Cox Communications allowed free access to nearly 200,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for customers using its Preferred, Premier or Ultimate High Speed Internet services. Customers can access the hotspots in cities including Los Angeles, New York and Austin, Cox said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ayNUUw). The new hotspots are located in such “high-traffic areas” as restaurants, malls and beaches, it said. “More hotspots are expected to be added before the end of the year as the integration with other cable operators continues,” Cox said.

Two individuals associated with Wise Media agreed to FTC settlements over allegations the company added unwarranted charges to users’ cellphone bills, totaling more than $10 million in consumer injury, according to a Thursday commission news release (http://1.usa.gov/1dkNXXq). “This case involved a new delivery system for an old-fashioned scam,” said Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Jessica Rich. “Getting consumers’ consent before charging them is as basic a consumer protection as you'll find, whether you're dealing with a brick and mortar store or with a mobile payment provider.” The FTC complaint alleged Wise Media set up recurring monthly charges of $9.99 without consent on consumers’ cellphone bills for “premium services,” including text messages with horoscopes and love tips, according to the release. The settlement includes a $10 million-plus judgment (http://1.usa.gov/18rMn1V). Brian Buckley, the company’s CEO, must also surrender all of his assets. Cyberfraud lawyer Mark Campbell of Changus Campbell represented both defendants in the settlement and said Buckley was “unavailable for comment.” Winston DeLoney was the other individual who agreed to the settlement. Deloney “was simply an investor in Wise and had absolutely no knowledge of or control over its day-to-day operations,” said Campbell in a written statement. “Mr. DeLoney was not privy to the enrollment, billing, or provision of services by Wise. Mr. DeLoney voluntarily returned $175,817 from his investment for refunds to Wise’s subscribers.”

Eutelsat signed an agreement with Poste Italiane for satellite broadband service across Italy. The deal is expected to transform Italy’s broadband landscape “where 2.37 million Italians in 3,600 towns and villages are still unable to benefit from a quality Internet connection for education, entertainment, communication and e-commerce,” Eutelsat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1aJO22B). Eutelsat’s service, Tooway, will be available in Poste Italiane offices and through its business sellers, “with the priority to serve regions beyond range of terrestrial broadband” beginning the first quarter of 2014, Eutelsat said. Poste Italiane provides Italy with postal, communications, logistics and other services.

Judges in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals are likely to uphold the FCC Connect America Fund order, wrote Stifel Nicolaus analysts Christopher King and David Kaut in a research note Thursday. Based on what they have “heard and read so far” about Tuesday’s oral argument (CD Nov 20 p2, Nov 21 p6), the analysts expect the judges to issue their ruling in Q2 or Q3, generally upholding the revamp of the $4.5 billion USF and the intercarrier compensation framework. King and Kaut said the panel could be “more skeptical” about agency reforms limiting broadband USF subsidies for rate-of-return rural telcos. The ruling will be “generally helpful to ‘midsize’ price-cap wireline telcos” that gain access to broadband USF support, the analysts said. It could also be helpful to AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, which all stand to gain from reductions in long-distance and wireless intercarrier compensation payments to LECs, they said. “We note oral arguments can be a shaky barometer of court sentiment, and we believe particular caution is in order here, due to the complexity of the case and its fallout, and the fact that we did not attend the all-day session in Denver,” the analysts said. “So the court could still come out any number of ways, with murky ramifications."

Boeing signed an agreement with Inmarsat, making Boeing the largest reseller to the U.S. government market for Inmarsat’s forthcoming Global Xpress Ka-band network. Boeing will have a specific focus on military Ka-band services, Inmarsat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1c6VxzS). Since 2010, the companies “have worked in close partnership on the development of the original fleet of three Global Xpress satellites,” it said. Inmarsat plans to launch services on the network next year (CD April 12 p5).

House Republican leadership has taken an interest in moving forward with a National Security Agency surveillance proposal from the House Intelligence Committee. “There is significant member interest in this issue as well as multiple committees with jurisdiction,” a leadership aide told us when asked about the House Intelligence proposal. “Leadership is working to ensure that there is a well-coordinated process with all interested parties going forward.” No details of the House NSA proposal have been disclosed, but Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., described elements of it during an open House Intelligence hearing this fall. At a Thursday closed markup session of HR-3381, the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2014, Rogers said he wants to consider any NSA bill separately from the authorization act because House Intelligence shares jurisdiction over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with the House Judiciary Committee. “I remain committed to continuing to work with members to move a FISA bill forward, but I hope we will save any amendments to FISA that Members are interested in pursing for a later day,” Rogers said in his opening statement (http://1.usa.gov/1fnGbwb) which was released outside of the hearing. The intelligence authorization passed by voice vote and advances to the House floor. A spokeswoman for Ruppersberger told us by email: “Since we did not reach the point of mark-up” of the House Intelligence NSA bill Thursday during the closed session, “there was still much that was up in the air, but the bill and any potential amendments all sought to enhance transparency, accountability, and oversight of the [intelligence community] and its national security laws and programs.” The House Intelligence bill is widely expected to preserve the government’s phone metadata bulk collection, which an alternative proposal from House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., would end. Sensenbrenner’s bill is called the USA Freedom Act, HR-3361, and now has 98 co-sponsors in the House, with two California members signing on Wednesday. “Leadership has not reached out to Congressman Sensenbrenner on NSA legislation,” a spokesman for Sensenbrenner told us Thursday. Several companies and nonprofits submitted a joint letter to House and Senate leaders Thursday urging support for Sensenbrenner’s bill and slamming alternatives that do not go as far. “We oppose legislation that codifies sweeping bulk collection activities,” the letter said (http://bit.ly/1aTXqgE). It was signed by many groups, including the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, Free Press, TechFreedom, Mozilla, NetChoice, Tumblr and Reddit.

