DirecTV shareholders voted to approve AT&T’s proposed takeover of the DBS provider. More than 99 percent of votes cast were in favor of the deal at the DirecTV shareholder meeting Thursday, DirecTV said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1BcL7Kv). AT&T will work with the various regulatory agencies reviewing the deal to gain their approval as well, an AT&T spokesman said in a statement.

The Wireless Broadband Alliance said WBA will “take an active role” in encouraging community Wi-Fi network development, including hosting community Wi-Fi interoperability trials. WBA released a white paper Thursday in collaboration with Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable and 20 other major companies that discusses key challenges community Wi-Fi faces and benefits of deployment. The white paper includes multiple case studies of services like Comcast’s XFinity Wi-Fi service. WBA said it will submit the white paper to other industry groups for further review. WBA also plans to generate network management and device behavior specifications, as well as launch a community Wi-Fi compliancy program for devices and access points (http://bit.ly/1rgmTik).

The tech industry should transform itself “to resemble the America that it serves, and hire diverse talent that increasingly represent a significant portion of their consumer base,” said the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in support of a Minority Media Telecommunications Council request that the FCC study diversity in the tech sector. MMTC President David Honig has represented Rainbow PUSH before the FCC in broadcast ownership proceedings. “The focus of diversity should be broad, focusing on all areas of business, from technical support to financial and professional services to procurement,” said Rainbow PUSH. The coalition said it supports MMTC’s call for the FCC to study the diversity of hiring among tech companies.

A multibureau group of FCC staff is reviewing several options on net neutrality, Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach wrote in a blog post (http://fcc.us/ZcgwRD) Monday. Repeating Chairman Tom Wheeler’s comments before the House Committee on Small Business last Wednesday (CD Sept 18 p1) that all options, in particular Communications Act Title II reclassification, are still on the table, Veach highlighted a few options under either Title II or Section 706 commission “staff has identified as adding to the potential ways that an Open Internet can be preserved.” Of note, according to Veach, were proposals by AOL supporting Title II reclassification with substantive rules promulgated under Section 706, and AT&T’s proposal to ban paid prioritization under 706. A Title II-based approach proposed by Columbia University law professor Timothy Wu, also known for coining the term net neutrality, and Tejas Narechania, a Columbia University law school research scholar, is “an important proposal,” the post said, as was Mozilla’s proposal to use Title II to create a presumption banning all paid prioritization.

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee offered the FCC an “open invitation” to hold one or more net neutrality roundtable discussions in his state, saying in a letter posted by the FCC Monday that he believes it’s unfortunate that all of the roundtables have been or will be held in Washington, D.C. The Pacific Northwest has “a large stake in the outcome” of the FCC proceeding on new net neutrality rules, Inslee said, noting more than 150,000 Washington state residents work in the information and communications technology sector. Those residents’ employment “is premised on the assurance that they will be able to operate and thrive by virtue of an open internet, subject to reasonable and balanced conditions that ensure nondiscriminatory treatment of their platforms, traffic, and e-commerce offerings,” said Inslee, a Democrat, and former member of the U.S. House (http://bit.ly/1uyokq1). The FCC held its most recent roundtable Friday (CD Sept 22 p1) and has more scheduled for Oct. 2 and Oct. 7.

FTC-enforced privacy and data security standards in the FTC Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) can apply to residential broadband Internet services, the FTC said in comments filed Friday to the FCC (http://1.usa.gov/1rhjJbF). The comments, filed in Docket No. 14-126, are in response to the FCC’s inquiry on the role privacy and data security play in consumer broadband adoption, the FTC said (http://1.usa.gov/1odLXkf). Broadband providers must uphold any privacy or security commitments, which are regulated under the FTC’s Section 5 authority, it said. But broadband providers are also subject to less obvious laws, such as FCRA. “Although best known for regulating the activities of credit bureaus, the FCRA also applies to companies that provide information to credit bureaus ('furnishers') and companies that use credit reports ('users'),” the FTC said. “Broadband providers often are both furnishers and users under the FCRA.” In these situations, broadband providers must ensure the accuracy of information provided to credit bureaus and give consumers notice when it’s changing its offerings to consumers based on credit report information. The FTC pointed to a 2013 case against Time Warner Cable as an example of FCRA’s application (http://1.usa.gov/ZCQAyt). The commission also cautioned that any broadband service provider that “knowingly” collects personal information from children under 13 is “subject to COPPA’s privacy and security requirements."

