Industry groups and other commenters backed the IoT green paper developed by NTIA and Department of Commerce, which posted the comments Wednesday (see 1703140022 and 1701120050). But many provided recommendations on improving the paper and IoT development approach. ACT|The App Association said the paper didn't adequately describe IoT's potential in fueling job growth and should have an "unambiguous policy recommendation" that an ex ante or ex post government action be based on data-driven evidence. "Government actions (or reactions) based on hypothetical and/or anecdotal harms will pose a significant threat to the innovation in the app ecosystem that will drive the growth of the IoT," ACT commented. The Center for Democracy & Technology said NTIA's assessment of IoT privacy issues is "inadequate." CDT said the IoT raises new questions about what constitutes personal data and privacy, which are challenging current legal frameworks. It said NTIA and Commerce should pursue consensus-based global standards and highlight efforts to promote privacy in the industry. NCTA commented that there are security areas the paper doesn't address including: incorporating a unique identifier for each IoT device; supporting authentication and authorization for users to validate a person to use a device and have permission to perform an operation; ensuring data at rest is protected; and "over manageability" of IoT devices for users. NCTA said users will need to keep an inventory of their devices, managing credentials, including when a device changes ownership. CTIA said 5G networks will "provide the speed, reliability and capacity necessary" for IoT growth, addressing "dense usage patterns in urban areas, and [powering] data-rich applications like high-resolution video and medical imaging, streaming media, and augmented and virtual reality." Microsoft worried about the expectation of "unlimited support" for connected devices, because some security advancements can be enabled only through new hardware, not patching. The company said unlimited support would probably stifle innovation by putting a large cost burden on new market entrants and dissuading consumers from buying new devices. CTA commended the paper for concluding that the IoT "require a reaffirmation, not a reevaluation" of government policy to encourage private sector leadership, global standards development and a multistakeholder approach in policy making. The group backed passage of the Digit Act (S-88), which would give Commerce lead responsibility in identifying regulatory hurdles to IoT development.

The FCC eighth floor could decide on a draft order removing the network overbuild condition on Charter Communications within a few weeks, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly told us Thursday. He said he hadn't voted on the order on circulation yet and was still reviewing it. O'Rielly was critical of the build-out condition in the 2016 order approving Charter's buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks (see 1605100050), and told us his focus is on the details of how to change the order. He didn't elaborate on specifics of the draft. American Cable Association, NTCA and the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned on Charter's overbuild condition (see 1606100043).

The European Commission approved AT&T's $108.7 billion buy of Time Warner, AT&T said in a news release Wednesday. "The global clearance process is on track," said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs Bob Quinn. The company said it hopes to have DOJ approval and close on the deal this year (see 1703080006).

With marketers increasingly fed up with different audience measurement standards used by different platforms, TV programmers Fox Networks Group, Turner and Viacom are looking to fill that gap and get ahead of the issue with the announced launch Wednesday of their OpenAp consortium, Syracuse University advertising associate professor Beth Egan said. Better audience targeting "doesn't need to be that complicated," Fox and others said, saying adoption of better audience targeting has been stymied by the lack of transparency and consistency in audience buying. They said the OpenAP standard audience targeting platform will open the door to more transparency in audience buying by being a standard for cross-publisher audience targeting and independent measurement. The OpenAP announcement didn't include some details, including who the independent auditor will be. Nielsen in a statement said it backs OpenAP efforts "to create a clearinghouse to audit the audience-based advertising delivery of its members" and to give audited and verified data on ad delivery. "This is an important part of what is needed to create openness and transparency in ad buying and selling," it said, saying its own ratings data will underpin the consortium data. OpenAP should make buying across different media owners easier, removing some friction, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said. He said it's significant that NBCUniversal isn't part of the consortium since it, along with Viacom and Turner, are among the major suppliers in the alternative ad data market. Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard in an address earlier this year at the Internet Advertising Bureau was critical of digital companies like Facebook and said more third-party auditing of and transparency around its ad data is needed, Egan noted. That may have influenced the timing of the OpenAP announcement, Egan said. In their announcement, Fox and the other programmers said OpenAP will bring "consistently designed audience targets [that] can be activated across any OpenAP member publisher" as well as independent measurement and an open platform backing industry-standard data and measurements.

Chief Financial Officer John Stephens pegged AT&T investment to decisions Congress may make this year on tax and infrastructure proposals. Speaking at a Wednesday event hosted by the firm, he lamented “dramatically slow economic growth” in recent years, curbing investment from the private sector. If Congress succeeds in the tax overhaul Capitol Hill Republicans and the White House say they want, “I believe we’ll see much larger capital investment, private investment,” Stephens said. “You’ll see it in our broadband, our wired, our fiber investments.” He would like to get gross domestic product growth up to 3-4 percent. A panel of staffers for the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees said an infrastructure package could be linked to tax overhaul legislation and there are many questions about what it may look like. “There’s a whole lot of questions out there over whether this sort of structure is going to be responsive to the actual needs our country faces,” said Aruna Kalyanam, tax counsel for the House Ways and Means Democrats, citing the proposal laid out in a Trump campaign white paper and uncertainty over what funding may be dedicated to and what type of projects would be appropriate. Democrats “strongly believe” in infrastructure funding, she said. “We need more details about how this would work,” agreed Tiffany Smith, chief tax counsel for Senate Finance Democrats. Barbara Angus, chief tax counsel for House Ways and Means Republicans, called infrastructure and tax overhaul “critically related” and said her bosses are interested in anything that drives economic growth. Staffers agreed repatriation of U.S. corporate money held abroad has potential. “It’s the easiest pot of money that’s out there,” said Kalyanam. American Action Forum President Doug Holtz-Eakin urged Republicans to back infrastructure spending and urged inclusion of siting provisions. Infrastructure legislation should have “serious inclusion of economic analysis” and demand “performance metrics after the fact,” he said. Jennifer Fritzsche, Wells Fargo analyst, said the changes could all affect the capital spending of telecom giants. “AT&T buying Time Warner -- this is a game changer,” she said, citing its ability to “challenge the cable model.”

