Idaho telephone companies will no longer have to fix outages within 24 hours or give customers a free month of service for failing to do so, ruled the Idaho Public Utilities Commission Tuesday in a 2-1 vote. At stake was Idaho’s Telephone Customer Relations Rule 502, which demands such quick repair for weekday outages and mandates the credit if that deadline is missed. About a dozen people and the AARP worried changing the rule would put the elderly, low-income and rural without the service they need.
Broadcasters worry about a repeat of problems with an ownership form when the FCC starts a system for all TV stations to upload to fcc.gov documents on paper in public files at main studios, their lawyers told us Thursday. They said the absence of a system to accept documents listing how much campaign ads sell for to politicians around the time of elections, quarterly lists of informational and educational programs, and other paperwork -- less than a month before online public files must start being created -- is causing some angst. The Media Bureau seems to be rushing to complete work on the forthcoming system, which could lead to another instance of glitches with a new paperwork collection system, as occurred for Form 323 biennial ownership reports, broadcast lawyers said.
The FCC quietly modified rules covering the 76-77 GHz band, both at the request of industry, intended to spur use of the band. Acting on a request from Toyota, the FCC agreed to change the limits for radiated emissions in the band to allow more use of “stop and go” adaptive cruise control and rear pre-collision systems in the cars it manufactures for sale in the U.S. The commission also agreed to allow fixed radar in the 76-77 GHz band at airports for foreign object debris detection and general safety. The FCC approved an order Tuesday, and released it Thursday.
A U.S. regulator gave more time to agree on set-top box energy efficiency standards among advocates at nonprofits seeking reduced energy use, and executives of consumer electronics companies and multichannel video programming distributors hoping to avoid rules. The executives said the talks on standards for set-tops have been fruitful, and they're hopeful conversations will pick up steam. The Department of Energy said Thursday it’s delaying a rulemaking schedule until after Oct. 1 to give the talks time to progress, and executives told us a fall time frame for a deal is reasonable.
EU lawmakers Wednesday blocked the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in what the author of the lead committee report called the “biggest ever defeat” of a European Commission legislative proposal. The EC could present Parliament with revised language later, but it’s more likely that the treaty is dead, said David Martin, of the U.K. and Socialists and Democrats. The 478-39 vote was the first time the body exercised its power under the new EU Treaty to reject an international trade agreement, Parliament said. The move shows that digital rights, as a political issue, is now center-stage for European policymakers, European Digital Rights Advocacy Coordinator Joe McNamee said in a newsletter. The intellectual property (IP) community, however, was furious.
CEA is no more enamored of NAB’s lobbying the FCC to encourage the voluntary inclusion of radio chips in mobile devices than it was with past NAB proposals urging Congress and the agency to mandate FM receivers in cellphones, CEA President Gary Shapiro told us in a statement Tuesday. He responded to NAB President Gordon Smith’s call on the commission earlier this week to begin “a serious discussion about the voluntary activation of radio chips” in mobile phones (CD July 5 p15). As ammunition in his letter Tuesday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Smith cited the important role radio stations played in distributing weather information during the recent storms that struck the East Coast and Midwest. Smith thanked Genachowski for convening a July 20 meeting of broadcast and wireless industry representatives to discuss the issue.
Special access reform and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s initial push for a vote on an order rejecting AT&T and Windstream pricing flexibility petitions are expected to be key areas for questions July 10 when commissioners are scheduled to appear before the House Communications Subcommittee for an oversight hearing. Other likely topics include USF/intercarrier compensation reform, progress on a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum and other spectrum issues, the Verizon Wireless/cable AWS deals and privacy regulations, said government and industry officials.
Five of the six top U.S. cable operators recently signed Wi-Fi roaming pacts to let their broadband subscribers tap into more than 50,000 wireless hotspots across the nation, particularly in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Six weeks later, they're trying to figure out how best to operate the new wireless broadband networks and make some money from them. Executives from the five large cable providers -- Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision and Bright House Networks -- said they're grappling with such key issues as locating the Wi-Fi access points, creating minimum service standards and determining the business model for the roaming service.
Rep. Howard Berman’s role as Hollywood’s champion on copyright enforcement online and elsewhere is serving him well in an uphill fight to keep his seat in a high-profile runoff against a fellow incumbent California Democrat, interviews with a wide range of players show. Opponent Brad Sherman has a similar record on intellectual property. But Berman has a huge advantage in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry and also leads with high tech.
CAMBRIDGE, U.K. -- Traditional regulation “will struggle to cope” with the privacy issues raised by mobile phone applications, a Vodafone official said Tuesday at a Privacy Laws & Business conference. Applications are the consequences of an ecosystem that includes dependent and independent players, and whose barriers to entry are incredibly low, said Stephen Deadman, group privacy officer and head of legal for Vodafone Group UK. Many application developers and platforms are based far away from Europe, so any data protection solution requires an understanding of the structures and dynamics of the system, he said. He urged collaboration among storefronts, platforms, designers, and carriers.