A House panel approved a fiscal-year 2012 appropriations bill banning the FCC from using government funds to carry out the agency’s December net neutrality order, and trimming the commission’s budget to $319 million, down $17 million. Earlier Thursday, the House saved the Rural Utilities Service broadband loans program from the chopping block by voting for a surprise amendment to the FY 2012 agriculture appropriations bill by Reps. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., and Bill Owens, D-N.Y.
The FCC is considering launching a new proceeding that would eventually create formal rules designed to crack down on bill “cramming,” an eighth floor source told us Thursday. The announcement could come as early as next week: The Center for American Progress issued a news release saying that Chairman Julius Genachowski will make a “cramming” announcement on Tuesday. Efforts to reach the chairman’s spokesman for comment were unsuccessful, but an FCC official said Thursday that staff had promised a proceeding on cramming several weeks ago.
The Obama administration is fully committed to getting legislation through Congress funding a national wireless broadband network for first responders, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday during a speech at the Old Executive Office Building. Biden shared the stage with Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among other top officials, in a high-profile push for public safety broadband.
CHICAGO -- Comcast and Time Warner Cable have settled their months-long dispute over a prospective next-generation access architecture for the cable industry, clearing the way for cable operators and equipment vendors to develop denser, more powerful networks for broadband and IP video use. In a release pointedly issued during the Cable Show, CableLabs said it will consolidate the various technical and operational differences between the two dueling next-gen architectures: Comcast’s earlier Converged Multiservice Access Platform (CMAP) and Time Warner Cable’s later Converged Edge Services Access Router (CESAR) project. CableLabs said the new compromise standard, known as the Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP), will incorporate the main features of the proposed architectures of both cable operators.
CHICAGO -- Some of the nation’s leading cable operators, cable programmers, cable tech vendors and consumer electronics retailers said they were pleased and relieved by the initial results from last week’s global test of the Internet’s next-generation protocol, IPv6, which apparently went off without any major problems. Appearing on a special Cable Show forum on IPv6 this week, cable, CE and other officials said World IPv6 Day generated surprisingly few user glitches during the 24-hour period that stretched over parts of June 7 and 8 in North America. They also said IPv6 traffic climbed strongly on the world’s data networks that day and, while it still remains at relatively low levels, has continued to run much higher than its previous mark.
Discussions within the cellular subgroup have been some of the most complex and difficult to work through, as the larger GPS Working Group wraps up its report on interference issues, said officials involved in the discussions of whether LightSquared’s proposed terrestrial network would interfere with GPS. The full working group was required to submit its report to the FCC by the end of the day Wednesday. But in a late development, LightSquared sought a delay in the filing deadline until July 1.
Local online news is dominated by traditional media outlets such as TV, radio stations and newspapers, a study commissioned by the FCC said. The study by George Washington University Assistant Professor Matthew Hindman was one of five FCC-commissioned studies about media ownership released by the agency Wednesday. The FCC commissioned a total of 11 studies, the rest of which have yet to be released. It will take comments on the studies after it issues a notice of proposed rulemaking on its media ownership rules, the FCC said. That could be as soon as July, depending on when the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals rules on challenges to the last FCC ownership proceeding, an attorney following the proceeding said.
A pair of Senate bills aim to clarify the nebulous legal framework surrounding geolocation data and its interception, use and dissemination by companies and law enforcement agencies. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act Wednesday in order to resolve legal ambiguities over how geolocation data is treated, they said. On the same day, the Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced the Location Privacy Act of 2011.
A data protection draft bill took shots from the left and the right at a hearing Wednesday of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Manufacturing and Trade. Senior Democrats said the draft by Chairwoman Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., removed key consumer protection provisions from last Congress’ DATA Act proposal. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said he saw Bono Mack’s version as an overreaction to recent breaches of Sony and Epsilon. But both sides said they hoped to reach consensus.
CHICAGO -- FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said he’s puzzled why more U.S. ISPs don’t meter broadband usage, by charging for what subscribers consume as opposed to the current practice of sending monthly bills of similar amounts to each category of customers. The all-you-can-eat broadband model doesn’t make sense to him, and is unlike other services, he said during a Q-and-A at a Cable Show luncheon. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she understands those who oppose usage-based pricing, while acknowledging that a certain number of broadband users consume a disproportionate share of capacity.