The FCC Wireless and Public Safety bureaus asked for comments on “concerns and issues” raised by the intentional interruption of CMRS service by government authorities for the purposes of protecting public safety. The notice makes specific reference to a service cut off by the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority in August aimed at preventing a political demonstration on the platform of a downtown San Francisco station. BART subsequently adopted a policy on when it can shut down wireless service (CD Nov 29 p13). While the important function that wireless service plays in protecting public safety is undisputed, some commentators, including some law enforcement personnel, have raised concerns that wireless networks can be used in ways that put the public’s safety at risk, the notice said. “Concerns, for example, that wireless service could be used to trigger the detonation of an explosive device or to organize the activities of a violent flash mob have led public authorities in the United States and abroad to consider interrupting wireless service.” Comments are due April 30, replies May 30.
Netflix played down the significance of losing some content for streaming after the four-year contract it had with Starz came to an end. Netflix stopped making several movies available to its streaming subscribers once the deal ended Tuesday. But Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey told us Thursday that Starz new release movies it had “accounted for only about 2 percent of Netflix viewing.” They included 15 Disney titles offered under a pay TV release window, “many of which,” including Toy Story 2, would “leave Starz in the coming weeks and months anyway,” he said. “The rest of Starz” content “either came off Netflix eight months ago, or were replaceable catalog movies,” he said. Netflix members are getting access to “an increasing flow” of titles under a similar pay release window under deals with Epix, Relativity, Film District, Open Road, The Weinstein Co. and other companies, he said. Those titles will, over “the next few months,” include Oscar winners The Artist, Hugo and Rango, as well as The Adventures of Tin Tin, Thor, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Captain America, Super 8 and The Immortals, he said. Separately, Netflix said on its blog that it reached its “captioning goal” on streaming content for 2011 in “mid December.” At that point, “more than 80 percent of the hours streamed” by it in the U.S. were for content with captions or subtitles available, it said. That represented “significant” progress from the 40 percent in June and 60 percent in September, it said. Netflix said it continued to require captions or subtitles from providers for all new content where available, and it continued to “author captions or subtitles for significant new content where it is missing.” The company’s “goal is to provide more and more content with captions,” but it warned that subscribers “should expect the gap on the last 20 percent to narrow more slowly than in 2011, since it includes a large number of titles that are rarely watched, so each hour of captioning added adds less and less to the overall metric.” Netflix said “we welcome the FCC rulemaking on captions and subtitles, since it helps align the industry on making captions and subtitles more available from the content suppliers, which can only help us all move forward in this important area.” In the U.S., nearly 90 percent of streaming viewing is done using a player capable of displaying captions or subtitles, it said. Some older Blu-ray players, TVs, and set-top boxes, however, aren’t capable and their firmware can’t be upgraded, Netflix said. Nearly all Netflix-ready devices in distribution can render captions, it said. Those devices include all three home videogame consoles, smartphones and tablets, TVs, Blu-ray players, and Apple TV and Roku set-top boxes.
There’s a growing trend to filter and block content and communications on the Internet, warned Navanetham Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) meeting this week in Geneva. Pillay said the advent of the Internet means countries can no longer be a monopoly information provider, and human rights activists are able to use crowd sourcing to share facts about human rights violations: “No wonder this has resulted in a backlash.” She expressed concerned about constant or just-in-time blocking of websites, and arbitrary arrests of bloggers on the pretext of protecting national security or fighting terrorism. Norwegian statistics said 60 countries are filtering or blocking the Internet in some way. Intellectual property rights can be misused, said Frank La Rue, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. His 2011 report on the right to freedom of opinion and expression in the Internet boosted discussion on the human rights aspect of Internet governance. While La Rue said there’s no need for additional norms beside article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international laws, he said he hoped the human rights perspective would take a center stage at Internet governance meetings throughout the year. While many governments applauded the first debate about the issue at the HRC initiated by Sweden, and, like the U.S. and the EU, urged considering the complicity of private companies in filtering, manipulating and censoring, Russia, Belarus, China and Cuba objected to continuing talks on procedural issues. Cuba warned against double standards of Western countries, pointing to the Wikileaks case. Carlos Afonso, executive director of the Brazilian Instituto Nupef, acknowledged that governments often acted inconsistently. In Brazil, a charter on Internet rights has been prepared for acceptance in Congress. On the other hand, the administration was preparing decrees that are contradictory to those principles.
