Data security legislation seems likely to move sooner through the House Commerce Committee than other privacy legislation, House lawmakers and aides said. But state preemption and other dicey issues could trip up a federal measure to protect consumers in data breaches, other lobbyists said. The Safe Data Act (HR-2577) by Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., is slated to receive a markup this September in the House Commerce Committee, House officials said. Other privacy bills have stalled and it’s unclear when they will receive committee votes.
A windfall awaits TV stations in presidential battleground states and those whose communities have contested congressional races because of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and related developments, say political operatives and researchers. Last year’s decision struck down restrictions on donations by corporations, including nonprofits not required to report their funding sources. It has “opened up the floodgates” of independent spending in campaigns, said President Bill Hillsman of North Woods Advertising, an ad agency and political communications firm that works for independent and liberal candidates. An executive of a political TV ad agency said ripples from the opinion will have “a major effect” in the 2012 campaign. “It’s pretty much entirely new money,” he said. But a broadcaster disputed that.
Many stimulus broadband projects are still waiting for environmental review, though construction has been under way throughout the country, Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein said Wednesday during the Broadband Talk Radio show Gigabit Nation. Meanwhile, the agency is considering more outreach efforts to minority projects for potential grant and loan opportunities, he said.
The cable industry has more questions than answers on what Google-Motorola Mobility means for tens of millions of Motorola set-top boxes used by North American TV subscribers. Cable executives said their companies were caught off guard by Monday’s $12.5 billion agreement (CD Aug 16 p1) for Google to buy Motorola Mobility. There’s some hope among operators and their suppliers that the deal could lead to a wider array of new products that subscribers can use at home, interviews this week found. With Google seeming more focused on Motorola Mobility’s thousands of patents and the cellphone business, executives and analysts said set-tops may now be more of an afterthought for the combining companies.
A technology wish list from Huawei shows how the North American operation of the huge Chinese vendor is pressing ahead in sensitive network businesses in the face of persistent resistance from the U.S. administration and Congress in the name of national security (CD Feb 16 p10). A description of needs that the company prepared for a Silicon Valley “speed dating” event with developers from around the country and beyond offers a road map of Huawei’s activity and ambitions in this region, said Rory Moore, the CEO of CommNexus, the matchmaker for the event, which runs Monday to Wednesday. The list includes desired data mining, location-services and security technologies.
Verizon and Google disagreed sharply on whether the FCC should give tw telecom the declaratory ruling it asked for. Tw seeks a ruling that VoIP is a telecom service under Title II, giving the company the right “to establish direct IP-to-IP interconnections.” Google, as well as NCTA and a number of cable operators, supported the company’s arguments. Verizon and USTelecom said any such ruling would be premature.
A second cable operator may get an FCC waiver to encrypt all channels. RCN now wants (CD Aug 16 p13) to follow Cablevision’s lead and be able to turn on and off service remotely, cutting down on signal theft and the expense and pollution of sending out technicians. Commission approval of RCN’s new request seems likely, and there will probably be less opposition to the move expressed than Cablevision faced in 2009, industry lawyers and an analyst said in interviews Tuesday. They said the regulator seems unlikely to start a rulemaking to examine whether it’s worth keeping a ban on operators encrypting channels in the basic tier. RCN wants out of that ban in Chicago and New York, where it’s gone all-digital.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., lambasted FCC transparency after the agency refused to show him the allotment optimization model (AOM) used by the commission to predict various possible outcomes of voluntary incentive auctions (CD June 21 p13). In an Aug. 3 letter, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told Dingell that disclosing the model would harm the agency’s process and the marketplace. The refusal is “deeply troubling from a number of perspectives,” Dingell replied in a letter Tuesday. “One wonders if perhaps Members of Congress would have an easier time getting information from the Commission by filing Freedom of Information Act requests."
Verizon and Verizon Wireless told the FCC a declaratory order remains the appropriate mechanism for addressing their concerns that the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) should be paid by the carriers seeking ports, not the carrier handing off numbers. Competitive carriers and cable operators disagreed. On June 1, the Wireline Bureau sought comment on Verizon’s May 20 petition and replies were due Monday (http://xrl.us/bk9qqm).
The GPS industry challenged LightSquared over the scope of interference to GPS signals if it were to begin service only in the lower part of the L-band. The objections came in reply comments filed at the FCC Monday. The effect to GPS services would be more far-ranging than LightSquared has let on, they said. The reply comments filed in docket 11-109 discuss the results reported by the FCC-required technical working group, meant to investigate interference concerns from LightSquared’s planned service. LightSquared continued to advocate its latest proposal, filed as part of the working group report, to begin service in the spectrum furthest away from the GPS services while also chastising GPS interests over their unwillingness to cooperate.