White House staffers seemed attentive during a Dec.10 meeting about concerns of more than a dozen nonprofit groups and technology companies about law enforcement access to encrypted devices, but Electronic Frontier Foundation Activism Director Rainey Reitman said the staffers didn't seem to share those views. "They maintained that President [Barack] Obama’s position has not changed in the last few months," she wrote in a Thursday blog post. "While they seemed well aware of our concerns about the technical infeasibility of inserting backdoors, they didn’t necessarily share them. That worried us a great deal." Rainey told us in an email that EFF wasn't represented in the meeting, which was attended by representatives from Access Now and New America's Open Technology Institute. The meeting happened after a We the People petition on strong encryption drew more than 100,000 signatures (see 1512090074). Concerns remain about increasing calls from law enforcement officials, including FBI Director James Comey (see 1512100032), for back-door access to end-to-end encrypted devices in terrorism and criminal investigations. The groups, which have said granting such access would undermine everyone's security and privacy, made several specific requests, Reitman wrote in the post, saying the White House is likely to issue a response by the end of the year. A National Security Council spokesman confirmed in an email that the meeting occurred but declined to comment on who attended or what was said beyond the White House's response to the petition.

Qualcomm said it decided not to split its chipmaking and patent licensing businesses into two separate companies. “Our review was comprehensive,” CEO Steve Mollenkopf said during a call with analysts Tuesday, after a board meeting. “We looked at everything.” Mollenkopf said a special committee of the board on which he served had looked at full and partial separation of the business lines, tracking stocks, a subsidiary initial public offering and “various changes to our capital structure.” Jana Partners, which invested more than $2 billion in Qualcomm in April, had pressed for a breakup to boost the share price, analysts said. “The strategic benefits and synergies” of staying one company “are not replicable through alternative structures,” Mollenkopf said in a statement. “We therefore believe the current structure is the best way to execute on our strategy to build on our position in the ecosystem and deliver enhanced performance and returns.” Qualcomm stock closed up 2.5 percent Tuesday to $48.02.

PricewatershouseCoopers officials discussed in general terms their outreach efforts as part of the FCC's planned local number portability administrator transition from Neustar to iconectiv (Telcordia). The LNPA oversees the systems that allow consumers to keep their phone numbers when switching local carriers. In an interactive webcast Wednesday, officials for PwC, which is the transition oversight manager, said their main outreach goals were to ensure transparency, create an open forum and incorporate feedback. They said there would be three phases to the transition: design, testing and migration from Neustar to iconectiv. The migration phase will include a period of "parallel activities" when both Neustar and iconectiv will be providing LNPA functions. A projected timetable for the transition is still being discussed with the FCC, North American Portability Management, LNP vendors and other stakeholders. The stakeholders include telecom and other industry providers, law enforcement agencies and others, said a PwC official, who noted about 500 people were on the live webcast. The company plans to hold outreach webcasts monthly.

Smartphones are the primary interface to consumers' smart homes, said a research firm report released Wednesday. It's helping create new app uses for music streaming services, driving interest in connected audio devices, wrote analyst Brad Russell. More than one-third of U.S. broadband households use their smartphones to stream music to a speaker or stereo system, said the research firm. Consumers 25-34 are the largest age group streaming tunes from smartphones to speakers, Parks said. Among all U.S. broadband households, 40 percent use a free service to stream audio and 26 percent subscribe to paid streaming audio services, it said. Amazon Prime Music is the top subscription music service among U.S. broadband households (10 percent), followed by Pandora One (6 percent) and Spotify Premium (4 percent).

The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions and iconectiv launched an online registry to "help accelerate the adoption of open mobile-to-mobile (M2M) systems," the groups said Tuesday in a news release. The oneM2M Application-ID Registry -- based on the work of a global standards initiative for IoT and M2M communications -- will move the industry "one step closer" to enabling applications developed on different networks and platforms to "easily and seamlessly" exchange information, they said: The registry provides a unique identifier for each application to facilitate communication between devices, and allows developers to "quickly and easily" register their applications online.

