FCC increase of speed thresholds for broadband was criticized by industry groups and others in statements after Thursday's decision (see 1501290043). Reflecting the party-line division in Thursday’s vote, consumer groups praised the move, saying it will push ISPs to provide faster service. The decision “by regulatory fiat” to raise the standard for judging broadband deployment to 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up “is not grounded in marketplace realities dictated by actual consumer demand and willingness to pay,” Free State Foundation President Randolph May said: “It is conjured up in the imaginations of those who wish to exert more government control over Internet providers by artificially narrowing the market definition."
Reddit received 55 subpoenas, warrants and requests for user data in 2014, it said in its first transparency report released Thursday. Fifty-three percent of those requests were U.S. subpoenas; U.S. warrants, 15 percent; U.S. emergency requests, 13 percent; U.S. civil subpoenas, 11 percent; and international requests, 9 percent, it said. Reddit provided user data for 58 percent of all government and civil requests; all U.S. state and federal government requests, 64 percent, it said. “Reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information,” it said. “If we ever receive such a request, we would seek to let the public know it existed.”
The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Wednesday hearing on cybersecurity information sharing is the clearest sign yet that the committee and its House counterpart are seeking a significant role in writing information sharing legislation, but it remains unclear whether they or the Intelligence committees will take the lead role, industry executives and lobbyists told us. Senate Homeland Security members said Wednesday that they will write their info sharing bill based on the White House proposal released earlier this month, along with two controversial bills from last Congress -- the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) (see 1501280060).
The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Wednesday hearing on cybersecurity information sharing is the clearest sign yet that the committee and its House counterpart are seeking a significant role in writing information sharing legislation, but it remains unclear whether they or the Intelligence committees will take the lead role, industry executives and lobbyists told us. Senate Homeland Security members said Wednesday that they will write their info sharing bill based on the White House proposal released earlier this month, along with two controversial bills from last Congress -- the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) (see 1501280060).
With an FCC vote on wireless indoor 911 location accuracy rules expected Thursday, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Commerce Committee sent a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Wednesday saying the rules adopted must be technologically neutral. “We have concerns that the FCC is considering rules that will lock public safety into using a single, proprietary technology for providing indoor locations,” said the letter from Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J. If this is true, the agency should instead “consider solutions that can operate across multiple technologies and platforms” that are “not tethered to a single technology," they said. Wireless carriers led by CTIA have made similar arguments at the FCC. Agency officials said Wheeler already had changed his proposal on the rules to an approach closer to the road map proposed by the four national carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association (see 1501270052). The rules should be “robust, enforceable and measurable,” House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., told Wheeler in a second letter Wednesday. There should be a vertical accuracy requirement, she said, and the rules also should be “technology neutral” and carriers shouldn't have to be “limited to one technology solution.”
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will rely heavily on mobile networks, posing challenges to public numbering systems, said officials from the Conference of European Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) in recent interviews. While work is ongoing on future use of IPv6 addresses for the Internet of Things, the need for phone numbers won't end for many years, said Freddie McBride, responsible for numbering and networks at CEPT's European Communications Office (ECO). M2M numbering and addressing is one of several major focuses for the next five years, said the CEPT Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) in a Nov. 28 strategic plan. Many issues will need regulatory action, McBride said.
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will rely heavily on mobile networks, posing challenges to public numbering systems, said officials from the Conference of European Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) in recent interviews. While work is ongoing on future use of IPv6 addresses for the Internet of Things, the need for phone numbers won't end for many years, said Freddie McBride, responsible for numbering and networks at CEPT's European Communications Office (ECO). M2M numbering and addressing is one of several major focuses for the next five years, said the CEPT Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) in a Nov. 28 strategic plan. Many issues will need regulatory action, McBride said.
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications will rely heavily on mobile networks, posing challenges to public numbering systems, said officials from the Conference of European Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) in recent interviews. While work is ongoing on future use of IPv6 addresses for the Internet of Things, the need for phone numbers won't end for many years, said Freddie McBride, responsible for numbering and networks at CEPT's European Communications Office (ECO). M2M numbering and addressing is one of several major focuses for the next five years, said the CEPT Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) in a Nov. 28 strategic plan. Many issues will need regulatory action, McBride said.
Carriers appear to be winning the fight to turn back parts of a proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on rules for improving indoor wireless 911 location accuracy, in favor of an order closer to the industry public safety road map, FCC officials said Tuesday. Eighth-floor staff is writing a new draft of the rules, to be voted at the FCC's Thursday meeting. The draft was expected late Tuesday.
Washington, D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) denied claims that encryption of the city’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services department radios was responsible for radio communications failures that occurred during a fatal Jan. 12 incident in a downtown subway tunnel. The denial came in a report Friday. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) interim General Manager Jack Requa had said the agency wasn’t aware that FEMS had switched from analog radios to encrypted Motorola Project 25 (P25) standard digital radios until after the Jan. 12 incident at WMATA’s L’Enfant Plaza Metrorail station, when problems with radio connectivity were seen as possibly hampering the rescue (see 1501220067) of passengers trapped in a smoke-filled train. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged WMATA and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to improve communications about interoperability of emergency radios between area agencies (see 1501230066). Available information indicates FEMS radio encryption “does not appear to have played a role in the communications difficulties” that public safety personnel encountered during the rescue, HSEMA said in its report. HSEMA also said it found the D.C. government’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) had coordinated with WMATA throughout the two years before it transitioned FEMS to the P25 radios and did 600 tests of the radios in every D.C. Metrorail station. OUC has fixed the radio connectivity issues in the L’Enfant Plaza station and is expediting a systemwide test of the radios, HSEMA said. A WMATA spokesman declined comment but noted the agency is waiting for the findings of the National Transportation and Safety Board, which he called the “only impartial agency conducting a fact-based investigation into this matter.”