The national emergency for the Western Balkans region, first declared in 2001, is extended for one additional year, until June 2014, President Obama said in a June 17 Congressional message (here). Acts of “extremist violence and obstructionist activity” continue in the region, including extremist violence in Macedonia and acts hindering Dayton Accords implementation in Bosnia, the message said. These acts are hostile to U.S. interests and a threat to national security and foreign policy, Obama said.
"I do know there are very many larger areas where the PSAPs are not ready to handle that,” said Chris Littlewood, project coordinator at the Allstate Center’s Center for Public Safety Innovation at the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute, of text-to-911. Education and outreach needs “to happen at the PSAP level as well,” he said. “I can tell you that it’s not just rural areas that have no idea that they need to be handling text-to-911 by the beginning of next year. … Are the PSAPs going to be able to handle that?” Different procedures will need to be in place at different levels of the 911 call centers, he said.
News Corp. Chief Financial Officer David DeVoe to retire, remain on the board, and be a senior advisor to firm; John Nallen promoted to senior executive vice president and CFO of new separate company to be named 21st Century Fox and hold the News Corp. media and entertainment assets, and all changes effective July 1 … WorldLink cable and broadcast multi-platform ad firm hires Larry Strumwasser, ex-MMT, as executive vice president … LIN TV hires Kimberly Davis as vice president-human resources, succeeding Daniel Donohue, retiring effective July 5, and René LaSpina, ex-Newport Television, as president/general manager, WIVB-TV and WNLO-TV Buffalo … Altman Vilandrie & Co. consultant hires Aaron Cohn, ex-Endeavour Partners and Mercator Partners, as principal on telecom, media and technology issues, based in Boston office … FCC names to Technological Advisory Council: Aon Mujtaba, Apple, replacing Bud Tribble; Brian Fontes, National Emergency Number Association; Mark Bregman, Neustar; Pierre Devries, Silicon Flatirons; Ramani Pandurangan, XO, replacing Randy Nicklas; and Vish Nandlall, Ericsson North America.
The National Tax Limitation Committee slammed California’s LifeLine program and the idea of the state’s high-cost subsidies overall, in a filing at the CPUC, which it publicized in a news release and media call Thursday. “Our cash-strapped State has spent nearly half-a-billion dollars over the past five years on High Cost subsidies,” the filing said (http://bit.ly/11Z2BYm). The California fund, administered through the California Public Utilities Commission, “wastefully duplicates federal programs to subsidize service to poor people,” referring to California’s LifeLine program, it said. California’s program is “in a class all its own” compared to some other “modest” state programs, the committee said. It criticized the fact that California’s program only subsidizes landline service, which it purported was losing ground to wireless. It said low-income and rural residents of California wouldn’t be hurt if California’s universal service program were cut. Prominent California legislators have proposed expanding the state’s broadband funding for both rural areas as well as low-income residents, citing needs that California has yet to serve with its current funding (CD May 30 p7). “The federal Lifeline program is wireless and the state LifeLine program is landline only,” a CPUC spokeswoman said. “You can’t be enrolled in both. So there is no duplication.” She defended the state programs and said they're “designed to help people obtain phone service, which keeps them connected to their jobs or to potential job opportunities, to friends and family, and also for receiving and placing emergency calls.”
WorldLink cable and broadcast multi-platform ad firm hires Larry Strumwasser, ex-MMT, as executive vice president … Altman Vilandrie & Co. consultant hires Aaron Cohn, ex-Endeavour Partners and Mercator Partners, as principal on telecom, media and technology issues, based in Boston office … FCC names to Technological Advisory Council: Aon Mujtaba, Apple, replacing Bud Tribble; Brian Fontes, National Emergency Number Association; Mark Bregman, Neustar; Pierre Devries, Silicon Flatirons; Ramani Pandurangan, XO, replacing Randy Nicklas; and Vish Nandlall, Ericsson North America.
President Obama issued notice that Belarus’ national emergency declaration, set to expire June 16, will continue for one additional year. In a June 14 notice to Congress, Obama said the government of Belarus “has not taken steps forward in the development of democratic governance and respect for human rights,” including by arbitrarily arresting citizens for political opposition and stymieing the country’s independent media (read the notice here). The country’s human rights abuses and political repression “continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy, Obama said. The national emergency for Belarus was originally declared through a June 2006 executive order.
Dish Network urged the FCC to determine whether Sprint Nextel has de facto control over Clearwire. The national security significance of Sprint’s control over Clearwire emerged “only once it was disclosed that the NSA [national security agreement] is premised on the assumption that Sprint lacks operational control over Clearwire today,” Dish said in a letter in docket 12-343 (http://bit.ly/13Caasd). If SoftBank acquires Sprint, and Sprint’s current rights in Clearwire are not expanded, “then the requirements for the decommissioning of certain Chinese-manufactured equipment and the review of new equipment purchases under the NSA would not be triggered.” Sprint’s extensive rights in Clearwire make that central notion questionable “both under the commission’s own control analysis and the standard applicable under the national securities laws,” it said: “Given Sprint’s majority equity position and majority board participation in Clearwire, it is incumbent on SoftBank and Sprint to explain why de facto control does not exist.”
Roughly three years after LG, Samsung and Sony introduced their first 3D TVs into the U.S. market with great fanfare and a blitz of national advertising, sale of 3D TVs as a business has experienced little year-to-year growth and may well be regressing, said DisplaySearch. It estimated TV makers shipped 3.93 million LCD TVs with the 3D feature in North America last year.
Roughly three years after LG, Samsung and Sony introduced their first 3D TVs into the U.S. market with great fanfare and a blitz of national advertising, sale of 3D TVs as a business has experienced little year-to-year growth and may well be regressing, said DisplaySearch. It estimated TV makers shipped 3.93 million LCD TVs with the 3D feature in North America last year.
Wi-Fi can play a big role in emergencies, and the U.S. can do more as a nation to “harness our civic instinct to come together in times of crisis to keep data flowing,” former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in an article posted on the MIT Technology Review website (http://bit.ly/126XB9O). The article was co-written by Harvard Professor Jonathan Zittrain. “We can start with an idea that needs no additional technology,” they wrote. “Many people and companies operate Wi-Fi access points. Each of these points -- whether used by apartment roommates, Starbucks patrons, or cell subscribers who get Wi-Fi ‘off-load’ from their service providers -- is connected to the Internet and often remains so even if cellular voice and data towers are out or overloaded.” The Internet offers “tremendous” potential benefits, the article said. “The same folks who contemplated rushing to a hospital to give blood, or merchants who deplete their stores of bottled water without fretting about the cost, can share their network access in a way that can make a huge difference to fellow citizens in distress. More ambitiously, recall that citizens in the midst of an emergency without working cell service still possess, in their smartphones and laptops, two-way radios that make their cell and Wi-Fi services function. So-called ad hoc networking technology can bind these radios together during times of crisis, creating a network that could be useful even if no one within it had access to the broader Internet."