The LNP Alliance urged the FCC to "monitor closely" its planned transition to a new local number portability administrator, iconectiv (Telcordia), "to ensure there is no undue impact on smaller carriers and their customers." The group sent a letter to Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero that was posted Monday in docket 95-116. "We are particularly concerned about the timing and the cost of the LNPA Transition, and the manner in which the LNPA Transition is coordinated with the IP Transition," said the letter. The LNP Alliance said North American Portability Management and others have offered conflicting information about the timing of the LNPA transition, "ranging from March 2017 to November 2017 to still later." The LNP Alliance said it supported creation of a "public timeline" for the transition, even if it needed to be adjusted later, so "small and large carriers alike have equal access" to timing plans. The group said it also was concerned that the "direct costs to small carriers have not been clarified publicly" and about "the interrelationship between the LNPA transition and the IP transition." It was concerned "there could be added costs and/or disruption of services if there is not close coordination between the LNPA and IP Transitions." Various small-carrier and consumers groups recently asked that the transition process be opened up and made more transparent (see 1510300060). A transition outreach webcast is scheduled for Wednesday, 3-4 p.m., a bureau public notice said recently.

Verizon joined the Obama administration's American Business Act on Climate Pledge and committed to reducing its carbon intensity by 50 percent from its 2009 baseline numbers by 2020, the company said in a news release. Verizon is one of 154 U.S. companies that have signed on to the pledge, it said Friday. "Verizon's commitment to [the American Business Act on Climate] is more than a single pledge," said Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen. "This commitment allows us to continue to assess how we are becoming more energy efficient even as our business expands."

Eighty-one percent of U.S. households get broadband service, up from 26 percent a decade ago, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Thursday. LRG said broadband accounts for 97 percent of home Internet service, compared with 91 percent in 2010 and 40 percent in 2005. Overall, 84 percent of U.S. households get home Internet service, and 69 percent of adults go online via a smartphone, it said. Sixty-eight percent of U.S. households get both broadband and pay-TV service, while 13 percent of households get broadband but don't subscribe to TV, LRG said. The data came from a phone survey of 1,223 U.S. households in October, it said.

FCC legal vulnerability on key net neutrality policies beyond Title II reclassification could help spur congressional broadband action, said Scott Cleland in a precursor.com blog preview of Friday’s oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Do not let the FCC’s likely unlawful means of broadband Internet regulation, i.e. Title II, distract you from the additional likelihood that two primary ends of supposed net neutrality ‘policy canon’ i.e. bans against ‘paid prioritization’ and ‘two-sided markets’ (only users should pay), are also likely unlawful, even under Title II, sans new legislation,” said Cleland, chairman of NetCompetition, an “eforum” he says is “supported by broadband interests.” The paid prioritization ban effectively forces broadband ISPs to carry Internet edge traffic for free, and while Title II of the Communications Act gives the FCC authority to ensure “reasonable” pricing, such free service “is not something tariff precedents have found ‘reasonable,’” he said Sunday, citing a Phoenix Center paper. Cleland said the ban on a two-sided Internet service market also was at odds with Title II precedent on “1-800 calls, yellow pages advertising, etc.”

The FCC said its Oklahoma tribal guidance for Lifeline USF shouldn't be stayed, pending further review. In a June order, the commission announced that effective Feb. 9, it will view an 1870-1890 historical map of Oklahoma, "which is the most accurate available representation" of former tribal boundaries in the state, as the basis for identifying former reservations, while continuing to consult with Oklahoma tribal nations on the map, said the FCC's opposition to the partial stay request of Assist Wireless in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Assist Wireless v. FCC, No. 15-1324). Petitioners don't "challenge the substance of the FCC’s interpretive guidance or the accuracy of the Oklahoma Historical Map; they instead challenge the Order on procedural grounds only," the FCC said. "But Petitioners’ legal arguments are insubstantial, and they have not shown that they are likely to prevail. Nor have they demonstrated that allowing the FCC’s interpretive rule to go into effect as planned would cause them any irreparable injury. And delaying implementation of this guidance would only harm the public by allowing public funds to subsidize areas that should not be eligible for enhanced Tribal Lifeline benefits." Carriers receive a higher monthly subsidy ($34.25) for serving low-income Lifeline users in tribal areas across the country, including former tribal areas in Oklahoma, than for serving those in other areas ($9.25).