The FCC received more than 800,000 net neutrality comments in the six days before the Sept. 15 filing deadline, including 244,374 on Sept. 11, and another 169,847 on the last day to file, the agency said on its blog (http://fcc.us/1o6JKam). “Throughout the two rounds of public comment, and despite the age of the Commission’s IT systems, the FCC IT team worked around the clock and implemented workaround solutions to scale the large volume of comments in order to keep the system up and running, ensuring the public could submit feedback to the Commission leading up to Monday night’s comment deadline,” said FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray in the post.

A new standard that allows users of the IEEE 802 set of wireless standards from the IEEE Standards Association to effectively use the TV white spaces is available. IEEE 802.19.1 “is intended to help achieve fair and efficient spectrum sharing,” said the IEEE Standards Association Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1yi0Qvv). The standard is intended to specify a coexistence discovery and information server, specify a coexistence manager, and “define common coexistence architecture and protocols,” it said.

The Competitive Carriers Association filed a motion for leave to intervene in support of the FCC in the NAB’s court challenge of the TV incentive auction rules, CCA said Wednesday. “CCA supports the FCC’s decision to use updated software and data to implement the repacking process of the incentive auction, and is hopeful the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will quickly resolve this matter in the Commission’s favor,” the group said in a news release. NAB had said the commission’s use of the TVStudy software would unfairly disadvantage stations.

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.