An Oregon bill would prevent the state from assessing unexpected utility taxes on companies with data centers in enterprise zones during their enterprise zone agreement, which includes certain county-granted tax abatements. Senate Bill 1532 was passed by the Senate and House and sent to the governor to be signed. It would give companies like Facebook more certainty that they wouldn’t face higher property taxes in enterprise zones. The governor has said he would sign the bill, and co-sponsor Mike McLane (R-Powell Butte) said he expects it to be signed soon.
The next in a series of cybersecurity hearings by the House Communications Subcommittee is scheduled for March 7, the Commerce Committee said Wednesday. The hearing is at 10 a.m. in Room 2123, Rayburn Building. Also, Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., appointed six of his members to serve on a bipartisan Cybersecurity Working Group: Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Reps. Lee Terry, R-Neb., Doris Matsui, D-Calif., Bob Latta, R-Ohio, Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. Terry and Eshoo will lead the group and Walden will be an ex-officio member. “The threat [of cyberattacks] is real and the economic impact on businesses, especially smaller companies, is serious,” Walden said. “This threat is not a partisan issue."
The Body of European Regulators in Electronic Communications is seeking comment on non-discrimination principles it plans to include in updated common positions on wholesale unbundled access, wholesale broadband access and wholesale leased lines (http://xrl.us/bmwkut). The concept of non-discrimination is an important regulatory tool to ensure operators have a level playing field in the market, BEREC said. It generally aims to ensure that conditions set by companies with significant market power (SMP) don’t discriminate against their rivals in favor of their own downstream businesses, hampering competition, it said. So the chief consideration under a general non-discrimination requirement is to make sure SMP players treat all those seeking access, whether domestic or foreign, the same way unless there are objective reasons for not doing so, it said. National telecom regulators should use the principle of equivalence in dealing with competition problems, it said. That can be done by seeking to achieve either an equivalence of outputs or inputs, it said. The ultimate decision is for national authorities, who must consider the particular competition problems they face and the cost/benefit analysis, it said. Regulators should consider functional separation (splitting a provider’s network arm from its retail branch) only where all other regulatory conditions have failed, it said. They should also put systems in place to prevent SMP companies from not making wholesale offers to competitors in time to allow them to offer new downstream services at the same time as the major player, it said. Other proposed principles include ensuring that alternative providers have the ability to influence the decision about characteristics of new wholesale products and interfaces; and imposing generic requirements on SMP companies to provide service level agreements and guarantees, and key performance indicators. Comments are due March 30 to pm@berec.europa.eu.
Comments are due April 2 on General Communication Inc.’s petition seeking a limited waiver of new FCC call signaling rules, replies April 17, said a public notice (http://xrl.us/bmwmho). The Wireline Bureau sought comment on GCI’s request for “a waiver to address specific instances where it cannot comply with the letter of the rules” and a waiver to permit it to “continue to evaluate its compliance with the new Rules, develop remediation plans, and seek further additional waivers as appropriate."
Al Jazeera will use capacity on the Eutelsat 7 West A satellite at 7 degrees west, said Eutelsat. The new capacity will let Al Jazeera extend coverage across North West Africa, Eutelsat said. It also said the European Union’s TV information services moved to the Eutelsat 9A satellite at 9 degrees east.
SES subsidiary Astra Broadband Services was renamed SES Broadband Services, said SES Thursday. It said the Astra2Connect satellite broadband service was also renamed as SES Broadband. SES recently renamed its branches to fall under the SES name and these changes are part of that “new corporate identity,” it said.
Changes to Comcast’s broadband program for the poor make it “more attractive,” NATOA said Thursday of the cable operator expanding eligibility criteria for Internet Essentials and doubling maximum transmission speeds to 3 Mbps down and 768 kbps up. The program helps “narrow” the “digital divide,” NATOA Executive Director Steve Traylor said about Comcast’s report this week to the FCC about the program (CD Feb 29 p5), which the cable operator agreed to as part of gaining commission approval in 2011 of its purchase of control in NBCUniversal.