The FCC plans to form a task force to deal with Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday at a news conference after the FCC’s monthly meeting. Even though nothing has been filed by the companies, “we've begun to think about how we want to organize,” he said. “If we're presented with something, then we'll announce how we'll handle it.” The commission will assign someone within the agency “who has experience in previous similar activity” to run the task force, Wheeler said. More details will be forthcoming, he said.

In 2013, the FTC took its first actions involving mobile cramming and the Internet of Things, while filing a three-year FTC high of 18 advocacy and amicus briefs, according to the FTC’s 2013 annual highlights, released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1myAkav). It said the FTC obtained $297 million in consumer redress and $20 million in civil penalties. “The hallmark of our work has been, and will continue to be, our ability to adapt established tools -- law enforcement, policy initiatives and education -- to address economic challenges and technological advances that Congress could never have imagined when it created the FTC,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in a statement.

The FCC should “clarify” that IP interconnection with incumbent local exchange carriers for managed VoIP service is governed by Section 251 of the Communications Act, Cablevision and Charter officials told FCC Acting General Counsel Jon Sallet Tuesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1pk3Gs7). “ILECs are currently unwilling to provide IP interconnection on commercially reasonable terms (if at all),” they said. “Because the inability to obtain IP interconnection harms competition and is a significant barrier to the industry-wide transition to IP facilities, we ask the Commission to move expeditiously in clarifying ILECs’ IP interconnection obligations.”

Channel sharing on both a physical and virtual level can be done, said a technical report on a Los Angeles TV channel sharing project. The report, released Friday by CTIA and Los Angeles TV stations KLCS and KJLA, shared technical achievements and limitations of channel sharing. The report is a result of a pilot project to determine whether channel sharing can help free up spectrum in the TV incentive auction (CD Jan 29 p4). The stations have provided real world evidence that channel sharing presents a significant opportunity “for broadcasters to continue their existing business on shared spectrum and take home a check for spectrum they voluntarily relinquish in the incentive auction,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1gz5GdL). He said he hopes broadcasters will closely study the report. The report also found that all the TVs and tuners tested were able to receive and correctly parse all the required information, and that it’s technically feasible “for two 720p high definition streams to be combined into a single Advanced Television System Committee [ATSC] channel,” it said (http://bit.ly/1h0VciA). The report cautioned that careful thought must be put into the radio frequency transition, “whether for repacking or sharing, by the FCC and broadcasters to find a solution that will minimize viewer complaints,” it said. Because broadcasters have no control over the final display format at home, “it makes sense to use the most efficient encoding structure for final distribution over the air,” it said. The stations compared PBS Newshour episodes in the 720p and 1080i HD formats. In 720p, “we found a surprisingly better DMOS [Differential Mean Opinion Score] at approximately 50 percent of the bitrate of 1080i,” it said. With ATSC 3.0, the use of High Efficiency Video Coding codec is envisioned, it said. What isn’t known today is the bitrates that 4K and 8K will require in the future, it said. It also isn’t known whether 4K and 8K will be a viable business opportunity for a broadcaster “or will be delivered through alternate paths,” it said. Many technical issues identified in the report are very familiar to broadcasters “as part of the industry’s extensive experience with multicasting,” NAB said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1o8Gujr). NAB noted in a blog post that while Wheeler “is making a big channel sharing push,” he also is working to eliminate sharing arrangements through joint sales agreements (http://bit.ly/1h3JwLX). Wheeler is essentially saying he wants to see broadcasters share facilities “because that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but that broadcasters must unwind agreements they voluntarily entered, with commission approval, regarding sharing other resources, because that’s bad,” it said. The FCC is scheduled to vote Monday on an order that is expected to make JSAs attributable for ownership cap purposes (CD March 28 p1).

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged the FCC to address various questions about Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules raised in a Jan. 31 petition by ACA International. “The Commission’s adoption of desperately needed updates, clarifications and revisions to its TCPA rules will allow covered communications to be governed by a clear, fair and consistent regulatory framework that protects the interests Congress contemplated in enacting the TCPA without impeding legitimate business operations,” ACA said then (http://bit.ly/1i099j9). The Chamber said the FCC should confirm that not all predictive dialers are automatic telephone dialing systems, that “capacity” under the TCPA means present ability and that prior express consent to make a call “attaches to the person who incurs a debt, and not the specific telephone number the debtor provides at the time of consent.” TCPA lawsuits are a growing problem for its members, the Chamber said. “TCPA lawsuits against businesses are skyrocketing,” it said (http://bit.ly/1iEIN8j). “There were 222 TCPA lawsuits filed in February 2014 compared to 159 in February 2013, an increase of 40 percent. There were 1,862 TCPA lawsuits filed in 2013 compared to 1,101 in 2012 and 825 in 2011, an increase of 69 percent and 126 percent, respectively."

