Billing Services Group (BSG) agreed to pay $5.2 million to resolve FTC contempt charges that the phone-billing company and its business entities violated a 1999 court order that had settled cramming charges, the commission said in a Wednesday news release. Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the proposed stipulated final order filed in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio. The FTC said the company must make 10 payments of $520,000 each, the first due in 30 days, followed by an equal payment every 90 days, to satisfy the judgment, but if BSG fails to make a payment a $17 million judgment will be imposed. The 1999 order with the FTC had barred BSG defendants from "unauthorized billing, misrepresentations to consumers, and billing for vendors who fail to clearly disclose the terms of their services." The commission said the defendants operated as a phone billing aggregator for years, and placed third-party charges on consumers' telephone bills without authorization. In the proposed settlement, BSG and its business entities admit to violating the 1999 order, and failing to vet charges before processing them and to investigate consumer complaints about unauthorized charges, FTC said. Defendants would also be banned from placing charges on consumer phone bills for enhanced services like email or voicemail and barred from placing unauthorized charges on any type of consumer bill, the commission said. "In the defendants’ current business, which involves providing wireless intermediary services to telephone companies and Wi-Fi providers, the proposed order will require them to monitor their servers’ traffic for possible fraud," the commission said.

Broadband adoption will reach 84 percent of U.S. households this year, up from 50 percent in 2006, said a Parks Associates report Wednesday, while ownership of smart home products grew from 16 percent to 19 percent of U.S. broadband households in the past year. Some 44 percent of households without a smart home device plan to buy one in 2016, and by 2020 half of North American broadband households will be smart homes, it said. "Adoption of the connected lifestyle continues to expand” as supporting technologies mature and consumers better understand the value of connected devices, said analyst Brad Russell. Increased access to fixed and mobile broadband and improved interoperability between “collaborative, though fragmented" communications networks will facilitate smart home adoption, he said. Russell cited efforts by big players including Amazon, Apple and Facebook and said their leadership positions and ecosystems will “help accelerate growth in established categories and emerging technologies such as wearables, smart fabrics, and virtual and augmented reality."

Nokia will enter the e-health market with an agreement to acquire Withings, Nokia said Tuesday. The cash deal, which combines two European companies, values Withings at 170 million euros -- or nearly $192 million. Withings makes digital health products including thermometers, activity trackers and blood-pressure monitors. The deal is expected to close in early Q3 and is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Digital health is a “large and important market,” and the deal strengthens Nokia’s business position for the IoT, Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said in a statement.

Verizon deployed OpenStack network function virtualization (NFV) in five data centers, the carrier said in a news release Monday. The project started in 2015, and additional deployments are underway in other domestic data center and aggregation sites, Verizon said. The carrier plans to deploy NFV internationally over the next several months, and in edge network sites by year end, it said. Verizon partnered with Big Switch Networks, Dell and Red Hat to develop the OpenStack pod-based design. It went from concept to deployment of more than 50 racks in five production data centers in less than nine months. The NFV project is a step toward building Verizon’s next-generation network, said Adam Koeppe, vice president-network technology planning.

A dozen civil liberties and open government groups expressed support Monday for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's effort to get intelligence agencies to consider changes in how they classify and declassify information in a move toward more transparency. In a letter to Clapper, they wrote "far too much information" is unnecessarily classified, and also for far too long and at too high a level. The groups, including Access Now, Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, Electronic Frontier Foundation and New America’s Open Technology Institute, said Clapper's March 23 memo directing intelligence chiefs to consider some changes such as "implementing a proactive discretionary declassification program" could be successful "if strongly promoted and sufficiently resourced."

The FCC's Connect2Health Task Force plans a May 18 meeting in Houston on how broadband technologies can improve mental healthcare and related policy issues. "Policymakers, industry leaders, health technology innovators, consumer advocates, clinicians, rural health organizations, and others interested in leveraging technology to help address and improve mental health" are invited, a Friday public notice said. Among those slated to attend are FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, University of Houston Law Center Dean Leonard Baynes, former astronaut and CEO of Vesalius Ventures Dr. Bernard Harris, and Francisco Fernandez, dean of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, whose school's efforts will be highlighted. The event is part of the task force's "Beyond the Beltway" outreach initiative. Further details will be posted at the task force's webpage.

