Correction: Cablevision, not Charter Communications, was the second cable company that the Computer & Communications Industry Association invited to its Monday panel discussion on media issues (see 1411170037).

The House approved the Senate version of the E-Label Act (S-2583) Thursday by unanimous voice vote. It had already approved its own companion version of the legislation. The bill would let device manufacturers include a required FCC label digitally rather than on the physical device. The legislation now advances for White House signature to become law. “I am confident the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology will do a great job updating our labeling rules," said bill author Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., in a statement after House approval. TIA praised the passage. “The current FCC requirement for manufacturers to either etch or print mandatory regulatory markings on the exterior of devices unnecessarily increases costs, limits design options and ineffectively conveys important information to consumers, especially as many devices become smaller,” TIA CEO Scott Belcher said in a statement. “By updating device labeling requirements, the E-LABEL Act will enhance the ability of our manufacturers to compete while also increasing access to consumer information.” FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel have also backed the measure.

President Barack Obama is likely to push forward on the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leader’s Summit, which opened Monday in Beijing, and may also target TPP progress at other meetings with heads of state in the coming days and weeks, said Peterson Institute for International Economics analysts. Immediately after the midterm elections, CEA President Gary Shapiro singled out a CE industry priority -- "fast-track trade authority" to reduce tariffs on high-tech goods -- as one of several legislative initiatives that he thinks will progress rapidly through a Republican-controlled House and Senate (see 1411050022). The Republican landslide in the midterms increases the likelihood that Congress and the White House will be able to cooperate on some critical pieces of the trade agenda over the coming months, said Peterson Institute senior trade analyst Jeff Schott on a Friday call with reporters. Obama and likely next majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pledged the day after the elections to move on trade. Congress is likely to vote on Trade Promotion Authority in the early weeks of 2015, and a TPP implementation vote could come within a year of securing TPA, said Schott.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler defended from a technical standpoint the agency’s December NPRM on allowing in-flight phone use while emphasizing the agency is involved in coordination that could include a ban of in-flight conversations. “The NPRM represents only the beginning of a process to consider carefully whether and how we should revise our rules to give airlines the ability to allow passengers to use mobile wireless services while flying above 10,000 feet,” Wheeler told lawmakers in an Oct. 31 response the agency released Friday. “The NPRM makes clear that nothing in the proposal would limit the ability of airlines to ban wireless voice conversations in-flight.” The FCC is conferring with the Department of Transportation in its own assessment of whether such calls should be banned, he said. The FCC has “created a formal input process to examine safety and security matters,” Wheeler said. “This includes a federal multi-stakeholder working group that FCC staff convened to consider national security and safety-related matters related to in-flight wireless services. The working group includes subject matter experts from the DOT, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ), and other relevant federal agencies.”

Public Knowledge upped pressure on all senators to save the set-top box integration ban, contrary to NCTA’s wishes and prompting the association's ire. Public Knowledge led a letter, backed by Common Cause, Consumer Action, Free Press and the Parents Television Council, to all 100 senators asking them to ensure repeal of the integration ban doesn't proceed as part of Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization. “If some insist on including special interest provisions to pad the pockets of the cable industry in legislation designed to keep the government open, we urge you to reject such a cynical, anti-consumer move,” the groups told senators. “There is no reason to hold the workings of the government or the delivery of satellite service hostage to the cable industry's effort to expand their monopolistic stranglehold on consumers.” They backed either stripping the integration ban repeal language or replacing it with a provision offered by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., which calls for a successor standard before any repeal. Markey and, as of the last week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have objected to hotlining the STELA reauthorization proposal due to this provision, and Public Knowledge has told us that other senators privately have voiced concerns (see 1411040053). Hotlining is a procedure that allows bills to be voted on by unanimous consent. STELA expires Dec. 31, and reauthorization is considered must-pass legislation before then. The House already approved an integration appeal in its STELA reauthorization this summer. “Every U.S. senator should know that American consumers are watching them as they decide whether to maintain choice and competition in the set-top box marketplace,” PK Vice President-Government Affairs Chris Lewis said in a statement. “If this legislative giveaway to Comcast and the cable industry is allowed to pass, it will provide them with a virtual monopoly on set-top boxes and allow prices on box rentals to increase unchallenged.” NCTA and staffers for the proposal's author Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., have defended the provision as having bicameral, bipartisan support. The groups’ letter “once again completely ignores the clear consumer benefits that flow from eliminating an outdated technology mandate that wastes energy and adds unnecessary costs to leased set-top boxes,” NCTA’s spokesman replied. “The fact that PK’s latest characterization falls so wide of the mark can only be interpreted as a conscious decision to remain willfully blind to the significant changes that have occurred in the video marketplace over the last decade, to ignore the harmful impact of technology mandates on innovation incentives, and to brazenly deny the manifest injustice of a rule that saddles cable customers with leased devices -- and cable customers alone -- with added costs for no appreciable benefit.” He called the provision “common sense” and said that it does not “disturb the underlying legal obligation to support separable security in retail devices and does not alter the market incentives that drive providers to expand the availability of its services.”

