Reports DOJ will require Sinclair to spin off very few stations in its acquisition of Tribune were met with scorn by former FCC Commissioner Mike Copps Thursday. “Lipstick on a pig! No conditions can make this work,” tweeted Copps, with transaction opponent Common Cause. The New York Post reported Wednesday night Sinclair is nearing an agreement with DOJ that would require divestiture of 13 stations. The parties didn't comment.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Chairman Ajit Pai was wrong in many predictions about the 2015 net neutrality order. As a commissioner, Pai predicted courts would reverse the Democratic majority's open internet decisions, and the order would lead to regulation of broadband pricing and plans, when none of that has occurred, Clyburn said Thursday "debunking" various Pai claims as "false." A Pai spokeswoman didn't comment. Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr in a Washington Post opinion piece responded to criticism of the draft order to undo Title II regulation: "Mad Max Fans, this is no Thunderdome. The FCC is not killing the Internet." AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Bob Quinn offered a similar view in a blog titled, "Reports of the Internet's Impending Death are Grossly Exaggerated." CTIA Vice President Scott Bergmann blogged the draft is "good news" for wireless consumers, as its members will be able to "get back to doing what they do best: delivering what their consumers want: an open internet that meets their needs." Free Press said people are protesting Pai's plan "to kill net neutrality" in Congress, at the FCC and at Verizon stores, with 600,000 people using BattlefortheNet.com's tool to call lawmakers.

In technologically changing times, the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing is trying to increase input from stakeholders from outside the core cable industry, with a new category of members and by including tech companies in some gatherings, CTAM executives told reporters at its headquarters Wednesday. One challenge industrywide, they said in National Harbor, Maryland, is how to buttress relationships through in-person meetings, with NCTA's INTX show no more (see 1610070023) and CTAM's Summit ended several years ago. No one event took INTX's place, and some are grappling with CES' big size and other meetings not incorporating more aspects of what was once the National Show, executives said. With CES "too big, it's too overwhelming," and CTAM is trying new strategies to serve members, CEO Vicki Lins​ said. "In our industry, it peaked a couple years ago, where your CMOs felt they needed to be there" annually, she said of chief marketing officers. Senior Vice President-Advanced Products Angie Britt, who has done a biennial CES tour, said in this "off" year she will do livestreaming and recorded interviews and perhaps demos of video and IoT products. "In a tour, you're taking 40 people through 150,000 of your friends" and that takes time, she said. "The conference is making it more and more challenging to get people on and off the bus at a place where you can let people on and off." CES is committed to ensuring "attendees and exhibitors have a quality experience," responded a spokeswoman for show producer CTA. It restricts attendance to ensure the show "remains easily navigable and that our attendees can find the distinct communities of their choice while experiencing the value of having the full industry represented," she said. "We work closely with the city of Las Vegas and transportation vendors to ease commute times from venue to venue to make the show experience as productive and streamlined as possible." For face-to-face gatherings generally, Lins thinks "the pendulum has swung very far." While "great stuff happened as a result" of past events, she said, "it's harder to have those relationships when you're not together with people." It was good to "right size," she said, but one still needs "those quality moments where you can build relationships, and I don't think you've found it yet." Yet post-INTX, "there wasn't the appetite for finding another big conference," said CTAM Chief Communications Officer Anne Cowan. "The marketplace was weighing in." Though her association had some INTX sessions, she said "the loss of that has been our gain" in some ways, with more coming to CTAM business meetings. In the first year without a major cable show, CableLabs and NCTA put on "The Near Future" event in April in Washington (see 1704270040). An NCTA spokesman declined to comment.

Warren Havens -- once subject of an administrative law judge order asking the FCC to determine whether he was qualified to hold licenses -- is scheduled to begin a five-day jail sentence Wednesday in Alameda County, California, on a contempt charge for interference with the receivership appointed to hold onto licenses in which he had a stake. In a docket 17-cv-6772 order (in Pacer) denying stay of sentence issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton of Oakland said Havens' contentions the contempt of court finding was unlawful are "too general and insufficient to warrant such an extraordinary remedy" as a stay. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert Friedman, in the 2016 contempt of court order, said it sprung from ALJ Richard Sippel's 2015 order inviting the FCC to issue a hearing designation order on whether Havens and his companies qualify to hold licenses, and a business partner of Havens' subsequently moving to appoint a receiver for the licenses they jointly held. Havens filed a petition for involuntary bankruptcy of that receivership, which violated court orders restraining him from interfering with the receivership, said the contempt of court order. Sippel's 2015 order said Havens had a "history of disruptive disregard of orders and otherwise contemptuous behavior" that barred Havens and his companies from future participation in a proceeding due to "their contemptuous and disruptive conduct," including harassing emails, "dumping" more than 444 unscreened exhibits of 17,000-plus pages on the Office of the ALJ, the Enforcement Bureau and other parties and multiple instances of taking conflicting positions in successive pleadings. Havens couldn't be reached for comment.

