Major U.S. cable operators, looking to make their facilities more energy efficient so it costs less to power them and equipment lasts longer (CD July 24 p12), have two new guides from the industry’s technical consortium for backend facilities. The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Tuesday released its first two standards for energy efficiency of hubs and headends which operators use to connect their larger networks and Internet backbones to regional cable systems. SCTE 184 is a recommended practice for how to locate such facilities and keep them running when commercial power goes out, and SCTE 186 is a specification for ventilation of such buildings and data centers, and ways to locate racks of equipment.

The 1974 Privacy Act should be amended to account for the tremendous technological shift in federal data collection practices, members said Tuesday at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management hearing. Chairman Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, advocated his amendment to the Senate Cybersecurity Act (S-3414), which would require federal agencies to implement data privacy policies and require agencies to disclose data breaches that involve citizens’ information. “I think it is critical to make agencies prioritize this before a breach occurs,” he said.

U.K. government thinking on broadband rollout has veered off course because of its focus on “superfast” services and a failure to consider broadband as a “major strategic asset” equal to roads, railways and energy networks, the House of Lords Communications Committee said in a report Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnivqn). It recommended the creation of open-access fiber hubs to drive broadband as close as possible to users. It also said that at some point it may be better to move TV broadcasting to Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), to free spectrum for mobile uses. The government said it’s on the right track. One analyst called the report ambitious but inconsistent, while a former FCC official cheered lawmakers for starting a public debate on the issues.

Without the $72 million in FCC Connect America Fund money, 100,000 homes in Frontier’s territory wouldn’t get broadband connectivity, CEO Maggie Wilderotter told us Monday. “We absolutely would not be able to reach these specific households” otherwise, she said, pointing to low population density that makes wiring the locations economically prohibitive otherwise. As Frontier praised the FCC for making this funding available, other would-be recipients said it wasn’t enough. Alaska Communications Systems, which accepted over $4 million to wire its unserved areas, said that even with the funding, ACS still couldn’t make the numbers work.

Boxee faulted a proposal contained in a letter last week from the six largest cable operators for dealing with third-party Clear QAM-reliant devices if the operators are allowed to encrypt their basic service tiers. Boxee’s lobbying efforts have slowed adoption of an order that would let cable operators that are all-digital encrypt that service tier, industry officials and staffers at the FCC, which got Boxee’s letter last week, have said. The company sells a device that integrates Clear QAM cable basic cable signals with other online video. Any long-term solution for delivering basic-tier service to such devices should be hardware free, Boxee said. The commitments laid out in the letter (CD July 26 p13) wouldn’t apply to smaller operators, it told officials in office of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Office of General Counsel and Media Bureau, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bniqke). An NCTA spokeswoman declined to comment.

FCC Commissioners Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai are raising concerns about a draft order circulated by Chairman Julius Genachowski that would terminate all 20 current 700-MHz band waivers to build out public safety systems ahead of a nation network in the 700 MHz band (CD July 13 p1). A major sticking point, agency officials said, is language in the order which they said would make it extremely difficult to get approval for a new grant of special temporary authority (STA) to build a system under a waiver. Discussions are ongoing and Genachowski offered some changes aimed at a compromise late Friday, agency officials said.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel raised strong objections to Seareka’s application for a waiver for its maritime survivor locating device. MSLDs are transceivers attached to life vests or other survival equipment, designed to help locate survivors of incidents at sea. The problem is the system operates in the 869.4-869.65 MHz band, used by U.S. carriers for cellular communications. Seareka told the FCC the frequency is widely used for maritime rescue across the world. The Wireless Bureau sought comment on the Seareka application last month (http://xrl.us/bnc4p9).

The federal agency having the biggest regulatory impact on cloud computing and data centers is an unlikely sounding source, said a consultant who bills himself as the only government-relations specialist for the industry: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “The CFTC regulates corn, not technology,” said the consultant, CEO Peter Kavounas of Cloud Strategix. He told us that what he called the cluelessness reflected in rules the commission has imposed and proposed shows why providers including telcos need to keep aware and start approaching regulators to explain how their businesses work and what they need. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has pushed back against several of the CFTC proposals.

Halo Wireless must “cease and desist” in 30 days in Wisconsin unless it receives necessary certification and “AT&T may take actions to remedy” the violation of an interconnection agreement, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission ruled Friday in an order concluding an investigation of the company’s practices. The Texas-based company still faces many opponents in legal battles across the country regarding its failure to pay access charges. The company’s bankruptcy filing last year won’t save it from the pursuit of state public utility commissions, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in late June.

After being accused of ignoring removal requests by the Public Safety Assistance Foundation (PSAF) last week (WID July 27 p10), Whitepages.com CEO Alex Algard told us the personal information search engine is “very diligent in response to user request for removal.” Since 2009, he said, the site has had a removal request process. “We've been looked at as the leader in providing tools … that let people take control of their information.” PSAF helps law enforcement and public officials remove themselves and their families from public databases.