Verizon Wireless delivered Phase II location data 91 to 95 percent of the time for five public safety answering points (PSAPs) in California and the five PSAPs did not attempt to retrieve available Phase II data for a “significant percentage” of those 911 calls, Verizon in an FCC filing (http://bit.ly/1e70rB8). The filing comes after T-Mobile (CD Sept 6 p10) and AT&T (CD Sept 11 p19) met with the Public Safety Bureau to discuss an ex parte filing by CalNENA made Aug. 12 that showed a significant drop in wireless Phase II location data reporting by five major wireless carriers to the PSAPs (CD Aug 14 p4). CalNENA measured the extent to which PSAPs have retrieved the location data that carriers have made available to them during the course of a 911 call, not whether the carriers have delivered Phase II data in accordance with FCC rules, said Verizon. Carriers do not deliver Phase II location data to the PSAPs’ call taker equipment “with the call,” but rather the PSAP itself is “responsible for retrieving the Phase II data from the Mobile Positioning Center,” said Verizon. Verizon Wireless’s vendor data showed the five PSAPs performed a re-bid for less than one-half of the 911 calls, and less than 10 percent of 911 calls for the PSAP where CalNeNA’s data showed the lowest numbers, said the company.

The FCC Media Bureau granted station KGAN Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s, request to move from Channel 51 to Channel 29 under the terms of a voluntary relocation agreement, said a bureau order released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1g60LwM). “The channel substitution will serve the public interest by removing any potential interference with a wireless licensee in the Lower 700 MHz A Block located adjacent to channel 51,” said the order.

The global community won’t wait indefinitely for the World Trade Organization to broker multilateral trading system deals, said newly minted WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo Monday in an inaugural address. The foremost current priority is negotiating a successful outcome at the Dec. 9 ministerial meeting in Bali, where “Doha Round” principles must be advanced, he said. Vigilance over protectionism is also of grave concern, and the Dispute Settlement Body remains in significant demand, said Azevêdo. “People only see us as good as our progress on Doha. That is the reality. And the perception in the world is that we have forgotten how to negotiate. The perception is ineffectiveness. The perception is paralysis,” he said (http://bit.ly/1d8kzQx). “Our failure to address this paralysis casts a shadow which goes well beyond the negotiating arm, and it covers every other part of our work. It is essential that we breathe new life into negotiations."

One of the key issues in the debate over U.S. spying is what powers the EU and its citizens actually have to redress privacy violations, said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the EU Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (WP) and the Netherlands Data Protection Authority. He appeared Thursday at the second hearing on electronic mass surveillance held by the European Parliament Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committee. The first part of the hearing was a private briefing on talks between EU and U.S. data protection experts in July. It’s unclear what rights Europeans have to fight back against collection of their personal data, since Americans themselves have scarcely any redress, Kohnstamm said Thursday. The WP, members of which are national privacy watchdogs, wants an international accord on redress, he said. The only possible actions at this point are political, involving the safe harbor, passenger name records and Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication agreements, he said. They're all based on trust in how people’s personal data is used, and if it’s being leaked by the National Security Agency and other secret services, in the end the EU has done a lot of work without coming to the desired result, he said. Referring to the discussion between the EU and U.S. on mass spying, he said there’s a “serious problem.” If it’s true that national administrations in Europe are doing more or less what the U.S. is, the EU must look at what the balance should be between intelligence services and data protection as a fundamental right, he said. It would be helpful if U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act material were declassified, he said. Documents arrive with mostly white pages, he said. Kohnstamm listed the information the WP wants, as set out in an Aug. 13 letter to Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Commissioner Viviane Reding and other EU officials (CD Aug 21 p18). Among the questions were what information is being collected on Europeans; when the U.S. considers personal data to be “inside” the country; and what procedures the FISA Court uses to target information collection. Several LIBE members said safe harbor should be suspended and questioned the point of having any such agreements with the U.S. Data protection authorities will meet in Warsaw in two weeks to discuss a possible protocol to reinforce the right to privacy on an international level, Kohnstamm said. He urged lawmakers to get on with their work on proposed data protection overhaul legislation as quickly as possible. The first LIBE hearing on surveillance took place Friday (CD Sept 6 p7).

