FirstNet successfully negotiated the first of seven spectrum lease agreements with NTIA’s suspended broadband stimulus projects, pending FirstNet board approval. NTIA suspended these public safety broadband network infrastructure grantees, recipients in millions of dollars from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), in May 2012, fearing the projects would waste money after the federal government authorized the national $7 billion public broadband network. Los Angeles is home to the first project to negotiate an agreement, but in interviews, project leaders expressed hope that others are soon to follow.

No one supports a “down from 51 reversed” 600 MHz band plan, as proposed in the FCC Wireless Bureau in a May 17 public notice, CTIA said in comments filed at the commission. CEA offered a similar critique. The bureau also sought comment on a proposal to rely on TDD instead of FDD, which has been proposed by Sprint Nextel. The notice dominated incentive auction discussions at CTIA the following week, and with comments due at the commission Friday, it got little industry love.

Fears about digital piracy and the rights of visually impaired people to access copyrighted works are major opposing considerations as negotiators meet this week in Morocco to conclude a World Intellectual Property Organization-facilitated treaty (http://bit.ly/14GygD9), stakeholders told us. In letters to U.S. officials, organizations representing intellectual property (IP) rightsholders have argued that a weak treaty in this area could set a bad precedent for future negotiations on IP rights, while consumer advocates say those fears are overblown. Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn told us that IP rightsholders “want to make this exception as difficult to use as possible.” Potential provisions in the treaty would “impose greater burdens on those that serve the blind,” said Rashmi Rangnath, director of PK’s Global Knowledge Initiative.

No one supports a “down from 51 reversed” 600 MHz band plan, as proposed in the FCC Wireless Bureau in a May 17 public notice, CTIA said in comments filed at the commission. CEA offered a similar critique. The bureau also sought comment on a proposal to rely on TDD instead of FDD, which has been proposed by Sprint Nextel. The notice dominated incentive auction discussions at CTIA the following week, and with comments due at the commission Friday, it got little industry love.

Fears about digital piracy and the rights of visually impaired people to access copyrighted works are major opposing considerations as negotiators meet this week in Morocco to conclude a World Intellectual Property Organization-facilitated treaty (http://bit.ly/14GygD9), stakeholders told us. In letters to U.S. officials, organizations representing intellectual property (IP) rightsholders have argued that a weak treaty in this area could set a bad precedent for future negotiations on IP rights, while consumer advocates say those fears are overblown. Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn told us that IP rightsholders “want to make this exception as difficult to use as possible.” Potential provisions in the treaty would “impose greater burdens on those that serve the blind,” said Rashmi Rangnath, director of PK’s Global Knowledge Initiative.

The Obama administration is committing $100 million to spectrum sharing and pushing cooperation between federal agencies and industry, almost a year after the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended the White House shift its focus from exclusive-use spectrum to sharing (CD July 23 p1). Until now, the White House had been generally supportive of sharing, but hadn’t released a presidential memorandum in reaction to the PCAST report. The White House also issued a paper making the argument that the administration is making progress on broadband deployment (http://1.usa.gov/11NlwJI).

Public Knowledge elaborated on its proposal (CD June 12 p10) for the FCC to establish a process for telcos to rebuild damaged copper with new services, in a Monday meeting with several members of the commission’s Technology Transitions Policy Task Force (http://bit.ly/13Heip9). Because the existing Telecom Act Section 214(a) process is “not very well-suited” to situations where carriers choose not to rebuild copper plant in response to a natural disaster, the commission needs a “post-disaster network change process” robust enough to “absorb unanticipated challenges in disaster recovery,” PK said. The commission should first establish that carriers are required to submit a filing discussing their new anticipated services, PK said. Carriers should also have to establish that the replacement services will be “adequate substitutes” for the services consumers get over copper, including calling card and collect call capabilities, PK said. The commission should also establish that it will continue to treat the replacement service as a Title II telecom service “at least until the Commission has resolved the complex issues raised by the phone network transition,” PK said. “The Commission cannot let natural disasters become opportunities for carriers to shortcut the deliberations currently underway to comprehensively consider how best to handle the phone network’s transition to IP-based technologies.” Verizon’s intended Voice Link fixed wireless replacement on Fire Island, for instance (CD May 13 p9), should be treated as a Title II telecom service and the commission should determine how best to apply obligations like those found in Sections 251 and 271 of the Telecom Act, PK said.

The FCC’s 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order faced attacks on all fronts Wednesday, as ILECs, CLECs, VoIP providers and state regulators filed hundreds of pages of reply comments responding to the commission’s defense of its rules. With heated rhetoric, the challengers accused the FCC of statutory overreach, failing to follow the Administrative Procedures Act, and making straw man arguments in its briefs to the court.

Several House lawmakers condemned the government’s monitoring of telephone and online communications and asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to justify the NSA’s broad surveillance techniques, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. Their comments came a week after the release of classified documents by former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden that revealed how the National Security Agency is secretly collecting phone metadata and user data from online services (CD June 10 p5). Mueller testified that the government’s surveillance programs are necessary to thwart terrorist attacks against the U.S. and could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

Several House lawmakers condemned the government’s monitoring of telephone and online communications and asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to justify the NSA’s broad surveillance techniques, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. Their comments came a week after the release of classified documents by former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden that revealed how the National Security Agency is secretly collecting phone metadata and user data from online services. Mueller testified that the government’s surveillance programs are necessary to thwart terrorist attacks against the U.S. and could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.