Mobility is kick-starting many changes in healthcare and sparking needed policy changes, company officials told Congress, touching on issues that affect the FCC. The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act report, due from the FCC, the FDA and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology by the end of the year, should include proposed strategy and recommendations regarding “an appropriate, risk-based regulatory framework pertaining to health IT, including mobile medical applications,” Qualcomm Senior Director-Government Affairs Robert Jarrin told the House Commerce Health Subcommittee Tuesday, according to his prepared testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1deUPFS). “It is essential that these agencies recognize the growing importance of managing risk at a systems level and that any comprehensive regulatory scheme should take into account existing solutions when contemplating future innovations,” Jarrin said. “The end goal should be for a regulatory framework that allows new technology to flourish, promotes innovation, protects patient safety and avoids regulatory duplication.” IBM Research Vice President-Research Strategy Zach Lemnios said cellphones and other technologies have transformed healthcare: “We are witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon today -- the convergence of five simultaneously disruptive technologies: social, mobile, cloud, pervasive instrumentation and advanced analytics” (http://1.usa.gov/186mNlb).

CenturyLink said it bought infrastructure-as-a-service and cloud management provider Tier 3 in order to “accelerate” its cloud offerings. Neither company disclosed the financial details of the deal. The Tier 3 deal is CenturyLink’s second acquisition of a cloud services provider this year -- it bought platform-as-a-service provider AppFog in June. Tier 3 Chief Technology Officer Jared Wray will become chief technology officer of the CenturyLink Cloud division. CenturyLink said it plans to move CenturyLink Cloud’s base to Tier 3’s former Seattle offices. CenturyLink said it plans to integrate Tier 3’s nine data centers with the 55 data centers it owns through Savvis (http://bit.ly/HWSn8s).

The E-rate process needs to be overhauled to include a less-cumbersome application process, said state grantees and E-rate coordinators on a Tuesday NARUC panel. Simplifying the program and modernizing it could help the FCC deal with the amount of paperwork and maximize the $2.38 million allocated for the program, said John Bailey, Digital Learning Now executive director. “E-rate will enable us to provide connected models of learning, but we need connectivity,” said Bailey. “Our challenge is to make sure that the schools have the next generation infrastructure.” The current incarnation of the E-rate program has become increasingly complex to combat abuse to fix the problems that less than one percent have caused, said Debra Kriete, South Dakota E-rate coordinator. “In this case, E-rate is a victim of its own success, and administrative efficiency needs to be put into the program,” she said. The FCC issued the NPRM to update E-rate to address these problems, said Trent Harkrader, Wireline Bureau associate chief. “We are always trying to make the application process easier for our schools,” he said. “We are constantly in contact with states to learn about their best practices, and we are looking for more data from the states to make our decisions on the program.”

About 520,000 high-speed Internet subscribers were acquired by the 17 largest cable and telephone providers in the third quarter this year. The top broadband providers, like Time Warner Cable and Verizon, “now account for over 83.6 million subscribers,” Leichtman Research Group analysts said in a research note (http://bit.ly/1issnAc). The top cable companies accounted for 84 percent of the net broadband additions for the quarter versus the top telephone companies, it said. The cable companies added about 440,000 subs, a 76 percent increase compared to the same period last year, it said. The telephone companies gained about 80,000 subs, “compared to a gain of about 4,000” in Q3 2012, Leichtman said. In the first three quarters of 2013, the top providers added about 1.9 million subs, “compared to about 2,150,000 in the first three quarters of 2012,” it said.

Time Warner Cable petitioned to be excluded from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices for 17 communities in Kentucky, said filings posted in FCC docket 12-1. The petitions cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The proposed deregulation would affect just over 8,000 households, including the communities of Crestview Hills, Dry Ridge, Brandenburg and La Grange.

Amazon will launch on Friday its second original series, Betas, following the release of three episodes of its first original series, Alpha House, last Friday. Amazon said Alpha House was the most-viewed show on the website through the weekend. The Beta schedule will follow that of Alpha House, with the first three episodes available to all Amazon customers for free, and after that, a new episode will release every Friday, available only to Amazon Prime customers via Prime Instant Video. Written by Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard, Beta follows four friends in Silicon Valley attempting to find success with a mobile social networking app.