The FCC gave CenturyLink’s Savvis Federal Systems a three-year contract to provide public cloud hosting services for the FCC’s public website domains. The contract, worth up to about $1.1 million, will include fcc.gov and myfcc.gov, CenturyLink said. The contract is for infrastructure as a service and includes a move of the FCC’s existing website infrastructure to a CenturyLink cloud data center. The telco previously got task orders to provide the agency with private wide area network services and managed trusted Internet Protocol services. Those two contracts are worth nearly $10 million over five years (http://bit.ly/13RnnPh).

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a nomination hearing Wednesday for Mike O'Rielly to be an FCC member and for Terrell McSweeny to be an FTC member, said the committee Wednesday night. The hearing in 253 Russell starts at 2:30 p.m., said a news release (http://1.usa.gov/17QRzev). A Senate vote on both O'Rielly and FCC Chairman nominee Tom Wheeler, who had a nomination hearing, is possible this month (CD Aug 5 p1).

House Commerce Committee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said Tuesday’s announcement of an industry agreement on interoperability in the 700 MHz band (CD Sept 11 p1) has implications for public safety. “On the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this agreement coupled with the important work underway to build a nationwide, interoperable public safety network will ensure our first responders are equipped with the 21st century tools needed to communicate seamlessly,” Eshoo said. Verizon Senior Vice President Kathy Grillo said Wednesday the carrier was pleased with the agreement. “By addressing difficult interference issues in a holistic manner, the parties appear to have developed a consensus solution that will promote efficient use of spectrum throughout the band and is a win-win for carriers and the consumers they serve,” Grillo said. But Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project said via email that public interest groups were right to raise questions about the agreement. “Our consumer coalition has been a strong supporter of interoperability across the entire 700 MHz band interoperability,” he said. “Interoperability is critical to smaller, competitive wireless carriers whose customers must rely on roaming outside their home region and who cannot otherwise get access to newest and most sought after devices. It will allow consumers to more easily switch carriers. Interoperability also is critical to an effective and efficient public safety network.” Interoperability should be assumed, Calabrese said. “Until now, the FCC has never auctioned bands of spectrum that lacked interoperability,” he said. “AT&T created this entire problem by leveraging its market power to create a proprietary band class. While this gave AT&T a competitive advantage, it harmed consumers and left a great deal of prime spectrum fallow, particularly in rural and small town areas. We urge the Commission to adopt the outcome of these negotiations in its rules and as license conditions that will be firmly binding on all parties."

AT&T said it completed its buy of 39 Verizon Wireless 700 MHz B-block licenses and related spectrum agreements (http://soc.att.com/189Krfe). The deal’s completion follows the FCC’s approval of the deal last week (CD Sept 5 p11). The spectrum AT&T bought covers 42 million people in 18 states. The spectrum “will support AT&T’s deployment of 4G LTE to meet surging demand for mobile Internet services,” AT&T said in a Tuesday news release.

Correction: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai sees a 700 MHz interoperability agreement as a further sign the agency should auction the H-block as quickly as possible (CD Sept 11 p1).

The incentive auction the FCC plans will be critical for funding the billions of dollars required by FirstNet, said North American Number Association CEO Brian Fontes in a Wednesday op-ed for The Hill (http://bit.ly/1eiHv3x). “This is the best and perhaps only opportunity to raise the necessary funds for investment in a network we so desperately need,” he said. “We cannot settle for half-measures and incremental moves -- the FCC must take decisive steps and set up an auction that delivers the resources needed to empower our public safety officials.” Fontes backed an auction in which all bidders are allowed to participate. “A limited spectrum inventory will reduce funds generated from the auction, and jeopardize the future of FirstNet and funding for Next Generation 9-1-1,” he said.