A two-year international partnership will join experts from the U.S. and Europe to debate and research “the balance between security and freedom,” said a Wednesday news release (http://bit.ly/1m82kil) from New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. OTI, whose major funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the State Department, is joining with the Global Public Policy Institute, a Germany-based think tank, for the initiative. “At a time of significant transatlantic tension on this topic, it is especially important that we build pathways for reasoned, research-driven international dialogue on controversial issues such as Internet governance, fragmentation, and cybersecurity,” said Tim Maurer, OTI research fellow. The project will produce two policy papers, a conference in Washington and “regular policy breakfasts,” OTI said.

The FCC should determine “the necessary substantive contours” of new net neutrality rules before deciding what Communications Act section to justify them under, longtime net neutrality proponent Marvin Ammori told Philip Verveer, senior counselor to Chairman Tom Wheeler, in a meeting Friday (http://bit.ly/1rAcEDM). A New America Foundation fellow, Ammori said his views expressed were “purely personal.” Beginning with Section 706’s “limitations” and then “crafting a rule that fits those limitations is putting the cart before the horse,” Ammori said. “At best, 706-first thinking could result in the appropriate network neutrality rule only by accident. At worst, this thinking could lead to the adoption of a rule devoid of the substance required to ensure an open Internet based on market evidence and theory.” The entire Internet ecosystem will be upset by the Comcast-Netflix paid peering agreement, Ammori said. If the biggest technology companies transfer money to ISPs to ensure a solid connection to end-users, “it will likely lead to less venture investment across the board in technology companies,” and will “weaken the acquisition market that fuels technology investment,” he said. ISPs would extract rents from smaller companies too -- not interconnection fees, but “access fees,” he said. Section 706 alone can go part of the way toward keeping the Internet open, but Title II reclassification is necessary for the strongest impact, public interest groups commented earlier this week on potential net neutrality rules, which CEA, CTIA and others said shouldn’t be restrictive (CD March 25 p9).

A Nov. 7 public symposium will celebrate the FTC’s 100th anniversary, with keynotes and panels on the agency’s history and future, the commission said in a Wednesday news release (http://1.usa.gov/1l41zXr). The FTC has created a website -- www.ftc.gov/100 -- where more information will be posted. People can also submit to the site comments about their FTC experiences.

Medley Global Advisors has decided to end telecom, media and technology policy coverage, said analyst Jeffrey Silva. The move is “part of streamlining efforts to better rationalize resources for its core macro policy intelligence service,” Silva said in an email. Friday is Silva’s last day with the company, he said. The Medley Global telecom shutdown comes one month after Stifel Nicolaus also ended its telecom coverage, former analyst David Kaut said. He and former Stifel analyst Christopher King were let go last month, “along with several other telecom analysts,” King told us.

The Communications Workers of America criticized Sprint Monday for its recent decision to lay off about 1,550 call center employees and reduce operations at six call centers, saying in an emailed statement that the move shows that a Sprint bid for T-Mobile US could “prove costly for American workers and consumers.” CWA has called a potential Sprint/T-Mobile a “non-starter” that “raises deep concerns about what is in the best interests of U.S. consumers and workers at T-Mobile’ (http://bit.ly/OWWlS0). Sprint disclosed the layoffs last week, citing a reduction in the number of calls coming into the centers. The carrier also said in March that it would be laying off 330 technical consultants, closing 150 service and phone repair centers and would close 55 of its worst-performing stores. A Sprint spokeswoman said the carrier is “committed to growing its business and will also continue to look for ways to operate more efficiently and to offer customers options for managing their accounts without assistance from a customer service agent. Over the last five years, calls to our customer service call centers have dropped by 60 percent.” Sprint said in January that it planned to make additional cuts following a Q4 net loss of $1.04 billion. Sprint has laid off or announced plans to lay off more than 2,700 call center workers since Japanese telco SoftBank bought the carrier in July, said CWA. The employees laid off last week were to continue working through Tuesday, which CWA said violated federal law, which requires at least 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs. One of the affected call centers was in Elmsford, N.Y., where state law requires at least 90 days’ notice before mass layoffs, said the union. Sprint is “constantly assessing its workforce to meet the needs of our ever-changing, competitive landscape,” the Sprint spokeswoman said.