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The Utilities Telecom Council (UTC) said it was unhappy with the Federal Communications Commission for not naming a single representative of electricity, gas and water utilities to its Emergency Response Interoperability Center's Public Safety Advisory Council (ERIC PSAC), which is coming up with design and build-out plan for a public safety emergency response network.

The first meeting of the 60-member council, which includes commercial broadband and equipment providers, will be March 15. "When the FCC issued its National Broadband Plan almost a year ago, it recommended that utilities and public safety should jointly build, operate and maintain 700 MHz broadband networks," the council pointed out, and UTC nominated a reserve police lieutenant from New Jersey. "We recognize the important role that public utilities serve during emergency response efforts and their commitment to serving their communities," said an FCC spokesman. "However, under the current law, these commercial companies are not clearly defined as public safety entities that would be permitted to use the 700 MHz public safety interoperable broadband network once constructed. We currently have an open proceeding that asks about this very issue to determine how best to address their concerns. We look forward to working with public utilities on this issue going forward."

When it comes to providing consumers with movies and TV shows online, Netflix is king with its more than 20 million subscribers. But the competition for serving up content on computers, TV screens and mobile devices is heating up fast.

Last week, Facebook and Warner Brothers announced a new content initiative. Although the deal is tiny — at this point only a single movie is available on Facebook — the move comes on the heels of Amazon's announcement last month that it would give its so-called prime customers the ability to stream about 5,000 movies, documentaries and TV shows for free. Netflix says it isn't surprised by the competition. "You know, it's pretty unusual for the world to let you run away with a couple of billion dollars of revenue and a large market cap without testing the waters," says Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer at Netflix. "Now, I would say, do we take some comfort from the running room that we have? Absolutely. We have a huge library of content and we have a great relationship with over 20 million subscribers." The company's rise has been quite stunning — it had just 12 million subscribers a year ago. And it's now streaming most of its content, rather than sending out DVDs.

The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with online advertising company Chitika, Inc. that ends the company’s allegedly deceptive practice of tracking consumers’ online activities even after they have chosen to opt out of online tracking on Chitika’s website.

The FTC investigated Chitika as part of its ongoing efforts to protect consumers’ privacy online. Chitika, whose website states that it delivers three billion ad impressions a month, acts as a go-between for websites and advertisers. According to the FTC complaint, Chitika buys ad space on websites and contracts with advertisers to place small text files called cookies on those websites. Chitika also uses a technique known as behavioral advertising ­ by placing “cookies” on consumers’ computer browsers, the company tracks consumers’ activities on the web, including searches the consumer has conducted and sites the consumer has visited. Based on consumers’ online activities, the company then displays ads to them that correlate to their interests.

The FTC alleged that in its privacy policy the company says that it collects data about consumers’ preferences, but allows consumers to opt out of having cookies placed on their browsers and receiving targeted ads. The privacy policy includes an “Opt-Out” button. Consumers who click on it activate a message that states, “You are currently opted out.”

According to the FTC complaint, from at least May 2008 through February 2010, Chitika’s opt-out lasted only 10 days. After that time, Chitika placed tracking cookies on browsers of consumers who had opted out and targeted ads to them again. The FTC charged Chitika’s claims about its opt-out mechanism were deceptive and violated federal law.

The settlement bars Chitika from making misleading statements about the extent of data collection about consumers and the extent to which consumers can control the collection, use or sharing of their data. It requires that every targeted ad include a hyperlink that takes consumers to a clear opt-out mechanism that allows a consumer to opt out for at least five years. It also requires that Chitika destroy all identifiable user information collected when the defective opt out was in place. In addition, the settlement requires that Chitika alert consumers who previously tried to opt out that their attempt was not effective, and they should opt out again to avoid targeted ads.

The horrific earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in Japan have caused widespread damage to undersea communications, according to data collected by telecom industry sources. Initially, it was thought that the damage to the cables that connect Japan and Asia to each other and other parts of the world was limited, but new data shows the extent of the problems.

According to research firm, Telegeography, the following cables have been damaged:

• APCN-2, which is an intra-Asian cable, forms a ring linking China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan.
• Pacific Crossing West and Pacific Crossing North, which are out of service.
• PacNet has reported outages on segments of its East Asia Crossing network.
• Korea Telecom reports that a segment of the Japan-U.S. Cable Network is damaged
• NTT has reported damage to some segments of the PC-1 submarine cable system.

Most of the damaged network routers land in the Ajigaura or Kitabaraki landing stations, which are between Tokyo and Sendai. The tsunami and earthquake have not damaged Japan’s cable landing stations.