Philip Verveer is optimistic U.N. proposals to regulate the Internet can be defeated. The State Department coordinator for international communications and information policy spoke at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Thursday. Subcommittee members reaffirmed their opposition to any U.N. proposals that could, as Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said, “break the Internet."
Facebook competing with Comcast? The FTC foresees such a scenario, and is taking a closer look at the competition and privacy issues that may arise as disparate platform providers increasingly enter each other’s businesses, commissioners Maureen Ohlhausen and Julie Brill said in a taped interview on The Communicators set to be shown this weekend on C-SPAN. They were attending last week’s Cable Show in Boston, and raised the possible inquiries into convergence independently of each other in separate interviews. Ohlhausen conceded she hasn’t personally read privacy policies and disclosures from at least one major Internet company, while Brill hinted the FTC may take interest in the spectrum deal between Verizon Wireless and four cable companies.
Public Knowledge and the California Public Utilities Commission squared off in reply comments to a March 1 FCC public notice on intentional interruptions of wireless service by government agencies seeking to protect public safety, disagreeing sharply on whether the FCC has authority to impose national rules. The FCC issued the notice after the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) shut down wireless service at one of its stations for three hours last August to prevent a possible protest (CD May 2 p8).
Three European Parliament panels vetting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement urged the lead committee to refuse consent to the controversial pact, they said Thursday. Opposition from the Civil Liberties (LIBE) and Industry (ITRE) committees was expected, but the Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee’s stance surprised one digital rights activist. But the close votes, and the European Commission’s determination to press on, mean the treaty is likely still in play, European Digital Rights Advocacy Coordinator Joe McNamee said.
In 2016, more traffic will traverse global networks than in all prior years combined, and government and industry will have to work together to ensure efficient use of the spectrum to support all the new traffic, panelists said at the unveiling of the Cisco Visual Networking Index forecast Wednesday. Cisco estimates that the Internet will quadruple in size over the next four years, with annual global Internet Protocol traffic forecast at 1.3 zettabytes. That’s 1.3 trillion gigabytes, and it’s likely a conservative estimate, said Doug Webster, Cisco senior director-service provider marketing.
Disclosures and other significant information must be made clear and conspicuous to customers making purchase decisions on mobile and online platforms, technology experts and state and federal government officials said Wednesday at the FTC. Tailoring disclosures and consent messages for mobile use was part of the discussion at the commission’s workshop on updating its 12-year-old “Dot Com Disclosures,” the online ad disclosure guidance.
The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee was asked by the NTIA Wednesday to refocus on a key issue for the wireless industry, anxious to get more spectrum in play for wireless broadband -- how to facilitate sharing between commercial and federal users in the 1695-1710 MHz and 1755-1850 MHz bands. The CSMAC will divide into five working groups looking at sharing the spectrum, per a document released Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm9qwr).
Disney executives defended the amount of money they charge distributors to carry ESPN and other pay-TV networks, during investor conferences Wednesday. Asked how Disney reconciles the need to preserve a pay-TV industry that’s affordable for 90 percent of U.S. households while also maximizing the value of its products, Chairman Bob Iger criticized distributors for complaining about the price of ESPN. “Distributors complain about the cost of the product and they do that more than selling the value of the product to their customers,” he told a Sanford Bernstein conference. “Usually if you have a distributor out there that has a pretty solid business model, they're out their extolling the virtues of what they're selling and not complaining about the cost."
Work on preparing for longer Internet Protocol addresses can guide energy-reduction and efficiency efforts, executives from the cable, content and consumer electronics industries said on a Brookings Institution panel. They said cable operators’ preparations that began several years ago for IPv6 are bearing fruit now that shorter IPv4 addresses are being exhausted. The IPv6 efforts can be a guide to all those industries’ work at an early stage to cut energy consumption and use power more efficiently, speakers said. Rivals will have to work together, and companies with their vendors, for the energy effort to be a success, executives at Intel, Comcast and its NBCUniversal business said.
A process of cybersecurity industry collaboration that started last fall bore fruit Wednesday at a White House event, with the Industry Botnet Group (IBG) as expected (CD May 29 p9) releasing a set of principles for mitigating the effects of botnet infections. FCC, Department of Homeland Security and Commerce Department leaders also spoke at the event. “Combating botnets is not a new phenomenon” but a “broader base” of organizations is now working together, Liesyl Franz, TechAmerica vice president-cybersecurity policy, told reporters on a conference call after the event.