavior at one time, but may choose to proceed in a deliberative fashion,” said ACA. Sinclair’s proposed deal, which includes sharing agreements with Cunningham Broadcasting in two Florida markets where Sinclair already owns stations, should be considered by the full commission because it raises “novel” issues, ACA said. The lack of “specific findings” allowing contracts that let stations coordinate retransmission consent negotiation “precisely speaks to the novelty of the issue in this transaction,” said ACA. However, ACA said it doesn’t object to sharing arrangements in general. ACA is challenging only portions of the sharing agreements that show “the contemplated posttransaction behavior of the Applicants in colluding in the sale of their retransmission consent,” said ACA. “The Applicants designed the transaction to attempt to cynically observe the letter of the Commission’s rule,” ACA said.