The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission denied state USF money to Sacred Wind Communications in a 5-0 vote Tuesday. Sacred Wind had applied as a means to fund “the extension of high-speed telecom and Internet capabilities to underserved areas,” specifically in the rural Navajo Nation land, but the Commission said it was concerned these USF funds “might be used for things like investor profits instead of consumer benefits.” Sacred Wind “lacked the proof necessary to show that underserved consumers will be connected,” said Commissioner Theresa Becenti-Aguilar in prepared remarks. The commission held an extended hearing on the case in February. Sacred Wind serves “approximately 2,200 residential customers spread over 3,600 square miles of Navajo Reservation and near-reservation lands in remote, rural areas of New Mexico,” the company said earlier this year(http://xrl.us/bnc4pg).
The FCC’s recent revision of its program carriage rules was consistent with the First Amendment, the Cable Act and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), attorneys for the commission said in a brief filed this week with U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (http://xrl.us/bnc4pn). The commission is defending the rules against a petition from the NCTA and Time Warner Cable.
Threats to Internet freedom are “real” and must be taken seriously, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said in a speech in Rome to the Associazione EGO and Puntoit. The comments are some of the strongest yet from McDowell, who has long warned about creeping regulation of the Internet. McDowell cautioned companies about the dangers of using intergovernmental bodies to regulate their rivals.
Members of the House Communications Subcommittee said there’s a need to update the regulatory structure that governs the video market. The comments came during a hearing held Wednesday. NCTA defended its use of broadband data caps, and the debate over retransmission consent boiled over as broadcasters defended their statutory right to control the use of their signals.
The Supreme Court’s Jones decision has left the law in disarray concerning warrantless government access to information from cell-site tracking, email, cloud computing and Web surfing, legal experts said Wednesday. “The law is really up in the air and uncertain at this point,” said Hanni Fakhoury, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer. Susan Axelrod, senior appellate counsel at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said that “for a prosecutor, it’s very frustrating” trying to deal with the questions opened by the case.
China and India have room for improvement in intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement, though China demonstrates progress, said Teresa Rea, deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) before the House IP Subcommittee Wednesday.
GENEVA -- Submissions in advance of a July ITU Council meeting suggested the organization’s work on international Internet-related public policy matters should move toward a “cybersecurity convention,” that a working group on the issues should be opened up to those with a stake, or that participants meet certain criteria to participate only in consultations to be developed by the working group of member government officials. A long-time ITU participant leading cybersecurity work in the organization said the idea of conceptualizing the global Internet as a “common heritage of humankind” isn’t a new one. The concept in the past has been used to extend jurisdiction by a global intergovernmental organization, he said.
A coalition of consumer groups urged the FCC to expand anti-cramming rules to take in both wireless and VoIP. Their requests came in comments filed this week. Carriers responded that no new rules are necessary, arguing that they have on their own taken steps to keep cramming from becoming a major problem for subscribers. States also pressed for FCC action on cramming. The FCC approved in April new wireline cramming rules, but put off any decision on applying them to wireless and VoIP, asking for further comment (http://xrl.us/bncyk3).
A consortium of high-tech companies, higher education associations and public interest groups announced a partnership Tuesday to spur the deployment of high-speed Internet using the TV white spaces at colleges and universities across the U.S. through what they're calling AIR.U (for Advanced Internet Regions). The white spaces market has been slow to get rolling, especially since the FCC has taken years to approve all of the rules for use of the spectrum.
Online media providers plan to ask lawmakers to modernize the rules that govern the video marketplace at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. Broadcasters will argue that they must maintain control over their signals to survive, while the cable industry will deny that it discriminates against online video providers, said advance copies of testimony published on the subcommittee’s website Tuesday.