The FCC should have its Diversity Committee study “troubling” employment practices in the technology sector, said the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and all four FCC members Wednesday. The tech industry’s “abysmal failure” to employ African-Americans, Hispanics and women hurts the FCC’s ability to follow congressional directives to “regulate EEO and promote employment and ownership diversity,” said the MMTC of equal employment opportunity. “Industry convergence and stark employment gaps” should merit a technology sector investigation by the Diversity Committee, and a follow-up by the FCC, another federal agency or Congress, the letter said. The FCC should focus on the tech sector because with the rise of over-the-top video, cord cutters and streaming apps, “the media jobs of the future will look more like technology jobs than traditional TV/radio production, advertising sales, and on-air occupations,” MMTC said. The tech sector has addressed this change in the past by asking for lowered restrictions on bringing in overseas workers though H-1B visas, a move MMTC said may be premature without a stronger effort to recruit domestic minorities and women. “An inquiry by the Diversity Committee would shed light on the extent to which technology companies recruit on campuses with high minority enrollments, actively mentor minorities for careers in the technology sector, and select diverse candidates who are U.S. citizens or residents,” MMTC said. Because of media convergence, diversity within the tech sector will increasingly fall within FCC EEO authority, MMTC said. “The digital divide cannot be closed when a sixth of the economy so profoundly and uniformly excludes African Americans, Latinos and women from equal employment opportunity."
Sixty percent of U.S. consumers expect to have experienced a house that speaks or reads to them by 2025, said a study on the impact of technology commissioned by Intel’s McAfee. Seventy-seven percent of consumers think the most common device in 11 years will be a smart watch, and 70 percent believe overall wearable devices will be common personal accessories. Seventy-two percent of consumers expect connected kitchen appliances will be a household item by 2015, six in 10 expect their refrigerators to automatically add food to a running grocery list when items are running low, and 84 percent believe their home security systems will be connected to their mobile devices, McAfee said. Almost 70 percent of respondents expressed concern over the state of cybersecurity in 2025, with identity theft, monetary theft and fraud the leading issues. By 2025, 38 percent of U.S. consumers expect to unlock their mobile device by eye scan followed by a thumbprint, McAfee said. On mobile pay, a third of consumers believe they'll be able to pay for items using their fingerprint, while 22 percent expected to use their mobile device. Twenty-six percent of respondents said they planned to still pay by credit or debit card. The online survey was done Aug. 1-12 by MSI Research among 1,507 U.S. citizens ages 21-65, split evenly by age and gender.
Comments are due Oct. 16, replies Nov. 17, on a Further NPRM on text-to-911 rules, the FCC Public Safety Bureau said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1o0UhUw). The August FNPRM teed up questions including whether the FCC should extend a text-to-911 mandate to non-interconnected over-the-top text providers and on rules for determining the location of those sending the texts and making the system work for subscribers roaming on another network (CD Aug 11 p1).
AT&T explained the job functions of its employees and asked for clarification and modifications for an FCC information request. The Media Bureau asked AT&T and DirecTV for information on AT&T’s proposed takeover of DirecTV (CD Sept 11 p21). The AT&T employees were listed on organizational charts prepared to identify custodians of documents responsive to each document request, AT&T said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-90 (http://bit.ly/1u2Dio1). The meeting participants also discussed the FCC’s definitions, instructions and procedures for the form of AT&T’s responses to the requests, it said. DirecTV also presented information on job functions of its employees, said a separate ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/XcPoAg). Both filings are on meetings with FCC staff tasked with reviewing the acquisition.
Neustar took heart in a letter Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach sent rival Telcordia asking for more information to clarify the scope of the second company’s relationships with telecom service providers, a Neustar spokeswoman told us Monday. The letter (http://bit.ly/1uOEQ5C), dated Sept. 10 and posted in docket 09-109 Monday, asked for a list of TSP and TSP affiliates to which Telcordia or parent Ericsson provides managed services. Neustar had challenged Telcordia’s neutrality because of the business relationships (CD Aug 25 p5). “Ericsson’s close financial and business entanglements with major mobile operators render it unable to be a neutral” Local Number Portability Administrator, “and hence legally unable to serve,” Neustar said in a statement. “That for the first time there is this level of focus ... is a positive development for the many medium and small carriers that would be stuck bearing the risks and costs of an unnecessary transition.” Telcordia was not immediately available for comment.
