The FCC extended from Friday until Oct. 1 the deadline for nominations and expressions of interest to serve on the Emergency Response Interoperability Center Public Safety Advisory Committee. The committee is to work with the FCC to help ensure that a proposed national public safety network is fully interoperable.
Verizon Wireless is asking for what public safety considers a significant change in E-911 wireless location accuracy, an issue tentatively on the agenda for a vote at next week’s open FCC meeting. FCC officials said the order has gotten some discussion in recent days, though not nearly as much as proposed white spaces rules (CD Aug 16 p1). In an agreement with the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International and the National Emergency Numbering Association, that the FCC was expected to ratify, Verizon and other CDMA carriers would have been allowed to exclude data from up to 15 percent of counties from being taken into account in assessing its accuracy in pinpointing the emergency calls, provided the counties were forested. Verizon asked for a change, allowing it to exclude 15 percent of counties for “any reason.” APCO and NENA protested, saying that’s not what was in the agreement they worked out with the carrier in 2008. “Limiting the exclusion to heavily forested areas was a material element of the negotiated agreement. Our concern had been, and remains, that a broader exclusion could lead to substantial areas receiving substandard location accuracy for E911 calls.” Verizon said the change is a matter of fairness and brings the agreement more in line with one for GMS-based carriers worked out between the public safety groups and AT&T.
Wireless carriers are taking steps to make their phones more usable by the blind, deaf-blind and persons with low vision without prescriptive regulatory mandates, CTIA said in comments filed at the FCC in response to a request for comments by the Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau. TIA, AT&T and Sprint Nextel also highlighted the progress of mobile operators in developing phones for customers with vision problems.
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- Two more Fox DVD releases each packaged with four sets of anaglyph 3D glasses from TrioScopics will arrive next month, following Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in 3D that’s being released Tuesday in the same bundle configuration, TrioScopics CEO John Lowry told Consumer Electronics Daily at the 3D Entertainment Summit. He declined to name them. In announcing Ice Age early this week, Fox stressed that the DVD would be “playable on all conventional home entertainment equipment.” Fox didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The TV white spaces will play a key role in communications once devices are made available, most likely next year, said speakers at a New America Foundation panel Wednesday. The discussion comes with several fine points in the FCC’s white spaces order, scheduled for a vote at the Sept. 23 commission meeting, still potentially in play. The order finalizes the proceeding, after the FCC approved the use of the white spaces for accessing the Internet in November 2008. The agency is expected to cut off further lobbying when it releases the sunshine agenda on next week’s meeting Thursday.
On September 15, 2010, the House passed, as amended, H.R. 3116, the Berry Amendment Extension Act1, a bill to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from procuring certain textiles and apparel2 unless the items are grown, reprocessed, reused, or produced in the U.S., with certain exceptions.
TV white spaces will play a key role in communications once devices are made available, most likely next year, said speakers at a New America Foundation panel Wednesday. The discussion comes with several fine points in the FCC’s white spaces order, scheduled for a vote at the Sept. 23 commission meeting, still potentially in play. The order finalizes the proceeding, after the FCC approved the use of the white spaces for accessing the Internet in November 2008. The agency is expected to cut off further lobbying when it releases the sunshine agenda on next week’s meeting Thursday.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski faces a very different political playing field if, as many predict, Republicans take control of either house of Congress, or both, in the Nov. 2 elections. Genachowski has in effect pushed off decisions on net neutrality and broadband reclassification until after the election. History shows that the job of an FCC chairman whose party loses control of Congress changes considerably.
The FCC knows how to answer communications challenges remaining from the 9/11 attacks “and we have taken action,” Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said in a blog Friday for the ninth anniversary. “The FCC has taken concrete measures to enable the first steps in the deployment of this nationwide interoperable public safety network,” he said. “We have recently established the Emergency Response Interoperability Center which is fast at work establishing the technical rules to ensure there is an interoperable nationwide network. We have also approved 21 early deployments of the public safety broadband network throughout the country. But there are many other steps which must be taken in addition to our efforts, to ensure that the network will be built everywhere and that it will be affordable and interoperable.” In the National Broadband Plan, the commission proposed a nationwide system using 700 MHz spectrum. “There is nothing inevitable about interoperability on this network,” Barnett said.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a final rule, effective September 13, 2010, which adds a new 31 CFR Part 576, the “Iraq Stabilization and Insurgency Sanctions Regulations.”