Early consensus on boosting information sharing among regulators in cases of fraudulent misuse of national telephone numbers has emerged at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly. More fraudulent misuse of national telephone numbers has surfaced, the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity said in a proposal. A group of 14 Pacific island countries have had problems with the new tactics, said an APT official. Nations supporting the short-stopping proposal are Australia, Bangladesh, Fiji, South Korea, Malaysia, Micronesia, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Palau. U.S. and Canadian officials are consulting with the Asian group to work out differences, an official said.
More than a year into talks on EU e-communications rule reform, “we have much yet to do,” U.K. Office of Communications Chief Ed Richards said Monday. The European Commission, Parliament and member countries still need “significant commitment and openness to compromise,” he told a communications and competition law conference in Brussels. Lack of accord on a new regulatory package before the 2009 seating of a new EC and parliamentary elections would mean no reform until the second half of 2011 at the earliest, something neither industry nor consumers need, he said. There are signs of high-level agreement on users’ rights provisions, he said, but other areas remain controversial. One is an EC proposal to give itself veto power over competition conditions imposed by national regulators, he said. A Council of Ministers compromise calls for subjecting individual competition remedies to peer review by an advisory body of regulators, he said. Review could form the basis for an EC recommendation directed at the national authority in question. EU lawmakers rejected the idea of an EC veto for an approach in which the EC could issue a veto if, after peer review, the regulators’ advisory body agreed. It doesn’t allow the EC to issue a binding decision, but the Council version makes it “virtually inconceivable” for a national regulator to proceed with a defective decision once vetted and publicly highlighted, said Richards. If given veto power, the EC must exercise that power as apolitically as it can, he said. National regulators will balk at a system in which the EC is allowed to “aim off from the advice of the regulatory experts in pursuit of some political goal du jour,” he said. Tied to the issue of how to make telecommunications rules more consistent in Europe is the issue of what EU-level body to create to advise the EC, he said. The EC proposal for a full-blown “Euro agency” was “ill-conceived,” and failed to win over the parliament and Council, he said. It’s now seen generally that any such body must have national regulators’ expertise at its heart, with the EC unable to interfere in its output, he said. The entity also must have a well-defined mission and the size to fulfill it, he said. Tentative conclusions are emerging, Richards said. There’s increasing support for a two-tier solution in which the advisory body clearly is the college of regulators, with specific functions hard-wired into the new rules, he said. The agency needs a small, permanent staff, perhaps extrapolated from today’s European Regulators Group secretariat, he said. Political accord on the reform package is complicated by many governments’ belief that the proper balance of power and duties between national bodies and EU institutions was settled in the 2002 rules, Richards said. But collaboration has to improve to manage ties that link the EC, national regulators and governments, so they are “less about banging heads together and more about placing subtle but effective pressure” on countries failing to create liberalized and competitive markets, he said. Regulators have a “real head of steam” now to make rules more consistent, said Richards.
GENEVA - Countries have geared up for negotiations on a range of telecom and Internet issues at the quadrennial World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Johannesburg, South Africa. Key topics during the Oct. 21-30 assembly include strengthening resolve to bridge the standardization gap (CD Oct 17 p6), possible new work on communications technology and climate change, accessibility and ways to identify new areas for standardization.
GENEVA - Countries have geared up for negotiations on a range of telecom and Internet issues at the quadrennial World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in Johannesburg, South Africa. Key topics during the Oct. 21-30 assembly include strengthening resolve to bridge the standardization gap (WID Oct 17 p3), possible new work on communications technology and climate change, accessibility and ways to identify new areas for standardization.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission will hold a conference call on October 20, 2008 to discuss its proposed rule on labeling requirements for toy and game advertising. The call is intended to inform the public about the details of the proposed rule and give interested stakeholders the opportunity to raise questions and share concerns about the rulemaking. (CPSC Public Calendar, dated 10/15/08, available at http://www.cpsc.gov/calendar.html.)
Flush with cash from an unexpectedly large budget approval, the Department of Homeland Security is increasing its cybersecurity efforts internally and for other agencies, agency officials told the Bethesda chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association Thursday. But DHS isn’t trying to become “FISMA 2,” said Robert Jamison, under secretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate. He was referring to the Federal Information Security Management Act and its agency review process, which many officials criticize as a paperwork exercise. DHS simply wants to act as a “support entity” for other agencies, he said.
The debate over how best to keep the Internet safe and civil will center next on Web site terms of service and the role that Internet service providers should play, panelists said Thursday at the National Press Club. They said the American solution certainly will differ from that in Europe, where people are more accepting of government intervention.
Support is growing for a digital TV transition educational effort in which stations use analog signals run a fixed image telling viewers they need to take action. The method began in the first market to switch to DTV (CED Sept 5 p1).
The FCC should create an E-911 Technology Advisory Group, but doesn’t need to wait to complete E-911 location accuracy rules, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association said in reply comments filed at the agency. Meanwhile, T-Mobile and the Rural Cellular Association reiterated concerns that the two main proposals for E-911 location accuracy rules, worked out between AT&T and Verizon Wireless and the two public safety groups, aren’t workable for all carriers. Motorola said the objections they raise are “valid and reasonable.”
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Wednesday that he’s asking commissioners to approve an order allowing use of unlicensed, mobile devices in the TV white spaces at what’s shaping up as a big meeting Nov. 4. Martin told reporters that white-spaces devices probably will hit the market about a year after the FCC sets rules. He also asked commissioners to approve two major wireless mergers: A Verizon Wireless acquisition of Alltel and a proposed WiMAX partnership between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. Martin didn’t schedule a vote on the AWS-3 auction to license spectrum for a free national broadband network.