The Department of Energy released recommendations for utility companies to ensure that all customers' energy usage data remains private. The guidelines, known as the Smart Grid Data Privacy Voluntary Code of Conduct (VCC), were developed in the past two years after customer concerns about smart metering technology, which were largely exposed in a recent white paper from the American Public Power Association, DOE said Tuesday. Its recommendations aren't mandatory but are viewed as a step toward ensuring customers can't be identified by data collected by the smart meters, said the department.

AT&T's planned acquisition of DirecTV will close in Q2, Canaccord Genuity analysts emailed investors Wednesday. The acquisition is expected to close in 2015's first half, an AT&T spokeswoman emailed us. The ongoing net neutrality debate and the FCC upcoming vote on a net neutrality order in February won’t affect the acquisition, Canaccord Genuity said. DirecTV didn't have an immediate comment. The news release announcing AT&T/DirecTV May 18 said it was expected to close within about 12 months, a DirecTV spokesman said.

The American Cable Association, in its reply comments filed at the FCC Thursday (see 1501080059), urged the commission to adopt remedial conditions to protect small- and medium-sized multichannel video programming distributors from alleged public interest harms associated with the AT&T/DirecTV acquisition. They should include redesigned nondiscriminatory program access rules and a commercial arbitration remedy to protect against unfair prices, terms and conditions, it said. ACA said the acquisition also could enhance the combined company's ability to charge higher prices for regional sports programming. ACA asked for similar protective merger conditions in its comments on the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal. In both deals ACA has proposed increased transparency of programming negotiations and a revamped system for bringing program access complaints. The FCC "must ensure" that procedures for enforcing program access on the deals "are effective for small and medium-sized MVPDs," ACA said.

The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) urged the FCC Thursday not to revise its interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, saying industry petitions to clarify portions of the law would “gut” the law’s intent. “We hope that the FCC will resist the pressure from business and industry trade groups to weaken rules that prevent robocalls to cell phones without consent,” NCLC Counsel Margot Saunders said in a news release. “Repeated unauthorized calls and texts to consumers’ cell phones invade privacy and cost money by using their precious minutes or limited text allowances.” The American Bankers Association and Consumer Bankers Association are among the groups seeking a reinterpretation of the law (see 1411060037 and 1411180026).

The FCC’s Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) Architecture scheduled its first meeting for Jan. 26, the FCC said in Wednesday’s Federal Register. The task force, which the FCC established to comply with the commission’s Text-to-911 Further NPRM (see 1411140062), will examine the current PSAP structure to determine whether further consolidation is warranted. The task force will meet 1-4 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room.

Motorola Solutions is investing in speech enhancement developer VocalZoom, Motorola Solutions said Wednesday. It didn’t disclose terms, but said other investors include 3M, Japanese firm FueTrak and OurCrowd. Israeli company VocalZoom has created an optoelectronic microphone that can enhance a speaker’s voice by creating a “virtual cube” so it substantially stands out above background noise. Motorola Solutions said its investment is connected to its plans to enhance public safety and commercial communications. VocalZoom’s technology “is the only technology of its kind that is not affected by any background noise, and has the potential to provide disruptive voice clarity in any condition,” VocalZoom Chairman Yechiel Kurtz said in a Motorola Solutions news release. The technology “has the potential to be the difference of whether a firefighter can communicate at a dangerous fire scene or if a transportation or utility worker can give or receive information in a noisy work environment,” Motorola Solutions Chief Technology Officer Paul Steinberg said in the release.

The Call+ calling app is available for landline and mobile users in the U.S., including Hawaii. The free app allows users to obtain 24 hours of unlimited free and uncapped calls to more than 85 countries by completing a quick in-app offer, Call+ said in a news release. The app also is available for landline users in the U.K., Italy, France and several other countries, it said.

Wiley Rein bought McBee Strategic Consulting. McBee will operate independently as a wholly owned subsidiary of the firm, Wiley Rein said Wednesday in a news release. The transaction will make Wiley Rein the only Washington law firm to bring to market strategic services like public policy practices and digital media practices, "in a robust, integrated offering," it said. The firms will operate separately with more than 310 legal, advocacy and communications practitioners, Wiley Rein said.

The FCC should adopt net neutrality rules that address the full scope of harms of last-mile ISP networks, said New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute in a letter in dockets 10-127 and 14-28. The oversight and measurement regime should be structured to ensure that ISPs don't continue to use interconnection "as a mechanism for extracting tolls and degrading their customers' service," it said. A nationwide measurement endpoint platform with server placements geographically dispersed across major markets and key points of interconnection should be part of the regime, it said. There also should be a focus on measuring the technical indications of congestion levels "in interconnection paths between the end-user and a wide footprint of transit networks," it said.

The FCC's adoption interconnection rules to give certain parties more favorable interconnection terms would reward behavior that's already proscribed under Section 5 of the FTC Act, said Jonathan Lee, a telecom attorney. Netflix wasn't surprised that its customers experienced degraded service levels as result of its "limiting the number of Comcast interconnection points to which it funneled its traffic," he said. Netflix's decision to limit its number of transit vendors artificially "meant that these vendors' capacity between their networks and Comcast were bound to become overwhelmed, resulting in congestion," he said in a blog post. The commission shouldn’t deceive itself into thinking that "consumer welfare" is served by "preemptively granting concessions to prevent behavior that is otherwise flatly proscribed by existing consumer protection laws," he said. Lee has worked on behalf of AT&T and other competitive and incumbent telecom service providers.