The FCC should “act expeditiously” to clarify the current state of the CableCARD and encoding rules in the wake of January’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s EchoStar decision, said TiVo in an ex parte filing at the commission Monday (http://bit.ly/1hedmmx). CableCARD requirements need to be restored or clarified “to provide consumers and retail manufacturers with certainty that navigation devices purchased at retail will continue to receive cable signals,” said TiVo. The commission should also pursue a new video standard to succeed CableCARDs, but the current system “must remain in place until a successor standard is in place,” TiVo said. The AllVid Tech Company Alliance also backed a new standard (http://bit.ly/IfJY0w). “A successor common interface is necessary to move forward from the cable-only CableCARD interface, which operators are moving away from, toward IP-based interfaces that save bandwidth and better mesh with home and online networks,” said a filing from the group which has included Best Buy, Google, Sony and TiVo. A move to a new standard would prevent consumers from being limited to renting multichannel video programming distributor devices “with little control or innovation in how they view MVPD video programming and services,” said the filing. It said the commission should issue an NPRM on a successor to CableCARD. The future of CableCARDs hangs in the balance post-EchoStar at the FCC and as lobbyists jockey over a bill to junk the ban on integrating security and navigation in set-top boxes (CD Nov 26 p4).

The FCC should create a new regulatory fee category for multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), said the American Cable Association in an ex parte filing Friday (http://bit.ly/1blRLWQ). That “would address the current inequity of cable and non-cable IPTV operators continuing to cross-subsidize these direct competitors in the video distribution market,” ACA said. The current regulatory fee system is unfair because small and mid-sized cable operators have to pay fees that their competitors in the direct-broadcast satellite industry don’t, ACA said. The commission should also offer fee relief for the smallest cable operators, ACA said. “Such reforms would not materially impact the revenue generated by the commission,” said the association. The cutoff for small operators should be set at 1,000 or fewer subscribers, ACA said. “Within the MVPD industry, these cable operators generate the lowest administrative burden for the Media Bureau among all cable operators."

Comments on Sprint’s petition for reconsideration of the FCC’s IP relay rate order are due to the FCC Dec. 5, replies Dec. 12, the agency said in a notice Monday. “Sprint claims that the rates established by the 2013 Rate Order are too low to ensure high quality service,” the notice said. “Sprint contends that the rapid exodus of three of the five IP Relay providers from the marketplace appears to be evidence of inadequate compensation of providers for their provision of IP Relay services, and argues that the departure of these providers renders the Commission’s rate calculations obsolete.”

Clarification: CEA President Gary Shapiro, concerned about the social desirability of people talking on cellphones in the air, doesn’t oppose an FCC NPRM on the subject, and the association welcomes the item (CD Nov 26 p9).

NARUC’s resolution adopting a white paper on cooperative federalism did not address how the FCC should handle the jurisdictional implications of the IP transition on state-federal cooperation, said Free State Foundation Legal Fellow Sarah Leggin in a paper released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1jGjQY8). The resolution, adopted by NARUC Nov. 20 (CD Nov 21 p20), calls for better cooperation between federal and state regulators to “ensure the reliability of telecommunications networks and the satisfaction of consumer needs,” said Leggin. The FCC needs to declare “its exclusive jurisdiction” over the economic regulation of IP-based networks, she said. The interstate and international nature of IP-based services make jurisdictional determinations “impractical, if not impossible,” said Leggin. “Subjecting service providers to dual regulatory regimes will likely impede the continued upgrading and build-out of such advanced networks,” she said. Despite the “fundamental changes” to the technological landscape, the NARUC Presidential Task Force on Federalism and Telecommunications, which wrote the paper and resolution, suggested the FCC, states and NARUC members continue to focus on the basic goals of the Telecom Act for consumer protection, interconnection and call completion, public safety, evidence based decisionmaking, broadband adoption, access and affordability and universal service, said Leggin.

