Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., said spectrum is the “big issue” facing the House Communications Subcommittee. “We know there is not enough spectrum,” the vice chairman said Wednesday night at a Phoenix Center event. Consumer preferences toward streaming video and audio are changing rapidly and “none of that happens without spectrum,” he said.
IPv6 has been “proven ready for business” after more than 3,000 websites, 60 access providers and five home router vendors moved permanently to it for the Internet Society world launch Wednesday, ISOC Chief Internet Technology Officer Leslie Daigle told a news briefing Thursday. “There are no more excuses” for not running IPv6 alongside IPv4, said Google Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf. Companies that aren’t capable of doing so must “get going,” he said. While it will take time for the technology to spread to all networks, websites and consumer equipment, some players are already looking ahead to its uses in emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), smart grids and cloud computing, they said. There’s a much larger supply of IPv6 addresses, vs. a dwindling supply of IPv4 Internet Protocol addresses.
The FTC said International Trade Commission exclusion orders in favor of a standard essential patent (SEP) holder, where infringement is based on implementation of standardized technology, “has the potential to cause substantial harm to U.S. competition, consumers and innovation.” It made the statement in response to an ITC request for comments in Investigation Nos. 337-TA-745 and 337-TA-752. The cases involve products such as iPhones and Xbox 360s.
A draft order circulated by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski earlier this week freezing further grants of pricing flexibility as the agency seeks more data on special access pricing looks likely to be the first contested order before the newly reconstituted FCC, complete with a first “no” vote from new Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai.
DALLAS -- The FCC didn’t go far enough when it started an initiative for a voluntary anti-bot code of conduct for ISPs and domain name system best practices, said Jeff Goldthorp, associate Public Safety Bureau chief for cybersecurity and communications reliability. “We were singlemindedly focused more on the tethered environment, less on the tetherless environment,” he said on a panel at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference on Wednesday.
The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council approved a report Wednesday recommending a testbed to collect data on 911 location accuracy when calls are made inside a building. A CSRIC working group on E-911 location accuracy had been asked to prepare a report by the FCC answering eight questions on indoor location accuracy. The group decided more data must be collected first to get a better handle on the topic, even as more people are using cellphones to call 911, in and out of their homes.
The draft version of the future International Telecommunication Regulations includes “this fuzzy boundary between ’telecom’ and ‘Internet,'” said Syracuse University Professor Milton Mueller, a day after he urged the U.S. government to provide access to the draft. The draft of the document, called TD64, was sent to him in a “mysterious email,” Mueller wrote, and it was posted on the website of the Internet Governance Project (http://xrl.us/bnava8). The ITU secretariat said it did not see a problem with the publication/leak.
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said Wednesday he didn’t think there is enough political will for lawmakers to tackle music royalty performance rights this session. He'd prefer an industry-based solution rather than congressional intervention, he said: “Frankly you see a stalemate up here on these issues, and so it really is better done out in the marketplace,” he told us following a subcommittee hearing on the future of audio. He and other subcommittee members praised a recent Clear Channel agreement to pay performance royalties to the Big Machine Label Group and its artists (CD June 6 p12).
DALLAS -- U.S. networks have seen a 20,000 percent increase in mobile data traffic over the past five years, and that growth could freeze in its tracks without public policy that makes enough spectrum available, AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson. Getting the public policy right will drive economic growth, he told a Telecommunications Industry Association conference in his keynote.
Wednesday’s Internet Society world IPv6 launch appeared headed for success at our deadline, with several participants saying they had encountered few if any problems in their own or customers’ connectivity, and experienced significant leaps in traffic. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of work to do, they said. Among other things, concerns remain in Europe, which is about to run out of IPv4 addresses and is lagging in IPv6 deployment, several observers said.