Parties supported a temporary waiver of a "first-come, first-served" rule for allocating toll-free numbers, which was sought by Somos (formerly SMS/800) for numbers controlled by its help desk (see 1604060037). Somos wants to restrict "Responsible Organizations" (RespOrgs), which manage toll-free numbers for others, to obtaining 100 numbers per day for a period of five days to prevent some entities from hoarding. In comments filed Thursday in docket 95-155, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions SMS/800 Number Administration Committee said it agreed with Somos that there's "widespread and intense interest" in toll-free 800 numbers, justifying a limited waiver to ensure "a wider and fairer distribution" than "first-come, first-served" allocation. Inteliquent, a new RespOrg, agreed the Somos proposal was the best way to allocate the 96,000 toll-free 800 numbers Somos says it took back from another RespOrg for nonpayment. Inteliquent said when Somos made its last large allocation of 800 numbers -- 23,000 in 2008 -- more than 70% went to just two entities. Also supporting the petition is ATL Communications, another RespOrg, which said it had large backlogs of client requests for 800 numbers that haven't been available in "any significant number" for "many years."

The FCC Technological Advisory Council will meet June 9, starting at 12:30 p.m., the agency said Thursday, in the Commission Meeting Room. “The TAC is helping the Commission to continue the momentum spurred by the National Broadband Plan to maximize the use of broadband to advance national interests and create jobs,” the FCC said in a notice.

The Department of Agriculture invited applications for $11.7 million in grants to provide broadband to unserved rural areas through its Rural Utilities Service's Community Connect program, a department release said Monday. The minimum grant amount is $100,000; the maximum, $3 million, it said.

Alaska Communications knocked an Alaska Telephone Association wireless USF proposal to the FCC, saying it provides a windfall for competitors -- and General Communications (GCI) in particular -- without clearly addressing middle-mile connectivity needs in rural Alaska. ATA's proposal for keeping annual USF support for rate-of-return wireline telcos in the state at $55 million for 10 years, subject to reasonable broadband deployment expectations, was appropriate, said an Alaska Communications (ACS) filing in docket 10-90. The price-cap telco said the rate-of-return plan is consistent with its own Connect America Fund Phase II proposal for the state's price-cap areas. But ACS objected to ATA's "extraordinary" proposal to expand annual USF support for wireless competitive eligible telecommunications carriers in the state to $100 million for 10 years. The telco called the billion-dollar proposal a "CETC enrichment plan" that would not ensure connectivity to remote areas, including 188 Alaskan Bush communities. "ATA does not endorse a specific proposal for closing Alaska’s middle mile gap, with defined deployment milestones and enforceable performance standards for capacity, speed, latency, and -- most important of all -- service affordability (as the Commission adopted for the rest of the nation)," ACS said. It said much of the $1 billion would "underwrite GCI's unregulated middle-mile monopoly," thus harming competition. The telco said the FCC should address ATA's proposals for wireless and rate-of-return carriers separately. If the CETC support is increased, ACS said, the FCC should attach safeguards, including "reasonable non-discriminatory access obligations, affiliate transaction rules, and cost-based pricing requirements, to ensure adequate and quality broadband service sufficient to meet current and project demand." GCI Senior Counsel Chris Nierman emailed in response Tuesday: “All of the providers supporting the Alaska Plan have demonstrated its need and benefits to consumers. Alaska’s unique circumstances require an integrated plan to address the challenges for Alaska. Just as the FCC saw fit to provide stability for non-contiguous price cap carriers like ACS, a similar approach is appropriate for Alaska’s other providers.” ATA didn't comment, but its representatives last week discussed its planned "Alaska Infrastructure Fund" with Wireline Bureau officials, said a Monday filing that included detailed proposed revisions to the FCC's recently updated rate-of-return USF rules (see 1603300065).