The government is showing greater comfort in moving services to the cloud, some cloud service providers said Wednesday during a FedScoop event at the Newseum. While agencies are embracing cloud platforms for some of their workloads, there are still challenges around the procurement and acquisition process, they said. The real opportunity for federal and commercial is workload movement, said David McClure, associate administrator at the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. “It’s not about picking an entire system up and arbitrarily moving into a cloud.” It’s more about data, how it’s managed and moving it around secure environments “and through existing policy arrangements the government has set up for privacy and security,” he said.
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District defended its decision to cut off service at one of its transit stations last August to fend off a possible riot. BART subsequently approved a policy for shutoffs (CD Dec 2 p11) and the FCC started to ask questions. On March 1, the FCC Wireless and Public Safety bureaus asked for comments on “concerns and issues” raised by the intentional interruption of CMRS service by government authorities for the purposes of protecting public safety (CD March 2 p14).
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District defended its decision to cut off service at one of its transit stations last August to fend off a possible riot. BART subsequently approved a policy for shutoffs and the FCC started to ask questions. On March 1, the FCC Wireless and Public Safety bureaus asked for comments on “concerns and issues” raised by the intentional interruption of CMRS service by government authorities for the purposes of protecting public safety.
With the sunset of the FCC’s must-carry viewability rules set to expire next month, companies and industry groups have been lobbying the FCC to make their cases for and against keeping them. The rules require cable operators to deliver must-carry TV stations’ signals to all viewers, which typically involves multicasting a digital and analog version of the programming. Barring FCC action, the requirement will expire June 17. The commission has asked whether it should extend it (CD Feb 8 p5).
The FCC must resolve some accessibility issues where advocates for the disabled and the TV and consumer electronics industries couldn’t reach consensus, participants in the recently completed work of an advisory committee said. The Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee wrapped up its work April 9, as mandated under a 2010 disabilities access law to finish the last three of four reports. A report on device and user interface accessibility, and one on getting emergency information had areas where VPAAC members couldn’t reach consensus. So the commission sought comment (http://xrl.us/bmhahx) Wednesday on those issues (CD April 26 p12), which participants in the panel said will inform the rulemakings the agency will undertake on proceedings that must, by law, be competed next year.
The FCC must resolve some accessibility issues where advocates for the disabled and the TV and consumer electronics industries couldn’t reach consensus, participants in the recently completed work of an advisory committee said. The Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee wrapped up its work April 9, as mandated under a 2010 disabilities access law to finish the last three of four reports. A report on device and user interface accessibility, and one on getting emergency information had areas where VPAAC members couldn’t reach consensus. So the commission sought comment (http://xrl.us/bmhahx) Wednesday on those issues, which participants in the panel said will inform the rulemakings the agency will undertake on proceedings that must, by law, be competed next year.
The FCC should not require carriers to implement SMS as an interim solution for texting to 911, except on a voluntary basis, CTIA and the major wireless carriers said in a meeting at the FCC with Public Safety Bureau officials. “While CTIA’s member companies explore whether the use of SMS as an emergency communications service is technically, economically and operationally feasible, meeting attendees reviewed significant technical and public policy complexities that must be addressed before SMS-to-911 services can be nationally deployed,” said a CTIA ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm4xwr). “Specifically, CTIA suggested that any voluntary approach must be standards-based to allow wireless service providers the flexibility to support SMS-to-911 consistent with each service provider’s existing and unique network architectures.” Attendees noted that the wireless industry is only part of the equation. “Meeting attendees discussed the Commission’s efforts to ensure that [public safety answering points] will simultaneously have the technical, operational and funding capabilities to accept, process and respond to text-based emergency communications from wireless consumers."
Interoperability has to be the No. 1 priority as the U.S. starts a national wireless broadband network for first responders, or there’s little chance interoperability will be achieved at all, FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett told the Technical Advisory Board for First Responder Interoperability. The board was created by the recently enacted Spectrum Act to develop interoperability rules for the new FirstNet. On Monday, the board held a morning-long workshop as it heard from panels representing various interests, from public safety to industry.
T-Mobile has recommitted itself to its “challenger strategy,” a few months after AT&T’s attempt to purchase the carrier failed, said Sharis Pozen, the Justice Department’s departing acting assistant U.S. attorney general for antitrust. The agency’s antitrust division in general “isn’t afraid to litigate, and when it does, it wins,” she said at a Brookings Institution briefing Monday.
T-Mobile has recommitted itself to its “challenger strategy,” a few months after AT&T’s attempt to purchase the carrier failed, said Sharis Pozen, the Justice Department’s departing acting assistant U.S. attorney general for antitrust. The agency’s antitrust division in general “isn’t afraid to litigate, and when it does, it wins,” she said at a Brookings Institution briefing Monday.