Mobile operators’ failure to end “roaming rip-offs” calls for a “fundamentally new” regulatory approach, said European Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Wednesday. The European Commission proposed measures to let customers sign roaming agreements separate from their contracts with their national services and keep the same cellphone numbers, and to give alternative providers the right to use others’ networks in other EU countries at regulated wholesale prices. The move brought cautious cheers from the head of the European Parliament’s industry committee. The GSM Association Europe said the changes need “assessing in detail."
A European single digital market is a key objective of Poland, which takes over the EU Presidency today (Friday), it said in a six-month program published in early June. The incoming presidency wants to complete the process of developing the single market, with “special attention” to development of electronic services and the abolition of barriers to cross-border Internet transactions, it said. Telecom, fiber-to-the-home and consumer electronics trade groups backed the focus on the single market. One consumer organization, however, urged Poland not to back European Commission plans for an entirely new system governing online sales transactions.
Wireless carriers got another 30 days to file at the FCC a list of counties where they're unable to easily meet new E911 location accuracy requirements (http://xrl.us/bkxdai). The agency approved tougher location accuracy rules last year, adopting a compromise worked out between major carriers, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association (CD Sept 24 p 6). The Public Safety Bureau order let carriers using network based technologies exclude locations where at least three cell sites aren’t sufficiently visible to a handset to determine a caller’s location. For wireless carriers using handset-based technologies, the order allows the exclusion of up to 15 percent of counties or public safety answering point service areas from the 150-meter requirement based on heavy forestation. Carriers were supposed to submit a list of these exclusion areas Tuesday. The new deadline is July 28. “The extension will promote the public interest by providing public safety entities and the public with more accurate and informative Exclusion Reports while facilitating the Commission’s monitoring of carrier compliance with location accuracy benchmarks and timelines,” an order said.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has posted several documents regarding the announcement by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus (D) to hold informal or “mock mark-ups” for three separate draft implementing bills for pending U.S. free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Kirk welcomed this announcement and added his strong support for the inclusion of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and renewal of the expired trade preference programs (GSP and ATPDEA1) in two of the draft FTA implementing bills.
The FCC’s Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) is slated to recommend that the FCC take steps to “turn off” the public switched telephone network (PSTN). TAC is examining a proposed “sunset date” for the PSTN, informed in part by when broadband is available everywhere under the National Broadband Plan and the rollout of wireless, said TAC officials at a meeting Wednesday. TAC, the advisory panel chaired by Tom Wheeler, met at the FCC Wednesday to discuss what may be its most controversial series of recommendations yet. TAC was recently rechartered for a two-year term with Wheeler again at the helm. A draft report by a TAC working group recommends that the FCC “take steps to prepare for the inevitable transition from the PSTN.” The report also recommends setting a date for the transition when the PSTN would no longer be “the system” of record for the U.S. Among other recommendations are that the FCC examine some form of subsidy for helping public safety answering points make the transition to IP. The report also is expected to examine how regulation needs to change so companies can deploy emerging technologies, which regulations should be kept in place, and which should be eliminated. Working group members agreed to do more work on the implications for regulation of retiring the PSTN in time for TAC’s next meeting in September. “If anything we probably wanted to make the recommendations a little more provocative,” said working group Chairman Adam Drobot, chief technology office of 2M Companies. “As the IP-based solutions become richer and richer … the PSTN will very naturally start decaying. The question is how long do you carry it.” In the end, Wheeler suggested, since everything is just an app in the IP world, there’s “no difference between voice and Angry Birds.” Drobot said the working group is still exploring how wireless fits in to the sweeping changes in wireline. “We thought we had underplayed the role of wireless,” he said. The working group also has not yet agreed on a “date that makes sense” for retiring the PSTN, he said.
The FCC’s Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) is slated to recommend that the FCC take steps to “turn off” the public switched telephone network (PSTN). TAC is examining a proposed “sunset date” for the PSTN, informed in part by when broadband is available everywhere under the National Broadband Plan and the rollout of wireless, said TAC officials at a meeting Wednesday. TAC, the advisory panel chaired by Tom Wheeler, met at the FCC Wednesday to discuss what may be its most controversial series of recommendations yet. TAC was recently rechartered for a two-year term with Wheeler again at the helm.
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Federal broadband efforts were criticized at the eComm conference by Google’s policy chief as lacking effective follow-through on the National Broadband Plan and by a former Obama White House official as failing to deal to what she sees as the central fact of monopolies in wired and wireless communications. Then an anti-regulation think tanker denounced what he called impulses to reimpose public-utility regulation on U.S. telecom.
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Federal broadband efforts were criticized at the eComm conference by Google’s policy chief as lacking effective follow-through on the National Broadband Plan and by a former Obama White House official as failing to deal to what she sees as the central fact of monopolies in wired and wireless communications. Then an anti-regulation think tanker denounced what he called impulses to reimpose public-utility regulation on U.S. telecom.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a final rule, effective June 29, 2011, which amends and reissues in their entirety the Western Balkans Stabilization Regulations at 31 CFR Part 588, to codify Executive Order 13304 which amended EO 13219 and blocks property and transactions with certain persons who threaten international stabilization efforts in the Western Balkans. OFAC has also issued a final rule which removes certain sanctions regulations at 31 CFR Parts 585, 586, and 587 relating to the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as the national emergencies with respect to which these regulations had been issued were terminated, and all related Executive Orders that had been implemented by these regulations were revoked. The removal rule is available here.
The Department of Homeland Security is concerned about gaps in cellphone coverage, Roberta Stempfley, acting assistant secretary in the Cybersecurity & Communications office, wrote Paul Feiner, town supervisor in Greenburgh, N.Y. Feiner sent DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano a letter complaining about coverage gaps there. “I think I'm in a third world country -- my phone dies on me during the middle of telephone conversations,” Feiner wrote. DHS submitted the letter and its response to the FCC in docket 10-4. “We work closely with the State of New York on these issues. You may wish for the Town of Greenburgh to provide input to the New York Statewide Communications Interoperability Plan,” Stempfley responded. “In addition, the National Communications System (NCS) is working with the telecommunications industry to ensure authorized users can complete calls during emergency situations when cellular service becomes congested."