A new DOJ Cyber Fellowship program is designed to develop “prosecutors and attorneys equipped to handle emerging national security threats,” the agency said Friday. The program will be coordinated through the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, it said.

The FTC Competition Bureau will begin recommending “enforcement action” Sept. 27 against companies that “fail to file” proposed transactions with the commission and DOJ “when retirement of debt is part of the consideration for the deal,” acting bureau Director Holly Vedova said in a Thursday blog post. Competition “is concerned” informal agency staff interpretations provided to companies about whether specific types of deals require going through the review process “may not reflect modern market realities or the policy position of the Commission,” Vedova said. “We are currently in the process of reviewing the voluminous log of informal interpretations to determine the best path forward,” but “previous informal interpretations” that “gave the impression that companies could avoid filing by paying off a target company’s debt, instead of paying the company with cash … missed the mark.” Some “merging parties have responded by structuring deals in ways that they believe fall outside of the filing requirements,” she said.

The FCC deactivated the disaster information reporting system for Tropical Storm Henri, said a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. A DIRS report from Monday showed 7,648 cable and wireline subscribers out of service in Connecticut, 13,167 in Rhode Island, 4,573 in New York and 1,321 in Massachusetts. No public safety answering points or broadcasters were reported out of service, it said.

The FCC proposed a $5.13 million fine Tuesday for alleged illegal robocalls tied to the 2020 general election. The fine was proposed against John Burkman, Jacob Wohl and JM Burkman & Associates, and sets a new record for a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the FCC said. Commissioners OK’d the notice 4-0. It’s the first action “where the FCC was not required to warn robocallers before robocall violations could be counted toward a proposed fine, per Congress’ recent amendment of the TCPA,” the agency said. Those cited allegedly made 1,141 illegal robocalls to wireless phones without prior express consent. The calls “used messages telling potential voters that, if they vote by mail, their ‘personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts,’” the FCC said. The investigation followed consumer complaints and concerns raised by a nonprofit organization, the agency said. Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel thanked the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for helping gather evidence and build a case: “This kind of collaboration is vitally important in our work to combat illegal robocalls and I look forward to future collaboration like this with other law enforcement partners nationwide.” The company didn't comment.

The FCC activated the disaster information reporting system for Tropical Storm Henri for affected counties in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, said a public notice Sunday. Daily reports were due starting Monday, the PN said. The bureau also issued PNs on emergency contact information for licensees that need special temporary authority and on 24-hour availability of FCC staff.

Data that will be collected through the emerging IoT will be transformative for many businesses, Bryan Tantzen, senior director in Cisco’s IoT Business Unit, said Monday at Fierce’s virtual Industrial IoT Summit. The transformation is just getting started and many companies are still using clipboards to record numbers rather than putting in sensors and doing automatic data collection, Tantzen said. “The promise of this new data is vast,” he said: “We think we can eliminate 80% of unplanned downtime. We can dramatically improve overall equipment effectiveness. We can even speed new product introduction.” In the post-COVID-19 era, businesses will focus on sustainability “so you can keep the lights on as a utility and make the grid more resilient,” Tantzen said. In factories, “when a robot goes down you no longer have to wait and fly in an expert,” he said. “You can virtualize that expertise and get remote … maintenance that can reduce downtime,” he said. The time is now to address security risks from the IoT and the automation, he said. “We’re seeing threats everywhere, not only malware,” he said. Most of the IoT is “a hard shell with a soft middle” and doesn’t have adequate security, he said: “That will not work going forward.” Looking at what the industrial IoT can do for a business shouldn’t start with use cases, said Saip Yilmaz, Black & Decker director-industry innovation. “Focus on your strategy, how you will compete in the market,” he said. “Thinking about the future state of your strategy really helps to set your goals,” he said. “Don’t become another data rich, information poor company,” he said. Understand the use case and then decide what technology would work best, advised Kervin Blanke, head of U.S. operations for Kinexon, an IoT company. There’s not “one sensor that’s going to do it all; it’s more complex than that,” Blanke said. Companies need a single platform that can tie all of their sensors together, he said. Lots of companies are investing in use of the IoT for predictive maintenance, said Markus Larsson, member of the senior leadership team at California’s Palo Alto Research Center. “The performance of what has been rolled out, broadly speaking, just hasn’t been good enough,” he said.

