Critics of expanded federal authority over private networks came up short with an effort to draw bright-line restrictions in the Cybersecurity Act (S-773), approved by the Senate Commerce Committee with several amendments at a short markup Wednesday. Sponsors emphasized that the bill would keep changing as it moved out of committee and indicated they disagreed with each other on core provisions, including what kind of regulations to apply to network and infrastructure owners. Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called the bill “preemptive” to protect the country but “basic,” lacking many details despite having gone through four drafts.
Critics of expanded federal authority over private networks came up short with an effort to draw bright-line restrictions in the Cybersecurity Act (S-773), approved by the Senate Commerce Committee with several amendments at a short markup Wednesday. Sponsors emphasized that the bill would keep changing as it moved out of committee and indicated they disagreed with each other on core provisions, including what kind of regulations to apply to network and infrastructure owners. Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., called the bill “preemptive” to protect the country but “basic,” lacking many details despite having gone through four drafts.
On March 17, 2010, a House subcommittee1 heard testimony on the capacity of ocean-going vessels to meet U.S. import and export requirements.
The Obama administration may have gotten ahead of itself with a cybersecurity coordinator in charge of the whole government, given the internal challenges that big agencies face, officials told a TechAmerica conference Tuesday. Trying to standardize on the same platforms and applications may not make sense among components of the Department of Homeland Security, Commerce and Treasury departments, they said. Officials said they were generally unenthused about the level of protection they were getting from security vendors, asking companies to focus on next-generation security techniques.
The White House has posted a fact sheet on the President's National Export Initiative,1 which covers the initial results of the Administration's efforts to reform the U.S. export control system, including an upcoming change for encryption products, and the government-wide export advocacy effort.
The National Broadband Plan sets “an agenda for connecting all corners of the nation,” the FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said Monday at a meeting of the Communications, Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council. It’s an “aggressive action plan to enhance the safety of the American people,” he said. In December, Chairman Julius Genachowski asked CSRIC to study how Americans communicate and how to promote cooperation among emergency communications (CD Dec 8 p1). The plan includes recommendations for a public safety broadband network and on cybersecurity and consumer matters, Deputy Bureau Chief Jennifer Manner said.
Broadcasters and cable operators supported a national annual emergency alert system test, in comments to the FCC last week. The national test should only be once a year, a group of state broadcast associations said. In the month the national test occurs, system participants shouldn’t have to also perform a regional test, NCTA said.
The U.S. Mobile Health market would reach $4.6 billion by 2014, but would be fragmented across many solutions and device types, said a report by CSMG, the strategy division of professional service company TMNG Global. If certain broad health care reforms are instituted, like pay-for-performance, adoption could accelerate, it said. Key mHealth technology opportunities include monitoring, personal emergency response services, telemedicine, mobile medical equipment, mobile health information and RFID tracking and health/fitness software. The report cited the National Broadband Plan, which estimates $700 billion in savings over 15-25 years from teleHealth initiatives. Given the complexity of mHealth, growth will require collaboration across telecom and health care-centric players, the report said, saying mobile network operators and device manufacturers must address build/buy/partner implications that vary by potential mHealth solution. MHealth would also need to gain reimbursement from payers as clinical solutions. Additionally, insurance/Medicare-paid mHealth solutions offer tremendous potential revenue, but also pose business model risks if reimbursement rates are cut. New solutions must demonstrate proof of efficacy to win reimbursement codes and to date, results have been mixed, the report said. Key drivers that would affect the pace and direction of mHealth include mobile/connected device technology innovation, broader health care industry reform and health care-specific technology developments like adoption of electronic medical records.
The FCC should reclaim TV broadcasters’ spectrum by 2020, Sanford Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson wrote investors. The agency should stay out of retransmission consent negotiations between stations and pay-TV distributors and relax ownership rules, he said. For emergencies, battery-operated radios or voicemail blasts to landline phones will suffice in a post-TV spectrum world, he said. For now, the government should let the retransmission consent process play out on its own, he said. “If the threat of a local station signal blackout gets cable MSOs to the negotiating table, don’t stand in the way of business negotiations,” he said. “After that, change the station ownership rules to allow a national roll-up of TV stations above the 39 percent cap and allow the cross-ownership of stations and newspapers,” Nathanson said. Deregulating ownership limits would prompt a flurry of transactions that “will make the local broadcast industry stronger during this time of change,” he said. It would also give stations more leverage in carriage negotiations with cable operators and the major networks, he said.
Overall mobile applications downloads are expected to increase from over seven billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion by 2012, said a report commissioned by app developer GetJar. The revenue from mobile apps, which includes both paid downloads and revenue from advertising and virtual goods, is expected to increase from $4.1 billion in 2009 to $17.5 billion by 2012, it said. Though on-deck (operator managed) mobile apps sales exceeded those from off-deck in 2009, by 2012, off-deck is expected to hold the lion’s share of the mobile apps revenue, the report said. The app market is different in emerging nations, where to effectively monetize the business, creative strategies are needed to attract new consumers and different business models would be required to make the regional ecosystems viable, the report said. Overall, by improving discovery, improving user experience, dropping price barriers, and increasing developer revenue share, the apps business can continue to prosper, it said.