Wireless mic maker Sennheiser formally asked the FCC to reconsider parts of its incentive auction report and order on wireless mics. As of June 2010, companies had to take all 700 MHz mics out of service and replace them with devices that use 600 MHz spectrum, the company said in a filing in docket 12-268, not yet posted by the FCC. “Now, if the 600 MHz spectrum auction and TV band repacking proceed as planned, microphone users will lose most of their remaining spectrum,” Sennheiser said. A proposal to allow continued operations in the 600 MHz guard bands won’t make up for the loss, Sennheiser said. “The guard bands are likely to receive out-of-band emissions from neighboring operations and to have power limits inconsistent with some uses of wireless microphones,” the company said. “Moreover, a performer’s ear monitors require frequencies separated from those for the microphone, resulting in a need for two distinct bands in UHF.” Sennheiser asked the FCC to “revisit its policies so as to make adequate UHF spectrum available.” Several options are available, including reserving “naturally occurring” vacant channels and Channel 37 for wireless microphones, “or setting aside additional spectrum from that to be auctioned,” the company said. The FCC should also require auction winners to pay the cost to move mics to other frequencies, Sennheiser said: “The Commission has recognized elsewhere the inequity of leaving incumbents to bear their own costs of relocating to a different band for the sole benefit of auction winners.” The German company said wireless mics are vital to the U.S. economy. “Wireless microphones are ubiquitous in all aspects of the entertainment business, in news reporting, in sports, and in U.S. commercial, civic, and religious life,” Sennheiser said. “They are essential to the production of virtually all non-studio broadcast events, and to nearly all studio-produced programs as well.”
Former New York gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout and running mate Timothy Wu, who created the term “net neutrality,” headlined a Free Press-sponsored rally in New York City’s City Hall Park Monday to urge the FCC to adopt strong net neutrality rules. Teachout, who received 34 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said from now on “you shouldn’t be able to be a politician in New York state, let alone in this country” without taking a “strong, clear stand” against the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable (TWC) merger and in favor of net neutrality. Cuomo recently ordered the state’s Department of Public Service to investigate TWC’s Aug. 27 nationwide broadband outage as part of the state Public Service Commission’s review of Comcast/TWC, already seen to be a more aggressive review of the deal than has occurred in most other states (CD Aug 28 p16). Wu, currently a Columbia University law professor and a former Free Press chairman, praised New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and other state politicians for “taking the right view” on net neutrality. Wu received 40 percent of the vote against Cuomo’s running mate, former Rep. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y.
Correction: Pennsylvania State University law professor Rob Frieden did not say common carriers can discriminate among similarly situated users (CD Sept 12 p6).
FCC technical staff suspended the conversion of the comments to PDF in the electronic filing system to free more system resources to deal with an increase in filings, an agency spokesman told us Friday. As a result, no new filings on net neutrality were posted Thursday and Friday, the spokesman said. Free Press is organizing a protest outside the first of the FCC’s planned net neutrality roundtables Tuesday, urging the agency to hold public hearings outside Washington, the organization’s website said (http://bit.ly/1sCVE0H). The protest is scheduled for 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the FCC.
The FCC’s new regulatory fee schedule was published in the Federal Register Thursday and part of it took effect then, said an agency notice in the publication (http://1.usa.gov/1lXG8vC). The usual 30-day period after publication would “not allow sufficient time for the Commission to collect the FY 2014 fees before FY 2014 ends on September 30, 2014,” said the FCC. The new schedule (CD Sept 3 p11) shifts the percentage of the costs of the International Bureau that must be supported by satellite operators, ended the AM expanded band exemption, increases the annual de minimis threshold from under $10 to $500, eliminates several regulatory fee categories and adopts a regulatory fee for toll-free numbers managed by a responsible organization, said the commission. All the provisions except the de minimis increase, the eliminated regulatory fee categories and the toll-free category took effect Thursday, said the commission. It said those three provisions will be effective in FY 2015.