The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on identifying the appropriate industry stakeholders to form a search committee to select a 3.45 GHz reimbursement clearinghouse to look after relocation expenses for secondary, nonfederal licensees that have to move. Comment deadlines are to come in the Federal Register. In the C band, the FCC decided a similar search committee “would be composed of nine members appointed by nine entities that the Commission found, collectively, reasonably represented the interests of the stakeholders,” said a Friday notice in docket 19-348. “We note that in this proceeding, incumbents are two broadcasters -- NBCUniversal and Nexstar -- operating weather radar systems in the band,” the notice said: “Are incumbent interests sufficiently aligned such that one entity can represent both incumbents?”

The largest cable and wireline U.S. phone providers gained 890,000 net additional broadband internet subscribers in Q2, the most of any June quarter in a decade, reported Leichtman Research Group Wednesday. Top broadband providers now have 107.4 million subscribers: 74.7 million for cable companies and 32.7 million for wireline phone companies, said LRG. CenturyLink/Lumen (62,000), Frontier (22,000) and Consolidated (4,522) had subscriber losses in the quarter vs. gains by Comcast (354,000), Charter (400,000), Cox (50,000), AT&T (46,000) and Verizon (70,000). Top broadband providers added 8 million subscribers over the past two years, including about 4.3 million net adds over the past year, said Principal Analyst Bruce Leichtman.

An order saying T-Mobile may have misled the California Public Utilities Commission is “meritless and without basis in fact,” the carrier’s spokesperson said Monday. Dish Network thinks the CPUC is right to hold T-Mobile to “commitments it made under oath while its merger was under review, including that the CDMA network will be operational until July 1, 2023,” a spokesperson said. In the Friday order in docket A.18-07-011, assigned Commissioner Cliff Rechtschaffen and Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer required T-Mobile to appear at a Sept. 20 9:30 a.m. PDT virtual hearing to “to show cause why it should not be sanctioned” for violating a CPUC rule on “false, misleading, or omitted statements.” T-Mobile told the agency under oath that its CDMA network would be available to Boost customers until they were migrated to Dish Network's LTE or 5G network, that maintaining CDMA service during the Boost migration wouldn't affect T-Mobile's 5G buildout, that all former Sprint customers would have a seamless upgrade during migration and that Dish would have up to three years to complete the Boost migration, the order said. T-Mobile omitted or gave misleading information about PCS spectrum being used to provide service to Boost customers on the CDMA network and the same spectrum would be required for the 5G network buildout, it said. After more investigation, the CPUC might later add charges on “the early retirement of the Sprint LTE network,” the order said. T-Mobile looks “forward to presenting evidence and setting the record straight through the upcoming process,” its spokesperson said. “For months, T-Mobile has been working aggressively to ensure no customer is left behind as we transition” to 5G. DOJ earlier raised “grave concerns” about what T-Mobile soon shuttering its CDMA network may mean for Boost customers (see 2108090008). “DOJ will have the final say but it seems increasingly likely that T-Mobile will have to delay the shutdown of CDMA,” Lightshed Partners analyst Walt Piecyk emailed Monday. Dish CEO Charlie Ergen noted the CPUC show-cause order Monday at the Technology Policy Institute Forum in Aspen, Colorado (see 2108160057).

Most mobile phones won't display the wireless emergency alert test message during Wednesday’s nationwide tests of WEA and the emergency alert system, said a joint FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency news release Monday. The tests will be at 2:20 p.m. EDT (see 2107260043). The message will be received only by “specially configured phones” that have been opted in to receive test messages, FEMA said. “In contrast, consumers will automatically receive real emergency alerts on compatible phones (even if they do not receive the test message),” said the release. Instructions on how to opt in are on the FCC’s website. The WEA message will read “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” The broadcast EAS audio message will include the phrase “No action is required” and will be accompanied by a visual message on televisions. FEMA and the FCC are partnering with the National Weather Service and several state and local emergency management agencies on the test, the release said.