Three members of the Senate Intelligence Committee slammed a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill that recently cleared their committee. The FISA Improvements Act (S-1681), a product of Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., passed 11-4. It “would explicitly permit the government to engage in dragnet collection as long as there were rules about when officials could look at these phone records,” wrote Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., in a joint New York Times op-ed Tuesday (http://nyti.ms/1b2KEwt). “It would also give intelligence agencies wide latitude to conduct warrantless searches for Americans’ phone calls and emails.” They all voted against Feinstein’s proposal during the Oct. 31 committee vote. Feinstein recently attached the FISA Improvements Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (CD Nov 25 p10), and these senators also proposed their own NDAA amendments on surveillance law. Wyden, Udall and Heinrich touted their Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, S-1551, which they say would end bulk collection of phone metadata, create a constitutional advocate for the FISA court and amend FISA Section 702, among other changes. That bill now has 13 co-sponsors, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who introduced a similar proposal called the USA Freedom Act a month after they did. Leahy’s bill (S-1599) has 18 co-sponsors, including all three of these Senate Intelligence members. “We will push to hold a comprehensive reform debate on the Senate floor,” the three said in the op-ed.

House Republicans expect to bring the Innovation Act (HR-3309) to the House floor Dec. 4, said Michael Petricone, CEA senior vice president-government and regulatory affairs, and another industry source, in separate emails to us. That would follow close behind a House Rules Committee meeting on the bill set for 3 p.m. Tuesday in H-313 of the Capitol. Proposed amendments to the bill are due to the Rules Committee by 4 p.m. Monday, the committee said. The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill last week 33-5 (CD Nov 22 p13). HR-3309 would curb so-called patent litigation abuse.

A software upgrade to allow IPv6 support for more than 4 million Arris TG852/862 wireless gateways presently used by the Comcast broadband network was released, said Arris in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1hg9EbW). The software upgrade will allow “operators like Comcast to plan its transition [sic] and deploy IPv6 support incrementally,” it said. Leveraging customer premises equipment “that is software upgradeable and that can handle both IP versions has been critical to our success, and our extensive IPv6 rollout on CPE complements our DOCSIS 3.0 based Cable Modem Termination Systems, which Arris also develops and supplies to Comcast,” said John Brzozowski, Comcast chief IPv6 architect.

The FCC should grant a permanent waiver of rules requiring the Oregon Public Utility Commission to provide a copy of a Lifeline subscriber’s certification form to eligible telecom carriers before that ETC can claim reimbursement from the federal USF, said the OPUC and the Oregon Telecommunications Association in a FCC petition Monday (http://bit.ly/1bSqPsA). The FCC Aug. 30 granted a limited waiver to California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah and Vermont to allow more time for those states to implement a process to share copies of consumer eligibility certifications for Lifeline support with ETCs (http://bit.ly/1aRhRz3). The rules to require state Lifeline administrators provide subscriber certification forms to the ETCs are “unnecessary and cost prohibitive in Oregon,” said the petition. “Requiring the OPUC to provide copies of the certification forms to the ETCs does nothing to enhance the validity of the subscriber’s eligibility for Lifeline, but adds to the burden and costs to both the OPUC and the ETCs.” In turn, this will result in an “unnecessary lag” in the delivery of Lifeline benefits to eligible consumers, it said. The OPUC’s policy to verify ETC eligibility and perform checks to eliminate duplicate Lifeline benefits presents a “special case” compared to states where the ETCs are solely responsible for the same functions, said the petition. A weekly report of all Lifeline consumers approved by the OPUC is electronically transmitted to the applicant’s respective ETC, said the OPUC. This electronic notification is comparable to the certification form and it provides “sufficient safeguards” for the ETC to begin providing Lifeline benefits and apply for reimbursement from the federal USF, said the petition.

Tennessee lawmakers pushed back against the possibility of airline passengers chatting on their cellphones while in the air. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., threatened to drop a bill stopping the FCC from authorizing the change. The FCC is expected to vote on an NPRM on the topic at its December meeting and has defended the move as a technical one (CD Nov 25 p1). Airlines can still regulate whether passengers can talk on their cellphones, according to the FCC. “The FCC commissioners will earn the gratitude of the two million Americans who fly each day by deciding: text messages, yes; conversations, no,” Alexander said in a statement (http://1.usa.gov/1dyNBwr). He described at length passengers “trapped” and listening to “yapping,” a situation in which “the Transportation Security Administration would have to hire three times as many air marshals to deal with the fistfights.” Meanwhile, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., circulated a letter to colleagues Monday requesting that the Federal Aviation Administration maintain the ban on cellphone talking. “I invite you to join me in sending a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration urging that it maintain its ban on cell phone calls in flight regardless of whatever decision the FCC may make,” Cohen said. He said allowing cellphone calls will make flying less safe and create a “markedly less pleasant flying experience.”