Six years after world IPv6 launch, the technology is in the "early majority" phase, said the Internet Society and others tracking rollout this week. The longer addresses are increasingly used by telcos, mobile operators, content networks and data centers, but deployment is being delayed by factors like the "elephant in the room" -- enterprise networks, ISOC reported. One issue has been the lack of a viable business case, but that's changing as IPv4 Internet Protocol addresses become more expensive, observers said.
Watching his decisions as chairman be reversed by what he repeatedly called “the Trump FCC” is “painful,” said former Chairman Tom Wheeler in an interview on C-Span's The Communicators, likely to be telecast Saturday and posted Friday. Wheeler, now with the Brookings Institution, disputed reports he ordered a cover-up of a distributed denial of service attack (see 1806060032 and 1806070051), praised the EU general data protection regulation and dared current Chairman Ajit Pai to push for Congress to enact net neutrality legislation. If Pai “has the courage of his convictions” and current net neutrality rules are “right for the American people,” Pai should call House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and ask for a vote, Wheeler said. It's “fascinating” the Republican position during his administration was that Congress should decide net neutrality rules and now it's the reverse, he said.
Capitol Hill moved forward on legislation aimed at limiting President Donald Trump's ability to lift or otherwise weaken a Department of Commerce-imposed seven-year ban on U.S. companies selling telecom software and equipment to ZTE, despite the department's announcement earlier Thursday it had reached a deal on an alternative punishment. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other lawmakers blasted the deal or viewed it with skepticism, while other insisted they would need to hear more from the White House. Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security announced the seven-year ban in April (see 1804170018). Trump faced criticism and threats of legislative action since he first explored lifting the ban last month (see 1805140062, 1805220057, 1805230058, 1805240064 and 1805250059).
Commissioners were in lockstep Thursday as they approved a high-band Further NPRM, though there was a party-line rift over the pre-auction limit of 1250 MHz of millimeter-wave spectrum that any party can buy at auction. The agency is sending "confusing signals" to industry given those limits and yet not committing to a time frame for making available more spectrum, said sole Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who dissented in part. Her support of the pre-auction limits was unclear (see 1805250058). The FCC said there was no substantive changes from the draft, but the approved item wasn't released Thursday. Commissioners also Thursday approved a telecom discontinuance streamlining order and six other items (see 1806070021).
COCKEYSVILLE, Md. -- About 70 people with protest signs, a megaphone and a stack of cardboard boxes made up to look like hollow TV sets gathered to protest outside the Sinclair shareholders' meeting for about two hours Thursday, yelling back at honking cars and chanting against “Trump TV.” Most we interviewed said protesting would help to generate more public opposition to Sinclair's proposed purchase of Tribune Media but conceded their demonstration doesn't have much of a chance of swaying Sinclair's shareholders. “No, it doesn't,” said shareholder James Patterson, 63, who described both shareholder votes and peaceful protests as “part of the democratic process.”
Growing delay in establishing a Lifeline national verifier is worrying some states and put Utah in a difficult situation, where its state eligibility system may terminate before the national system is available, state officials told us this week. Utah eligible telecom providers plan to self-certify consumers starting July 1, though some warned such a process can increase fraud risk.
The FCC approved 3-1 an order to further relax telecom service discontinuance duties and related regulatory processes in an effort to remove barriers and encourage the industry shift from legacy wireline to next-generation, IP-based offerings. Commissioners also voted 4-0 to adopt an order to relieve certain rural telcos of USF contribution obligations on their broadband services to equalize their treatment with other carriers and promote affordability. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel largely dissented on the discontinuance order and concurred on the rural telco USF order.
LAS VEGAS -- Though few consumers suffer a direct impact from widely publicized data breaches, their high level of concern over security is legitimate, panelists said at Integrated Life Day (see 1806050067) at Infocomm Tuesday. Worse, panelists said, they can't do anything about their concerns. Parks research says 75 percent of U.S. broadband households say keeping data and communications safe -- and keeping them private -- are important, and for 23 percent polled in Q4, those concerns are a barrier to buying smart home products. “Consumers’ data is regularly being exposed,” said Parks analyst Patrice Samuels. “If consumers cannot trust us to keep their data secure, or to handle it responsibly, then we’re not going to be able to harvest all the valuable potential that data can bring.”
Between now and the U.S. 5G future sit hurdles ranging from an "urban crunch" of spectrum availability to the morass of dealing with legions of local zoning and permitting steps, speakers said at an Axios event Wednesday. North America “started late” on 5G standardization, behind the Far East, but the country has reversed its position in the past two years and the first large-scale rollout likely will happen within the next 12 months in the U.S., said Ericsson North America CEO Niklas Heuveldop.
Application developers interacting with Facebook still have access to friend data if the linked friends have downloaded the same app, Facebook Privacy and Public Policy Director Steve Satterfield said Wednesday. Developer access to friend data is considered one of the major issues that enabled the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach (see 1804100054 and 1804110065). Friend access allegedly allowed Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan to take user data from 300,000 people and access information from as many as 87 million users.