Comcast officials met with members of the FCC Media Bureau and the agency task force overseeing its proposed buy of Time Warner Cable Friday, said an ex parte filing posted Thursday to docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1lD27ro). It said Comcast “sought clarification and guidance” on the FCC’s recent information requests on the deal (CD Aug 26 p1) and “requested modification of certain questions” to allow for a timely response.

Reclassifying the Internet as a common carrier would be “a disaster,” said NCTA in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/YcfLrk). The association has begun a print and digital ad campaign (including in Communications Daily) “to show how laws that were originally written for telephone lines in 1934 are totally ill equipped to handle modern broadband networks in 2014,” said NCTA. The ads direct readers to NCTA’s Title II page (http://bit.ly/1uneg4o), headlined “Net Disaster, not Net Neutrality.” Title II would turn the Internet into “a slogging, permission-based government utility,” NCTA said. “Title II reclassification would allow for the very things Title II advocates are most afraid of."

The company that will be spun off from Comcast if its purchase of Time Warner Cable and divestiture deal with Charter Communications are successful will be called GreatLand Connections, Charter and Comcast said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/YbGRic). The spinoff has been referred to as SpinCo or Midwest Cable in FCC filings on the deal. “The name GreatLand Connections pays homage to the rich history and striking geographies of the diverse communities in which the company will operate,” said the prospective company’s CEO, Michael Willner. GreatLand Connections will be an independent, publicly traded company made up of former Comcast systems with about 2.5 million customers in the Midwest and southeast U.S., the release said: “At its inception, it is expected to be the fifth largest cable company in the United States."

TDS Telecom bought “substantially all of the assets” of Bend, Oregon, cable provider BendBroadband for $261 million, TDS said Tuesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1tXTcCk). TDS Telecom is a subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems, it said. BendBroadband reported annual revenue of $70 million in 2013, and the deal will add 300 employees to TDS, said the buyer, which had previously announced the deal and just completed the transaction.

The FCC should grant cable operators that use TiVo set-top boxes a waiver of the requirement that they must include “an industry-standard, interactive, and recordable home networking interface,” the company said in a waiver petition (http://bit.ly/1vJGlFR) posted Tuesday in docket 97-80. TiVo had successfully sought an extension for the deadline for set-tops to fulfill that requirement because the Digital Living Network Alliance had not released industry standards for the boxes on time (CD April 7 p16). “TiVo could not anticipate the precise outcomes of the DLNA process or the timing and content of published specifications, and had to develop its own home networking solution in order to maintain its role in providing innovative solutions to retail consumers,” TiVo’s petition said. If TiVo has to change its technology to fit the DLNA standard, it could “hinder TiVo’s ability to compete on both a retail and a wholesale level,” the company said. If the FCC takes the position that the home networking requirement was invalidated by the EchoStar decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, TiVo said, its petition would be moot.

Charter Communications officials met with members of the FCC task force overseeing Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable Wednesday, said an ex parte filing posted Tuesday to docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1trkMsT). It said Charter officials discussed the FCC’s recent requests for information on the deal to Charter, which is getting some systems that Comcast/TWC are divesting (CD Aug 26 p1), and the Department of Justice’s investigation of the transaction. Charter “sought clarification and guidance on the scope of the FCC’s questions,” it said. Charter also submitted a copy of its organizational chart to the FCC as part of its response to the information request. The chart was kept confidential under a joint protection order.

Time Warner Cable officials discussed the company’s responses to a recent FCC request for information (CD Aug 26 p1) and to the Department of Justice’s investigation into its planned buy by Comcast, with the FCC task force overseeing the deal. That came in a meeting Tuesday, said an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1lAbcBw). “We provided an update on the status of TWC’s production of documents to the Department of Justice in connection with its ongoing investigation of the Comcast-TWC transaction.” TWC also “sought guidance from Commission staff regarding potential limits on the scope of TWC’s responses to the commission’s requests,” the filing said.

A voluntary agreement (VA) by the pay-TV industry, makers of consumer electronics and energy conservation advocates on energy standards for set-top boxes (CD July 24/12 p12) has saved U.S. consumers around $168 million on energy bills and 842,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, said NCTA in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1lyFTXV). The information on energy saved comes from an annual report (http://bit.ly/1tP3svy) on the VA by an independent administrator hired by the VA participants, said a CEA news release on the report. Under the VA, 85 percent of set-tops bought by pay-TV providers in 2013 met the EPA’s Energy Star 3.0 efficiency levels, using 14 percent less energy than previous models, NCTA said. The agreement has also led to software updates being deployed to enable light sleep for set-tops already in homes, an auto power-down feature in 90 percent of direct broadcast satellite boxes and energy efficiency information being posted by pay-TV providers for all new boxes, NCTA said. The more-efficient boxes “save consumers money on their electric bill, reduce pollution, and work even better than the old ones used to,” said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he directed the Department of Public Service (DPS) to investigate Time Warner Cable’s nationwide broadband outage as part of the Public Service Commission’s review of the company’s proposed takeover by Comcast (http://on.ny.gov/1phWobm). The outage, which affected 11.4 million TWC customers nationwide Wednesday, is a “stark reminder that our economy is increasingly dependent on a reliable broadband network,” said Cuomo, a Democrat, in a statement Wednesday. “That is one of the reasons why I pushed for a stronger standard of review for cable company mergers earlier this year.” New York raised its state regulatory review requirements to require cable merger applicants show that a deal would be in the public interest rather than require the state PSC to approve deals unless they could be harmful to the public interest (CD March 21 p15). Observers said subsequent DPS recommendations on the merger review indicate the PSC’s review will be more aggressive than other states’ reviews (CD Aug 14 p5). The DPS investigation will also review whether the outage affected TWC’s phone service in the state, Cuomo said. DPS will also include its analysis of the outage in its ongoing study of the telecom industry in the state, which is exploring changes in the telecom regulatory landscape, Cuomo said. A TWC spokesman said “we apologize for the early morning disruption in service and we intend to discuss any of the Governor’s concerns with him as well as the many consumer merits of our merger.” The FCC is reviewing Comcast/TWC. (See separate report above in this issue.)

Fletcher Heald law firm plans a free webinar on the must-carry and retransmission consent election process Sept. 9, at 2:30 p.m. EDT. Attorneys Paul Feldman and Dan Kirkpatrick will discuss rights of broadcast, cable and satellite TV operators, “including the upsides and the downsides of the available alternatives,” the firm said Tuesday in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1ARPzjA). They'll also explain what has changed since the last round of must carry/retransmission consent elections, potential pitfalls and hidden concerns regarding carriage, “and what the future of retrans may involve,” it said.