An FCC working group will recommend by year-end the appropriate role for the commission regarding public networks and cybersecurity, and the resources it would need, Chairman Julius Genachowski told Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the Senate Commerce Committee chairman, by letter. After several agencies suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack, Rockefeller wrote Genachowski in July for information about the FCC’s plans for responding to and mitigating cybersecurity incidents, how it tests its emergency recovery plans, how often it probes its systems for vulnerabilities and whether contractors provide assurances that their systems can’t be used for backdoor attacks. The commission released the exchange last week. In his response last month, Genachowski said most of the information comes from a September report by the FCC. He said the commission follows guidance from US-CERT and federal continuity of operations directives about responding to cybersecurity incidents and keeping operations going. It uses continuous scanning for vulnerabilities and uses NIST criteria to rank its vulnerabilities, Genachowski said. The FCC has made agreements to ensure that cybersecurity is dealt with in contracts and its interconnections with other agencies, he said. “With respect to cyber security issues that occur in the public communications networks, the FCC is much more limited in its ability to detect, monitor and analyze cyber attacks outside the FCC,” Genachowski said. It uses information reported publicly or by other government agencies to get information about the workings of IP-based networks, he said. The commission can grant temporary authorizations or exemptions to industry members to minimize attacks, but it doesn’t have procedures dealing with “purely cyber-based” attacks such as a denial-of-service, Genachowski said. The FCC is hiring a chief information security officer, he added.
Comcast and General Electric said they expect 9-12 months of regulatory review of their deal for joint ownership of NBC Universal, announced Thursday. They said they don’t believe authorities will impose burdensome conditions. Critics, including some on Capitol Hill, were already lining up promising to raise competition issues.
Net neutrality rules proposed at the FCC probably wouldn’t affect the financial outlook of communications companies through next year, Fitch Ratings said in a report. The FCC is expected to act on the proposal shortly after it completes the National Broadband Plan in February. “While there are a large number of regulatory issues that need to be addressed in the telecommunications and cable industry, led by universal service funding and intercarrier compensation, these issues will be complicated and take a long time to resolve,” said the report. “Instead, it appears that in 2010 the Federal Communications Commission will focus on their involvement in the broadband development allocation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and net neutrality. Neither of these issues is likely to have a material impact on financials or prospects for the industry in 2010.”
FairPoint Communications is studying a Maine utility commission order demanding that the telco immediately cut its rates in that state for 12 months, and for the same period give its Maine customers a rebate (CD Dec 1 p10), the company said late Tuesday. “As you're aware FairPoint entered Chapter 11 on October 26, 2009. This is a complicated process which is being conducted under the jurisdiction of the federal bankruptcy court in New York,” company spokesman Jeffrey Nevins said. “We are currently reviewing the related issues raised by the Maine Public Utilities Commission in its November 30 order.”
The National Emergency Numbers Association urged the FCC to establish a subsidy mechanism for public safety that follows the model of the Universal Service Fund E-rate program. In comments on a National Broadband Plan public notice on public safety broadband issues, NENA and other public safety groups said adequate broadband service isn’t available in rural and tribal areas. Meanwhile, disabilities-rights advocates backed upgrades to the 911 system to support relay services for the deaf.
Small cable operators’ lobbying group supported Time Warner Cable’s efforts to rein in fees that the industry pays TV stations to be able to carry them. “Small cable operators and their customers -- who cannot afford to engage in hand-to-hand combat with price-gouging media conglomerates - urge Time Warner Cable to ‘get tough’ with programmers in hopes that some modicum of reasonableness will return to the market as a result,” President Matt Polka of the American Cable Association said Wednesday. “ACA further hopes that these efforts will lead Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to recognize that cable networks and broadcasters regularly abuse their market power.”
CTIA weighed in for the first time on Local Switching Support. The association called for comprehensive changes in the Universal Service Fund and opposed what it called a “backward-looking petition” by the Coalition for Equity in Switching Support. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a draft notice of proposed rulemaking that tentatively concluded incumbent local exchange carriers should get additional universal service support under the LSS mechanism if they lose a significant number of access line customers (CD Oct 13 p8). But the commission asked for more data before it makes a final decision.
Great Lakes Communications said it gave the Iowa Utilities Board plenty of notice before getting a temporary restraining order from the U.S. District Court in Sioux City, Iowa (CD Nov 6 p14). Qwest said Great Lakes gave the board no notice of the order, which stopped Neustar, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, from reclaiming all blocks of telephone numbers assigned to Great Lakes. “Both the Iowa Utilities Board and Neustar, Inc. were given ample notice of Great Lakes’s Complaint and Motion for Temporary Restraining Order,” Great Lakes told the FCC by letter Monday. The carrier also criticized a Qwest filing asking the commission to turn around quickly a reconsideration order, circulating around the eighth floor in draft, related to a dispute between Qwest and Farmers and Merchants Mutual Telephone (CD Nov 24 p13). Qwest said the decision would be significant to the district court case in Iowa, but Great Lakes said “that hope is misplaced.” The FCC’s first order on the Qwest-Farmers dispute “is final and binding federal authority as it relates to the Commission’s tariff-based holdings and analysis.” Section 405 of the Communications Act requires the commission to resolve substantive reconsideration of a tariff dispute within 90 days, but it’s been over a year since the FCC allowed Qwest to file a supplemental petition for reconsideration, Great Lakes said. “If the Commission were intending to overturn its prior decision, Section 405 required it to do so in August 2008.”
The FCC needs to take a close look at broadcast TV spectrum and whether it can be reallocated to meet the growing needs of wireless carriers, Commissioner Meredith Baker said during an interview on C-SPAN’s Communicators to be telecast Saturday. But Baker said other spectrum, including that now in the hands of the Department of Defense, also must be looked at closely.
The FCC needs to take a close look at broadcast TV spectrum and whether it can be reallocated to meet the growing needs of wireless carriers, Commissioner Meredith Baker said during an interview on C-SPAN’s Communicators to be telecast Saturday. But Baker said other spectrum, including that now in the hands of the Department of Defense, also must be looked at closely.