A lack of quorum caused the Senate Judiciary Committee to postpone its National Security Agency oversight hearing scheduled for Thursday. “Apparently this is another example of how we try to block the president’s judges and I'm sorry for that,” said Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., when he recognized the committee was one senator short of quorum and it appeared only Democratic senators had shown up. In the past three weeks, Senate Republicans have blocked three presidential court nominees, said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., during remarks on the floor Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/19Lf71I). After Leahy recessed the hearing, he made his way to the Senate floor and a few hours later the upper chamber voted 52-48 to change the nomination rules to allow most judicial and executive branch nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60-vote level previously required (http://1.usa.gov/18rm7EU). The hearing had been scheduled last week, well before it was known the Senate would be voting on rules changes Thursday. After briefly considering rescheduling the hearing for Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, the committee pushed it back to sometime in December, said a spokeswoman for the Computer and Communications Industry Association. CCIA President Ed Black was to testify during the hearing, along with representatives from the NSA, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Thursday attached language identical to the Cybersecurity Act of 2013 (S-1353) as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (S-1197). Rockefeller “believes the provisions in his amendment will strengthen the nation’s national security and, therefore, deserve consideration through the NDAA,” a Senate Commerce aide said. The cyber bill, sponsored by Rockefeller and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., would authorize the National Institute of Standards and Technology to work with industry on an ongoing basis to develop voluntary cybersecurity guidelines and best practices, in line with NIST’s current development of the Cybersecurity Framework. The bill, which would also strengthen the government’s cybersecurity research, education and public awareness efforts, cleared Senate Commerce in late July in a unanimous vote (CD July 31 p1). Since then, “it’s been sitting on the sidelines for too long and there’s too much at stake to not look for every opportunity to pass it in the Senate,” Rockefeller said in a statement. Senate Democratic leaders have warned against attaching amendments on unrelated political issues to the authorization bill, but the Senate Commerce aide told us Rockefeller had the backing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich. The NDAA now contains more than 300 amendments, including at least five that challenge aspects of controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. Democratic leaders would like to pass the defense bill before Thanksgiving (CD Nov 21 p10).

Corrections: The companies that primarily do commercial satellite launches are European and Russian, said Satellite Industry Association President Patricia Cooper. She said the U.S. is the place where she expects the prices of launches would have to take into account additional risk, absent commercial launch indemnification (CD Nov 21 p14). … None of Harris Corp.’s LTE projects (CD Nov 21 p5) is in Harris County, Texas.

Broadcaster associations in Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia urged the FCC to take a flexible approach to the presentation of emergency information to the public and to require that during emergency alert system (EAS) activations, all cable systems pass through TV programming “that makes weather-related and other emergency information available to viewers,” they said in joint reply comments in docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1bDy5Zo). Reply comments on the first nationwide EAS test were due this week (CD Nov 12 p8). Cable systems undermine the efforts of local stations to provide their communities with this critical information “when cable systems choose to override local programming with other content during EAS activations,” they said. NCTA urged the Public Safety Bureau to consider the technical and operational costs and challenges posed by proposed changes to the EAS protocol for EAS participants before it makes recommendations for FCC action, it said (http://bit.ly/1bRDmjq). Cable operators “need to retain the ability to make the selective override decision where it is technically feasible and makes sense for their customers,” it said. Cable operators typically don’t have the ability to create or edit closed captioning streams and pass through closed captioning exactly as it’s received, it said. NCTA also urged the commission to reject DirecTV’s suggestion of formalizing use of the Washington, D.C., location code, it said. The American Cable Association cautioned against additional regulatory mandates that require its members to buy, replace or modify equipment to ensure compliance, ACA said (http://bit.ly/18oBvlF). The association supports efforts to ensure the readability of EAS alerts, it said. But the bureau must develop a full understanding of the costs involved in standardizing diverse character generator systems, and consider alternatives “before recommending that the commission impose inflexible readability mandates,” it said. Hearst said it supports a longer nationwide test. Another important set of data may be revealed if the next test is longer than two minutes, “namely data associated with the time-out limitations programmed into most EAS gear,” it said (http://bit.ly/19HSfQF).