SEATTLE -- As federal and state regulators harp on privacy red flags at tech companies big and small, Seattle mobile location startup Glympse is confident in its strategy, founder and CEO Bryan Trussel told a TechCafe gathering Friday. “Initially we were very concerned” that a service that lets users share their real-time location with anybody would draw intense regulatory scrutiny, but the company decided that “we're actually the solution to that problem,” said the Microsoft and Xbox Live veteran. Having crossed 3 million users over Memorial Day and recently announced an in-car dash partnership with Mercedes-Benz, Glympse’s next phase is focused on partnerships with carriers and OEMs, he said.
STOCKHOLM -- “The multi-stakeholder self-regulating system of Internet governance … has served the system and the world exceedingly well,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt Friday at the European Dialogue (EuroDIG) conference. Bildt pointed to the success of the Internet and the parts that organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) played.
The FCC shouldn’t grant waivers of its accessibility rules for advanced communications services (ACS) such as VoIP and videoconferencing on videogame consoles and TV sets and digital video players, said the Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, National Association for the Deaf and other accessibility advocates. The groups were expected to oppose separate petitions from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the CEA for a limited waiver of certain accessibility rules (CD March 27 p4). The NCTA and Panasonic wrote the commission in support of CEA’s waiver request and the Voice on the Net Coalition said it supported the ESA’s request.
The FCC needs to become “more nimble” in “keeping pace with the marketplace and technological innovation,” new Commissioner Ajit Pai told the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee Friday. The FCC’s other new Commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, told the CAC consumer issues loom large for her.
AT&T and Verizon Wireless said there is widespread agreement that the FCC should change how the cellular service is licensed -- from a site-based to a geographically based regime. The FCC sought comment in February (CD Feb 16 p12) in a notice of proposed rulemaking, and reply comments were due last week.
The FCC special access order on circulation “lays out a path” for data collection, but the request will appear in a subsequent order, Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said. The order doesn’t roll back existing grants of pricing flexibility, she told a conference on the transition to an Internet Protocol-based telecom framework. AT&T’s top lobbyist also discussed the transition to an all-IP network at the conference, and blogged (http://xrl.us/bnbvrn) about it. (See story below.) The draft puts new grants on hold while the commission “sets out a path to reform” legacy rules that “increasingly appear ill-suited to the competitive landscape that exists for today,” Gillett said Friday.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The LTE industry’s first large patent pool will be announced in the late summer or early fall, said Roger Ross, the president of the group, Via Licensing. More than 20 patent holders, including big names, have signed on, said Ross and Joe Alfred, the director of patent licensing and sales at AT&T, a member of the pool. Neither man would identify other members or discuss the number of patents involved or the royalty rates that the pool will ask for licenses.
STOCKHOLM -- Europe remains divided on privacy regulation, panelists indicated at the European Dialogue on Internet Governance Thursday. With the Privacy Directive review underway in Brussels, the three EU bodies which were all represented on the EuroDIG panel, representatives of industry and non-governmental organizations struggled to agree how far data protection and privacy protection should go.
A State Department advisory group recommended establishing an informal “collaboration group” to allow governments and private companies to work together during an international disaster. The Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy (ACICIP) offered its recommendations at the State Department Thursday, as other officials reported developments of various communications working groups, and Yahoo spoke of its approach to international human rights concerns.
More companies told the FCC Media Bureau that a program-access dispute between Sky Angel and Discovery Communications is the wrong venue to resolve questions about whether online video distributors (OVDs) can be classified as multichannel video programming distributors and benefit from the same regulatory system. Intel urged the commission to initiate a rulemaking on the topic (http://xrl.us/bnbswz). “As much as the video marketplace has already evolved, we are on the cusp of even more profound changes as devices become more powerful, high capacity broadband Internet access becomes more ubiquitous and innovative ways to present and curate video content continue to develop,” the company said. “In such a dynamic and evolving environment, the issue of which video programming distributors are covered by the Communications Act warrants careful analysis."