NTIA, set to publish the second round of broadband data in August, understands there’s been interest in collecting broadband pricing data, said Anne Neville, program director of State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program. The reality is pricing often changes frequently so there’s no easy apple-to-apple comparison, she told the Broadband Breakfast Club on Tuesday. Combined with the cost of reviewing and publishing data, she said data collecting, maintaining and validating is expensive. NTIA hasn’t received any proposal to collect pricing data, she noted. If any third party has an idea of how to “marry data with pricing,” they can do so, Neville said.
NTIA, set to publish the second round of broadband data in August, understands there’s been interest in collecting broadband pricing data, said Anne Neville, program director of the State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program. The reality is pricing often changes frequently so there’s no easy apple-to-apple comparison, she told the Broadband Breakfast Club on Tuesday. Combined with the cost of reviewing and publishing data, she said data collecting, maintaining and validating is expensive. NTIA hasn’t received any proposal to collect pricing data, she noted. If any third party has an idea of how to “marry data with pricing,” they can do so, Neville said.
The Congressional Research Service has recently issued a report on sector-specific concerns of the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). Some of the concerns reported by CRS were also expressed in industry advisory committee reports1 that were submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative in 2007. These concerns include provisions of the KORUS FTA regarding beef, various agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, etc.
The European Union issued the following trade-related releases on June 20, 2011 (notices of most significance will be given separate headlines or summarized in future issues):
The President has issued a notice that he is continuing for one year the national emergency with respect to the risk of nuclear proliferation created by the accumulation of weapons-usable fissile material in the territory of the Russian Federation, as declared in Executive Order 13159 of June 21, 2000. EO 13159 blocks property and interests in property of the Russian Government in the U.S. or in the possession or control of U.S. persons that are directly related to the implementation of the agreement between the U.S. and Russia concerning the disposition of highly enriched uranium extracted from nuclear weapons, and related contracts and agreements (collectively, the HEU Agreements). The President's letter to Congress is available here.
The FCC reminded all video providers, given the many recent natural disasters, that they must make emergency information accessible to those who can’t hear or see well. Such commission rules apply to TV stations, cable operators, DBS services and all other subscription-video providers, a public notice Friday said. Four pages long, with a consumer complaint form at the end, it’s longer than some other recent FCC notices reminding industry of regulatory obligations but similar to previous reminders on this subject in years past. It said it was released “in light of the flooding in the south, the tornadoes in various parts of the country, and the already active storm season.” An FCC spokesman noted that there are about 36 million Americans with hearing loss and 25 million with what he called significant vision loss. Friday’s notice “is our yearly reminder to video programming distributors about their accessibility obligations, issued to ensure that television services be accessible to all Americans with disabilities,” he said. There are “no exemptions” to the information-accessibility rule, with broadcasters required to comply no matter what type of technology they use, the regulator said. “We stress that the need to comply with section 79.2” of FCC rules “and make the critical details of emergency information accessible is not always limited to the immediate geographic areas affected by the emergency because, for example, information about the relocation of individuals outside that immediate geographic area also falls within the rule’s mandate,” the notice said. That may include “providing information to non-impacted areas sheltering individuals displaced by a large-scale disaster, such as that which occurred recently with the tornado devastation of Joplin, Missouri or in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck the south. In these cases the need to comply with section 79.2 has extended to areas throughout the country where evacuees were temporarily re-located.” There also are times when emergency information of national import is of local “concern,” and should be made accessible, the FCC said. For those who can’t see, the video portion of emergency information that interrupts regularly scheduled programming must be accessible, the notice said. Representatives of the broadcast, cable and DBS industries had no comment on those companies’ efforts to make all alerts accessible.
The Obama administration is fully committed to getting legislation through Congress funding a national wireless broadband network for first responders, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday during a speech at the Old Executive Office Building. Biden shared the stage with Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among other top officials, in a high-profile push for public safety broadband.
A pair of Senate bills aim to clarify the nebulous legal framework surrounding geolocation data and its interception, use and dissemination by companies and law enforcement agencies. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act Wednesday in order to resolve legal ambiguities over how geolocation data is treated, they said. On the same day, the Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced the Location Privacy Act of 2011.
A pair of Senate bills aims to clarify the nebulous legal framework surrounding geolocation data and its interception, use and dissemination by companies and law enforcement agencies. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act Wednesday to resolve legal ambiguities over how geolocation data are treated, they said. On the same day, Senate Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Al Franken, D-Minn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced the Location Privacy Act of 2011.
The President has issued an administrative order continuing for one year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13405, which blocks the property of certain persons undermining democratic processes or institutions in Belarus.