Digital and mobile technology will play an increasingly significant role in campaign ads for the 2012 presidential campaign and future races, said panelists at the Broadband Breakfast Club Tuesday. TV ads remain the primary choice of campaigns, according to Rob Saliterman, senior account executive of elections and issues advocacy for Google. But more ads in both the Romney and Obama campaigns are shifting to other media like email, mobile devices, Facebook, Twitter, Google advertising and even Pinterest, the panelists said.
GENEVA -- Revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) later this year should maintain a high-level focus on boosting investment and innovation, a group of 45 operators in Africa, the Middle East and Asia told an ITU Council working group in a submission to a meeting this week on conference preparations. Submissions variously called for boosting confidence and security in using networks, provisions to address cybersecurity, calling line identification, the availability of routing information, international Internet connectivity, naming and numbering, taxation of gear and services, and proposals to address fraud and cybercrime, which have raised past opposition. The submissions were made to a June 20-22 ITU Council meeting preparing for a December world conference, but they aren’t official conference proposals.
BRUSSELS -- Europe must immediately start working on a policy for use of the 700 MHz band or risk isolation, said Radio Spectrum Policy Group Chairman Roberto Viola at a Forum Europe spectrum management conference Tuesday. The band was tentatively allocated at WRC-12 for global use for mobile broadband, and the question now is whether Europe can afford to lag behind in the debate, he said. Although the band in Europe is occupied by terrestrial broadcasters, it can’t be ignored, nor can the future of broadcasting, he said.
The “glaring defect” in the FCC’s pricing flexibility rules is that they measure competition for end office services in order de-regulate transmission services, the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, a group of enterprise purchasers of telecom services, told aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Robert McDowell and Jessica Rosenworcel last week. In other words, Ad Hoc said, “they take the cow’s temperature to see whether the pig is sick” (http://xrl.us/bnb5tp). Ad Hoc was just one of several groups showering commission staff with metaphors and academic papers to try to persuade them on the state of competition in the special access marketplace.
AT&T and Sirius XM filed a joint proposal at the FCC on an agreement the two companies reached on shared use of the 2.3 GHz band for the Wireless Communications Service and the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service. The band received a prominent mention in the National Broadband Plan for reallocation for wireless broadband.
The U.S. government must accelerate the release of spectrum through federal sharing scenarios and faster FCC approval of commercial spectrum deals, panelists said Monday at an event hosted by the American Consumer Institute. The FCC’s slow consideration of commercial deals like the proposed Verizon Wireless purchase AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox, harms consumers and retards innovation, they said.
A deal between the Mobile Content Venture (MCV) and Elgato could be the basis on which future mobile-DTV deals with distributors are modeled, MCV executives said. The MCV’s Dyle Mobile DTV brand will support Elgato’s EyeTV iOS device and app, they said Monday. The MCV, a joint venture among Fox, NBC and a group of top station groups, said it hopes to let its distributor partners differentiate themselves through applications that use MCV content. The Elgato deal “could point the way for potential distribution partners down the road,” said Erik Moreno, senior vice president-corporate development at Fox Network Group and a co-general manager at the MCV.
State chief information officers want to make sure there are no “unfunded mandates” for states in the cybersecurity measures being considered in Congress, said Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). His group hasn’t taken an “official stand” on the measures being considered in the Senate, he said.
Two years into its digital agenda program the EU has reached about a third of its goals, but progress remains mixed and regulatory divergences wide, the European Commission said Monday. There’s too much complacency, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Europeans are hungry for digital technologies, but they're being held back by EU governments and industry, she said. There have been positive developments, such as nearly ubiquitous broadband across Europe, and booming mobile broadband take-up, the EC said. But the results so far spark worries that Europe won’t meet its 2015 goals and will fall behind competitors, Constantijn van Oranje, a member of Kroes’ cabinet, said at a press briefing.
As the telecom industry transitions to Internet Protocol, traditional regulatory approaches will have to be totally rexamined, and government should enact policies that encourage investment in new broadband infrastructure, speakers said Friday at a Wiley Rein workshop on the “IP Transition as Grand Challenge.” Industry stakeholders discussed strategies for the transition away from the TDM, as some wondered what to do about what they called “corrupt” state public utility commissions that want to apply legacy regulations to a world of new technologies.