The FTC plans to continue to “vigorously enforce” the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield as part of the agency's role as the “chief privacy enforcer” in the U.S., said acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen during a Financial Times event Wednesday. FTC and International Trade Administration officials said before President Donald Trump's inauguration they were hopeful the commission's commitment to the Privacy Shield would continue after then-President Barack Obama left office (see 1611090016, 1611100039 and 1611210032). “We have committed to investigate Privacy Shield companies on our own initiative,” Ohlhausen said. “We will prioritize referrals from European data protection authorities. And we will monitor our orders to ensure compliance with the framework. When companies don’t comply with orders, we will bring enforcement actions.” The FTC is also committed to working with EU institutions on improving the Shield's effectiveness, including participating in the European Commission's annual review of the framework and meeting with the Article 29 Working Party, Ohlhausen said. The chair said she has been “pleased to see that [the Trump administration] has affirmed its commitment” to the Privacy Shield given the framework's importance to U.S.-based business interests. EU agencies and U.S. businesses sought reassurances from the FTC after Trump's election and inauguration, including whether Trump's executive orders on immigration from some majority-Muslim countries (see 1701290001, 1702060016 and 1702100042) would affect Privacy Shield enforcement. “We don't believe it will,” Ohlhausen said. Enforcement of the Privacy Shield and other international privacy frameworks “is an integral part” of the FTC's cybersecurity and privacy program, Ohlhausen said. She cited the agency's privacy memorandums of understanding with Ireland, the Netherlands and U.K. and the agency's participation in the Global Privacy Enforcement Network. An “ongoing dialogue” with EU partners is necessary because of the ongoing misconception “that this is the Wild West” for privacy, Ohlhausen said. The FTC has “an extremely robust record” on privacy, she said.

The FCC proposed a Q2 industry USF contribution factor of 17.4 percent of interstate and international telecom service revenue from end users, said a public notice from the Office of Managing Director in docket 96-45 in Tuesday's Daily Digest. Telecom consultant Billy Jack Gregg projected March 2 the contribution factor would rise from Q1's 16.7 percent due to a drop in industry revenue (see 1703020079).

Lillian Salerno, a former Department of Agriculture deputy undersecretary, told us she's interested in being an FTC commissioner if nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but added Tuesday: "I have no idea if I'm being considered." Reuters reported Monday that Salerno is under consideration to fill the empty Democratic seat. Currently, the five-member commission has two members, acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, and Commissioner Terrell McSweeny, a Democrat. Two of the empty seats will likely be filled by Republicans while the other seat should be filled by a Democrat or independent. "I'm a 100 percent confident that if I was given the opportunity ... I would certainly try to protect consumers and particularly small business and ordinary citizens" from abuses involving people's private communications and lack of competition, said Salerno. The Texas resident, who worked in Agriculture's rural development program for five years, said she informed Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans, about her interest in being on the FTC but hasn't forwarded her name to the White House, nor has the Trump administration contacted her. She also said she hasn't been contacted by the Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. The Intercept reported Friday that Schumer wants his former chief of staff, David Hantman, to fill the FTC seat. Before setting up his own public policy firm, Hantman was Airbnb's head of global public policy for three years, after a nearly six-year stint as Yahoo vice president-global public policy. Neither Schumer's office nor the White House commented. Republican Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes has been floated as a possible nominee to head the commission.

State public utility commissions made preparations for Tuesday’s East Coast winter storm. The New York Department of Public Service was in contact with utility senior executives and monitoring the situation, said a Monday news release: Verizon, other telecom providers and energy utilities “are prepared to bring on additional manpower to minimize service disruptions, if they occur.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) declared a state of emergency across New York ahead of the storm, triggering conditions in the Public Service Commission's Altice/Cablevision order last year (see 1606150056). In a state of emergency, Altice, which bought Cablevision, must provide free Wi-Fi access to subscribers and nonsubscribers, must make the News12.com site available to noncustomers and share outage information with utilities at no cost, a commission spokesman emailed. Altice is in compliance with the merger conditions on states of emergency, a company spokeswoman said. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission hasn’t heard of any telecom issues yet, a PUC spokesman said Tuesday. “We've been getting regular updates from utilities -- first about their storm prep, and now regarding outages and responses.” The PUC was closed Tuesday but its emergency management team was working in coordination with the governor’s office and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, he said. The Maryland Public Service Commission also was closed but had engineering staff doing emergency response coordination and monitoring with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency’s state emergency operations center, a PSC spokeswoman said. No telecom outages had occurred, she said. Verizon provided a storm preparation briefing Monday to the District of Columbia Public Service Commission, which opened Tuesday after a two-hour delay, an agency spokeswoman said. There were no reports of telco outages in New Jersey, but some utility wires went down that might affect cable service, said a New Jersey Board of Public Utilities spokeswoman. New Jersey declared a state of emergency, so the board closed for the day, she said. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream representatives reported no significant network outages due to the storm as of our deadline. T-Mobile said its "crews are addressing any issues that come up as quickly and as safely as possible."

Free State Foundation postponed its communications policy conference set for Tuesday due to expected inclement weather. No new date was announced.