Web application attacks rose 69 percent in Q3 over the same time last year, continuing a trend of increasing vulnerabilities fueled in part by unsecured IoT devices (see 1711210047), Akamai reported Tuesday. With holidays approaching, criminals may increase malicious activities, including use of ransom letters, it said: The Mirai botnet and WireX malware attacks suggest attackers may be leveraging IoT and Android devices to build future botnet armies. The Android-based WireX botnet infected as many as 150,000 devices within weeks, illustrating the "worrisome potential for cyber attackers to compromise and leverage mobile devices in their exploits," the company said. More promising is the multicompany effort that successfully stopped the botnet while still in its relative infancy, it said. Nonetheless, criminals are getting smarter and new attacks on mobile platforms are likely, wrote Senior Security Advocate Martin McKeay. "Our experience suggests that an army of new potential attackers comes online every day." NCTA blogged Monday that it's working with the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group to improve information sharing on distributed denial of service attacks, and to develop IoT security standards. "We should expect to see more end-user devices supporting automatic software updates," wrote Matt Tooley, vice president-broadband technology. "A huge and growing problem involves devices ... not getting a security patch and then later being used by cyber criminals."

With 5G needing "substantial and sustained infrastructure deployment," the FCC's newest member wants "more attention on this issue and potential solutions," including job training, he told a Labor Department workshop Tuesday on wireless apprenticeships and workforce development. Acknowledging "no direct regulatory role for the FCC," Commissioner Brendan Carr noted a "shortage of skilled workers that can deploy the small cells, distributed antenna systems, and other network facilities." The move to fifth-generation wireless networks "is going to require substantial and sustained infrastructure deployment," an up to 100-fold increase in small cells and millions of miles of new fiber, said prepared remarks from Carr, leading a wireless infrastructure proceeding. "This transition could result in $275 billion in network investment." With federal, tribal, state and local laws "not tailored" for this, he cited FCC moves including a twilight tower public notice on the agenda for commissioners' Dec. 14 meeting (see 1711220026). Ericsson sees a billion 5G subscriptions globally for enhanced mobile broadband by 2023 (see 1711280034).

U.S. internet traffic is projected to continue "explosive growth," rising "two-and-a-half times over the next five years," according to a USTelecom analysis Monday of annual IP traffic data in a Cisco index, blogged Patrick Brogan, the association's vice president-industry analysis. "A massive shift toward online consumer video is the primary driver of traffic growth. Other factors explaining the projected growth include increased mobile data traffic, continued broadband adoption, faster broadband connection speeds, new IoT "technologies, and other applications such as virtual reality, cloud services and data analytics," he wrote.

It isn’t clear whether large platform companies pose a distinct enough threat to merit antitrust action, but more regulation could be an option, said panelists during an American Enterprise Institute discussion Monday. “Some intervention is needed,” said University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales. The concentration of advertising platforms is probably harmful for the economy, but a government-driven solution “isn’t the right approach,” he said. To evaluate whether there's market dominance, “you need to know whether a person can easily switch between services, and is there a cost to switching,” and in today’s tech market, consumers mostly have options, Zingales said. “What’s happening in Silicon Valley is fantastic,” agreed AEI Director-Economic Policy Studies Michael Strain. “The only thing that matters in antitrust analysis is consumer welfare, whether consumers are benefiting.” Companies like Yahoo and RIM (now BlackBerry) that once were powerhouses no longer pose the same concerns, and have been overtaken by today's platform giants, he said. “It’s foolish to think that it’s impossible the iPhone won’t be replaced by another device in 10 years. And I don’t believe Google has perfected the way to organize the internet,” Strain said. “The barrier to entry is pretty small,” said Ryan Hagemann, Niskanen Center director-technology policy, making the case that a new entrant could challenge established players given the speed of tech innovation. "History is full of giants that eventually die," said Zingales.

Eliminating the reseller service option from the Lifeline program would be cemented in the net neutrality order (see 1711270042) with its confirmation that only facilities-based providers can participate, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Monday at a Connect South Carolina Community Technology Action Plan event, according to comments posted on the FCC website. She said regardless of where one stands on net neutrality, that FCC action is one of the most "pointed attack[s] on the economically disadvantaged" in recent agency history. With Lifeline "in trouble," its backers have to partner with providers and local and state authorities to let the agency know of that requirement's effects, she said. Clyburn said the agency still hopes in 2018 to hold a Connect America Fund Phase II auction, with a Mobility Fund Phase II auction "close behind." She said the agency is working to streamline deployment through the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee but that effort "seems to be not entirely consensus based," with limited state and local representation.

T-Mobile supports a request by broadcasters in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for permission to repack stations early (see 1711150038), the carrier said in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 12-268. Allowing an early transition of the TV stations affected by recent storms in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands “has real, practical benefits for broadcasters and, in turn, will benefit the overall transition plan and enable rapid deployment of new wireless service,” T-Mobile said. T-Mobile has emphasized its plans to take possession of spectrum purchased in the broadcast incentive auction as soon as possible, and previously has entered into agreements with public TV stations and low-power outlets to facilitate their repacking efforts (see 1707170043). “An early repack would prompt broadcasters to take advantage of this interim operations period to rebuild once, rather than require a rebuild of current facilities only to be built again in less than two years’ time,” T-Mobile said.