ASPEN, Colorado -- White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel sees the bicameral reconciliation process of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S-754) as key to fixing the administration’s problems with it. Daniel kicked off the start of the Technology Policy Institute' annual meeting Sunday.
ASPEN, Colorado -- White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel sees the bicameral reconciliation process of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S-754) as key to fixing the administration’s problems with it. Daniel kicked off the start of the Technology Policy Institute' annual meeting Sunday.
Broadcasters and legislators are waiting to see if the FCC will act on recent commitments to step up enforcement against pirate radio stations, according to interviews and an exchange of letters between Chairman Tom Wheeler and 33 House members. In Wheeler's letter to the legislators and in a June roundtable with broadcasters, the FCC identified some actions to turn up the heat on unlicensed broadcasters, but it's unclear if the agency will take the simple step that broadcasters want most, said New York Broadcasters Association President David Donovan.
Seven industry and public safety organizations submitted a proposal to the FCC recommending key principles for guiding efforts to deploy and operate next-generation 911 systems with effective governance and accountability, said a news release from Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. For the IP transition, the recommendations said efforts should be made to accelerate the continued development and implementation of NG-911 standards and systems, while assuring reliability. On governance, providers of 911 services must be accountable for the reliability of their services and vendor contracts, the filing said. On NG-911 reliability, the transition to NG-911 must be accomplished in a manner that doesn't undermine the availability, reliability and resiliency of the system, it said. ATIS is one of the seven organizations that submitted these principles. Others are the National Emergency Number Association, National Association of State 911 Administrators, Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies, USTelecom, Commission on State Emergency Communications and the Texas 911 Alliance. The principles included in the proposal are designed to help the FCC address the issues about governance, accountability and reliability that exist in today’s evolving 911 systems and services, ATIS said in docket 13-75.
The FCC should modify emergency information rules to keep school closing announcements and other less important information from pre-empting critical emergency information on audible news crawls transmitted over secondary audio streams, said broadcasters, cable associations and consumer organizations in comments posted to docket 12-107 Monday. The comments were filed in response to a Further NPRM seeking comment on emergency information accessibility. Nearly all commenters agreed that such crawls should prioritize emergency information over closings. But cable groups and consumer groups disagreed on requiring multichannel video programming distributors to provide simple mechanisms for accessing secondary audio information
Despite what EchoStar says, relying on ITU coordination instead of FCC two-degree spacing rules to mitigate signal interference issues "would help, not hurt, satellite competition," Intelsat said in a filing posted Monday in docket 12-267. Intelsat and EchoStar have been at loggerheads over Intelsat's recommendation to end two-degree spacing and go with ITU filing priority as the basis for coordination requirements (see 1508050034). As numerous new national satellite operators emerged in recent years in multiple areas, "it therefore hardly seems as if the ITU’s processes are hindering new entrants seeking to provide communications satellite services," Intelsat said. "ITU coordination procedures facilitate market entry because they require good faith negotiations between sovereigns/operators -- even by the senior rights holder." Meanwhile, relatively few geostationary satellites have been licensed by the FCC in that time, Intelsat said. Relying on ITU coordination "would allow U.S. licensees to better meet the demand for services utilizing small antennas, such as mobility services," Intelsat said.
The right training for dealing with disasters helps individuals, communities, economies and others better absorb the shock of an emergency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a Monday post on FirstNet's blog. That kind of preparedness translates to shorter recovery times and increased resilience, which applies to everything from human health to international emergency response to coastal disasters, NOAA said. Its Office of Response and Restoration recognizes the importance of training and education for preparing local responders to respond effectively to coastal disasters, the agency said.
The right training for dealing with disasters helps individuals, communities, economies and others better absorb the shock of an emergency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a Monday post on FirstNet's blog. That kind of preparedness translates to shorter recovery times and increased resilience, which applies to everything from human health to international emergency response to coastal disasters, NOAA said. Its Office of Response and Restoration recognizes the importance of training and education for preparing local responders to respond effectively to coastal disasters, the agency said.
Even as comment deadlines on emergency alert system rules were set Monday, the FCC had already received some filings from EAS stakeholders. Comments on proposed changes are due Sept. 9, replies Sept. 24, in docket 04-296, the Public Safety Bureau said in Monday's Federal Register. The proposed rule changes follow a request by the National Weather Service that the FCC add three EAS event codes for extreme wind and storm surges, and that it revise the territorial boundaries of geographic location codes 75 and 77, which are offshore marine areas.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler reassured Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., he plans to address the communications abilities available to Amtrak police, responding to her April inquiry that came in a July 23 letter the agency released Wednesday. He said he “recently circulated a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to my fellow Commissioners that addresses the issue you raise.” As recommended by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council the rulemaking would move to "permit railroad police, including Amtrak police, to use interoperability and mutual aid channels in several public safety spectrum bands for the purpose of communicating with state and local law enforcement officials in railroad-related emergencies.” He sent a similar letter to Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and another to Rep. Albio Sires, D-N.J., both also released this week.