Witnesses for Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee hearing on FirstNet are FirstNet Board Chairman Sam Ginn, FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky, Ohio Chief Information Officer Stu Davis, Harris Corp. Chief Technology Officer-Radio Frequency Communications Dennis Martinez, New Mexico Department of Information Technology Cabinet Secretary Darryl Ackley, and Dereck Orr, National Institute of Standards and Technology program manager-Public Safety Communications Research Office of Law Enforcement Standards. The hearing will be at 10:30 a.m. in 2121 Rayburn. The subcommittee majority memo included significant background on FirstNet and a section titled “Controversy Remains.” It described “several controversies” and shaken confidence in network leaders, citing transparency concerns that began plaguing FirstNet earlier this year. “Considerable uncertainty exists among stakeholders with respect to the cost, coverage, design, and the timing of the network deployment,” the GOP memo said (http://1.usa.gov/1hV9bgv). “FirstNet has acknowledged that it ‘fell short on answers to timing and business model questions’ in its outreach. While FirstNet continues to work to improve its communication, the lack of such fundamental information, if unresolved, could undermine the ability of a State to make an informed decision to opt-out of the FirstNet [radio access network] plan, or worse, compromise public safety’s confidence in the ability of FirstNet to deliver and sustain a truly nationwide public safety broadband network."

The White House endorsed the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) Monday, with National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling calling the bill a “big step in the right direction.” The bill, introduced Monday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, shows that “both chambers of Congress share the President’s goal of encouraging innovation, not needless litigation, by reducing abusive patent trolls lawsuits,” Sperling said in a statement. S-1720 reflects many of the legislative recommendations the White House released in June, Sperling said. Those recommendations came in conjunction with a set of executive actions tasking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with addressing patent abuses (CD June 5 p12). S-1720 drew support from many industry groups Monday and Tuesday, with National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith saying in a statement that the bill would “combat ‘patent trolls’ that are a drain on both the U.S. economy and the broadcast industry. This legislation deters those entities that acquire patents primarily as a litigation tool while protecting the true innovators who keep our economy moving forward.” Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said in a statement Tuesday that S-1720 “provides key reforms that will curb some of the worst abuses of the patent system. The abusive conduct in this area requires legislation sufficient to address the broad scope and dimensions of the problems that exist.” A Public Knowledge spokesman said in a statement Monday that the bill “shows that there is a general consensus growing on the Hill that demand letters, when abusively asserted, negatively impact the economy, innovation, and consumers. The Patent Transparency and Improvements Act of 2013 is a practical step in reforming the patent system in a way that empowers those who want to bring new technologies to Americans and for those who need to access them.” S-1720 also mirrors some aspects of the Innovation Act (HR-3309), which the House Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Wednesday.

The incentive auction could reduce the number of minorities and women who own broadcast licenses, said the National Hispanic Media Coalition in an ex parte filing released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cFrVtB). Minorities and women could relinquish ownership because of pressure to participate in the auction or to sell to companies speculating on spectrum, said NHMC. The FCC should release a report after the auction studying its impact on those groups, said NHMC. The commission should also fund studies on the impacts of ownership rule changes on minorities and women, and fully fund the “critical information needs” studies, said NHMC. “Strong media ownership rules are an effective, race-neutral way to provide greater opportunity for people of color and women to own broadcast outlets,” said the ex parte. NHMC also said the Lifeline program should be extended to stand-alone broadband service and that “Lifeline savings” shouldn’t be used to increase the cap on the E-rate program, the ex parte filing said.

Inmarsat is helping Telecom Without Borders restore communication platforms to a hospital in the Philippines following a typhoon that hit there this month. Inmarsat’s broadband global area network service “will enable hospital staff to collaborate with medical teams on a national scale and provide coordinated health support to the thousands of victims seriously injured,” it said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1aEdoia). Since the typhoon, “Inmarsat has been prioritizing satellite traffic to and from the Philippines,” it said. Telecom Without Borders also supplied the company’s IsatPhone Pro satellite phones to Philippines government officials to help improve communications capabilities, Inmarsat said.