“One of my greatest concerns during a lame duck is that we could see leaders in both parties pushing through a nationwide internet sales tax,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told National Review Online Monday. That’s “one of the favorite causes of the corporate lobbyists on K Street, to jack up taxes on millions of mom-and-pop internet retailers,” he said: “That helps all the big businesses at the expense of the little guy.” Opponents and supporters of the Marketplace Fairness Act (HR-684) have told us that MFA proponents in the Senate are likely to attach that bill to the Internet Tax Fairness Act (see 1409230083). Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., introduced the Marketplace and Internet Tax Fairness Act (MITFA) in July, just after the House’s passage of the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (HR-3086) (see 1407210077 and 1407160078). MITFA (S-2609) combines the principles of the MFA, which would let states tax remote sellers with annual revenue topping $1 million, and the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which would extend the moratorium on Internet access taxes through Nov. 1, 2024.

TVFreedom issued another blog post Monday tearing into the pay-TV industry for reaping what it called too much profit and not helping consumers. “Using every means at their disposal, [pay-TV lobbyists] continue pressuring Washington lawmakers for new laws and policies that would separate out local broadcast TV stations from existing cable package offerings and, instead, would require consumers to purchase these popular local TV channels on an 'a la carte' basis,” TVFreedom's spokesman wrote of the Senate’s Local Choice proposal. “This is one component of a grand strategy to use government intervention to fundamentally alter the nation's existing video market in order to provide the pay-TV industry with an irreversible competitive advantage over the broadcast television industry for local advertising dollars.” TVFreedom is a coalition of broadcasters, including NAB. “Blinded by the potential financial windfall they'll reap as a result of broadcast-TV-only 'a la carte' through increased local advertising dollars, the pay-TV cabal is now engaged in a full-throttled effort to hide this truth from their subscribers,” the spokesman said. The pay-TV industry should “offer subscribers a lease-to-purchase option for DVRs and set-top boxes as part of service contract renewals” and take “proactive measures to overhaul their truth-in-billing practices for the benefit of customers,” the TVFreedom spokesman said. TVFreedom has been engaged in a lobbying battle with the American Television Alliance, a coalition of pay-TV industry stakeholders, throughout the past year. The American Television Alliance has defended Local Choice as necessary and criticized broadcaster greed (see 1408270052).

NCTA released a blog post Thursday outlining why it thinks Congress must repeal the set-top box integration ban, a longtime lobbying priority the association has pursued throughout the last year. A provision repealing the ban is part of the Satellite Television Extensional and Localism Act reauthorization legislation the House approved in July as well as in the Senate Commerce Committee proposal -- “good news,” according to NCTA. The provision is the source of a fight between Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and the Commerce leaders who included it, with intense lobbyist speculation for how that battle may play out in the lame-duck session. STELA expires Dec. 31, and lawmakers hope to reauthorize the law before then. “While progress on this legislation is currently on hold because of the Congressional recess, we will continue to urge Congress to sunset this outdated FCC rule,” NCTA said. The group said it costs consumers more than $1 billion “in unnecessary costs” and wastes energy. NCTA would back “supporting CableCARDs to decrypt video signals in retail devices and in the 50 million leased devices already in service” if need be, it said. Cable operators have included more than 50 million CableCARDs as part of their set-top boxes since 2007, it said, giving rise to the blog post’s title -- “50 Million Reasons to End the Integration Ban.” NCTA said “this rule isn’t protecting third party device makers, it’s really just a burden on cable providers and customers.” TiVo has disputed NCTA's lobbying stance and argues there should be a successor standard in place before the repeal of the integration ban.

Verizon dismissed fears of paid prioritization as “demagoguery,” responding to a letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Last week, Leahy requested pledges against paid prioritization from Verizon as well as AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast and Time Warner Cable (see 1410230041). “Unfortunately, the fever pitch over ‘paid prioritization’ and ‘fast lanes’ among advocates of greater Internet regulation is just demagoguery since no major ISP has expressed an interest in offering ‘paid prioritization’ and all agree that the FCC has a valid legal path to prohibit it,” Verizon General Counsel Randal Milch told Leahy in a letter Wednesday. “Verizon has no plans to engage in paid prioritization of Internet traffic.” He emphasized that paid prioritization is “theoretical” and a “phantasm,” without any history of an ISP even laying out the business case for crafting such deals. Milch bashed Title II reclassification and emphasized the FCC’s path to target paid prioritization deals under Communications Act Section 706. Verizon railed against Title II and restrictive regulation generally. “For example, some net neutrality advocates have attacked new business models, such as sponsored data or ‘zero-rating,’ that would save money for consumers,” Milch said. “Under these nascent arrangements, content providers could voluntarily agree to pick up the tab for usage-charges when consumers go to their sites. Or in other instances, such as T-Mobile’s Music Freedom plans, in order to differentiate its service a broadband provider could decide not to charge usage for certain types of traffic.” It would be “regressive” to ban potential “pro-consumer practices,” he said.

Four members of the Senate Commerce Committee asked its leaders for a hearing on the Internet of Things. “The proliferation of connected products is sparking a number of important policy questions related to consumer protection, security, privacy, technical standards, spectrum capacity, manufacturing, regulatory certainty, and public-sector applications, among many others,” said Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, in a joint letter Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1ybBonU). “Now is the time to start building a robust public record through testimony and questions.” The letter is addressed to Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D. A hearing would be appropriate during the lame-duck session around the winter holidays, they suggest, citing “millions of Americans” who will be “shopping for new tech products during the upcoming holiday season.” Thune “would certainly welcome such a hearing and will work with the chairman to see what may be possible yet this year,” a GOP committee aide told us, saying the “level of interest is certainly understandable due to the growth in use of such technologies and builds on various conversations that Senator Thune has been having with fellow committee members.” Rockefeller’s office didn’t comment.