The FCC’s delay in approving a waiver for the state of Oklahoma so it can build out an early public safety network in the 700 MHz band is putting the network at risk, a delegation from the state, led by Chief Technology Officer Alex Pettit, said in a meeting with top FCC officials. The state got a high-profile hearing, with state officials meeting with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett and Angela Giancarlo, chief of staff to Commissioner Robert McDowell.
The PBS emergency alert system pilot project using mobile DTV (CD June 6 p11) has been expanded to include a commercial TV station (KOMO-TV in Seattle), and organizers said they intend to bring the project to the ATSC for standards approval in May. The alerts developed by the four broadcasters involved in the pilot were shown at CES last month. This month, the partners begin a road show, with plans to bring the technology to WGBH-TV Boston, Alabama Public TV in Birmingham and Montgomery, Seattle and possibly Washington, D.C., said Jay Adrick, vice president of broadcast technology at Harris Corp., one of the partners in the pilot with LG, Roundbox and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Then, an improved demonstration will be brought to NAB in April, with additional use cases and functionality.
The House Cybersecurity Subcommittee unanimously approved in a one-hour markup Tuesday a cybersecurity bill authored by Chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif. Members considered slight tweaks to the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness (PrECISE) Act and agreed to report the bill to the full Homeland Security Committee. Lungren told reporters afterward that the bill is in line with the recommendations of the House Republican Cyber Security Task Force and is “on the same track” as the House Intelligence Committee’s Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
GENEVA -- Wider discussions on cybercrime are ramping up to evaluate existing legal instruments and to assess whether new measures are needed, speakers said at a high-level panel on cybersecurity and cybercrime Tuesday. A “universal convention on cooperation” is needed for the fight against cybercrime, a Russian official said. “Divergence of views” between governments is “very significant,” a U.N. official said. The panel was organized by the U.N. Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the ITU and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
Creation of a next-generation public safety communications network will require leadership “from a single non-profit organization devoted to this purpose,” said a report released Tuesday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT). The report also said any network should “incorporate commercial technology where appropriate” and find ways to “extend commercial technology to achieve robustness.” It emphasized the importance of ease of use and affordability in any network used by public safety (http://xrl.us/bmqc8z).
A New York State appeals court rejected Dish Networks’ challenge to sanctions a lower court imposed on Dish for allegedly destroying evidence tied to Cablevision’s $2.5 billion suit against it. The New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld Judge Richard Lowe’s ruling that he could tell jurors about erased emails in an upcoming trial into Cablevision’s claims that it breached a contract to carry the defunct Voom network. Jurors could assume the email evidence would benefit Cablevision, Lowe said. Cablevision sued EchoStar in 2008, but Dish assumed related litigation when EchoStar was spun off as a separate hardware company.
Comcast said it will expand the pool of customers eligible for its discount broadband program to households that have a school-age student receiving a free or reduced school lunch. And Comcast said it will double the download speed it offers for the Internet Essentials service to 3 Mbps. Those were among the changes Comcast said it plans to make to the program after five months operating it. Other changes include working to drop the price of the subsidized computers it offers, increase its efforts to market the program through local partners and print more digital literacy material to distribute, said Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen during a call with reporters.
Sen. John Kerry worries about a one-sided negotiation over spectrum in the House-Senate conference working on the payroll tax cut extension, the Senate Communications Subcommittee chairman said Tuesday. The extension bill, due by month-end, is expected to include spectrum auction authorization to pay for the bill. While the House and Senate Commerce committees have developed individual spectrum bills, the conference has three members from the House Commerce Committee and zero from Senate Commerce. In a speech Tuesday at a New America Foundation event, Massachusetts Democrat Kerry said he’s particularly concerned with a provision in the House bill prohibiting the FCC from setting spectrum aside for unlicensed use.
Senate Privacy Subcommittee members expressed their concern with the House’s attempt to modernize the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), during a subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., along with Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Al Franken, D-Minn., and Ranking Member Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said the 24-year-old law should be updated, but each said they were concerned about the unintended consequences of the House amendment, HR-2471.
The FCC approved an order Tuesday rewriting the rules for the Universal Service Fund Lifeline program. Commissioners Robert McDowell and Mignon Clyburn found aspects of the order lacking, but both voted to approve the order as a whole. McDowell dissented in part and concurred in part. Clyburn issued a concurrence on one part of the order.