CTIA President Meredith Baker questioned whether the FCC can develop a definition for “reasonable network management” that will protect the wireless industry if the same basic net neutrality rules are imposed on mobile broadband and fixed. Baker spoke Monday at the GSMA 360 North America conference in Atlanta (See related story), saying she would have rather focused on a topic other than net neutrality. “Parity for the sake of parity is nonsensical, and should never be the FCC’s objective or governing principle,” Baker said, in her prepared remarks. “Our differences cannot be simply defined away.” Net neutrality advocates haven’t offered a definition of reasonable network management “broad enough, or adaptive enough to capture today’s … mobile broadband experience, or provide broadband providers the certainty they need to invest billions more in networks and spectrum,” she said. The FCC is exploring the issues, including at a net neutrality roundtable Friday (CD Sept 22 p1). Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter, meanwhile, sent FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler a letter Monday questioning the wisdom of imposing tough new regulations on mobile. “A framework that would subject each and every management decision made by a mobile broadband provider to legal scrutiny under fixed-in-time administrative rules is particularly unworkable and unwise,” Spalter wrote. Mobile networks are unusually complicated, he said. They “rely increasingly on adaptive, self-optimizing and predictive algorithms in their management,” he said. “Mobile broadband networks must accommodate multiple generations of wireless service, hundreds of device types, and numerous operating systems, while also accounting for ever-changing demands within each cell site and constant reallocation of network resources to address users’ movements during any given communication."

AT&T’s comment in the Communications Act Section 706 notice of inquiry that wholesale obligations could deter it from making broadband investments is an “absurd argument,” Comptel said in a reply filed in docket 14-126 at Friday’s deadline. AT&T argued in Sept. 4 comments (http://bit.ly/1Af6UAO) that legacy regulations, like the wholesale obligations in sections 251 and 271, “may require carriers to maintain legacy TDM-based networks even after their IP networks are in place.” The claim that the obligations deter broadband investment “has never been proven,” Comptel said. The commission found in the IP transitions order that in the 15 years before deregulation in 2001, “the industry experienced ‘a torrent of new investment deployed over 200,000 miles of trenches and approximately 18 million miles of fiber -- enough fiber to circle the equator 750 times,'” Comptel said. AT&T’s claim of being required to maintain two networks “is nonsense,” Comptel said, because “the same physical infrastructure that has supported TDM-based services over the decades supports IP-based services.” The commission failed to provide “adequate support” for its proposal to increase the broadband download speed threshold to 10 Mbps, AT&T said in its reply made available Monday. The proposed increase “is not based on a reasonable analysis of how customers’ actually use broadband services,” said AT&T, which also criticized Public Knowledge and Netflix’s backing of a 25 Mbps benchmark. Public Knowledge’s comments were “based on a hypothetical average household that watches three HD movies simultaneously while using other basic device and online services,” while Netflix’s was “based on streaming super and ultra HD content,” AT&T said. There is no evidence “latency prevents consumers from using the applications listed in section 706, and thus there is no basis for the Commission to include it in evaluating broadband,” AT&T said. Replies filed Friday hadn’t been posted on the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System by our deadline. But major wireline players which filed initial comments -- including Fiber to the Home Council Americas, NCTA, Netflix, NTCA, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom and USTelecom -- told us they did not file replies. Some industry observers said the absence of filings in a proceeding that asked questions on topics such as increasing the broadband speed benchmark (CD Aug 6 p5). There’s a sense that the commission intends to move ahead regardless of the comments, said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka, a view shared by some others. That telecom attorneys are “completely overwhelmed by the absurdly intense series of deadlines the Commission has imposed” played a role, Szoka and others said. Spokespeople and attorneys for some of the groups said a sense the commission plans to move ahead with its proposal, including raising the broadband speed benchmark, was not a factor in why they did not file. They were too busy meeting a spate of deadlines on such other proceedings as on net neutrality and E-rate modernization, and felt their initial comments expressed their viewpoint, the sources said.

Several parties that urged the FCC to reject Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable support AT&T/DirecTV with conditions, noted a Guggenheim Partners analyst. Analysts expect both deals to be approved, but the AT&T/DirecTV comments may suggest a more manageable approval path for that deal than for Comcast/Time Warner Cable, said analyst Paul Gallant. Dish Network, Public Knowledge and Netflix took a more even-handed position on the AT&T transaction than they did the Comcast deal, he said Friday in a research note. “This is noteworthy and suggests to us that AT&T/DirecTV is likely to face less strident opposition than Comcast/TWC.” Those entities will probably be among the “leading voices” at the Department of Justice and FCC on both deals, he said. Their moderate tone on AT&T/DirecTV “is incrementally positive for that merger and introduces an additional note of caution on Comcast/TWC,” he said. Initial comments in the AT&T/DirecTV proceeding were due Tuesday (CD Sept 19 p3).

Correction: The name of the Department of Defense facility that partnered with Cascade County, Montana, on a land-use study map was Malmstrom Air Force Base (CD Sept 18 p19).