Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., wants tougher net neutrality rules for ISPs. On Tuesday she introduced legislation with Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., to create a new section in Title II of the Communications Act to codify the FCC’s six net neutrality principles. The bill would apply equally to wireline and wireless providers. Public interest groups that thought the FCC didn’t go far enough in its order said they supported the Cantwell measure.
The federal government seeks to partner with the private sector and international bodies to help drive standards development, key to achieving national priorities like smart grid, health IT, cybersecurity, cloud computing and public safety, said Commerce Department Secretary Gary Locke at the National Institute of Standards and Technology roundtable Tuesday. The administration is seeking public input on effective federal participation on standards and conformity assessment activities related to technology, he said.
MetroPCS will file a legal challenge to the FCC’s Dec. 21 net neutrality order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the carrier said. The lawsuit is patterned on Verizon’s challenge filed last week in the same court (CD Jan 21 p1). The company filed a notice of appeal through its law firm Paul, Hastings.
Helped by wireless growth, Verizon Communications posted a Q4 net income of $4.6 billion, nearly doubling its Q4 2009 profit of $2.4 billion. Meanwhile, most of the impact from the FCC’s net neutrality order “won’t be felt this year,” CEO Ivan Seidenberg said during a conference call Tuesday. The rules don’t sound “anywhere near troublesome” but there would be longer term impact if the FCC exercises its authority, he said. “We need to challenge the authority” over the long term, he said. MetroPCS followed Verizon in suing the FCC over net neutrality rules (see separate story in this issue).
TORONTO -- The Canadian government pushed back plans to auction off the nation’s valuable 700 MHz spectrum until at least the second half of next year, even though Canadian TV broadcasters are slated to start vacating that spectrum this summer and the nation’s major wireless carriers have been pressing for an earlier auction date.
Congress doesn’t want to mandate a data retention enforcement policy to help law enforcement but will very soon if it doesn’t come up with a voluntary standard, a bipartisan group of congressional leaders said at a House Judiciary hearing Tuesday. The message is loud and clear, replied Kate Dean, executive director of the United States Internet Service Provider Association after the hearing.
STANFORD, Calif. -- Civil libertarians go into Data Privacy Day, Friday, cheered by a string of recent victories in intermediate federal appeals courts concerning electronic communications, said two prominent legal activists. Last month, a “really important” ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati recognized for the first time a reasonable expectation of privacy in stored e-mail, said Professor Susan Freiwald of the University of San Francisco’s law school.
Don’t let public safety and some wireless carriers stop the FCC from auctioning the 700 MHz D-block, former government officials and others on the Connect Public Safety Now coalition told Hill staffers in a pair of briefings Monday. In panels on both sides of the Capitol, the auction advocates dismissed public safety concerns about spectrum sharing, and said AT&T and Verizon are only looking out for themselves. The Senate briefing in the afternoon was well attended by staffers for senators on the Commerce Committee, including aides for Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, Mark Warner, D-Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.
Qwest and CenturyLink have been in talks with state legislators about shifting video oversight authority to state from city, state officials told us. Although many states have some statewide video franchising authority, in states like Colorado, companies have to seek franchise agreements with individual municipalities before they can offer video service.
The FCC will consider reverse auctions as part of its overhaul of the universal service fund, two commission officials confirmed. The FCC is already structuring a pilot program that would allow reverse auctions for the mobility fund, but Chairman Julius Genachowksi’s proposed rulemaking notice sets up a separate set of reverse auctions, the officials said.