Facilities-based carriers would need a court order before intentionally disrupting phone service, according to a new bill introduced in the California state legislature Wednesday. The bill, SB-1160, says facilities-based carriers that interconnect with the public switched telephone network “shall not intentionally interrupt, suspend, or disconnect service to a particular user or to a geographic area” unless they can prove probable cause that the service would be used to assist in illegal activities and be a threat to public safety. State Senator Alex Padilla said he introduced the bill in response to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Agency’s shutdown of mobile services during public protests in August. “For decades, California law has required a court order to interrupt or shut down traditional telephone service,” he said. The bill would “extend those protections to the modern telecommunication networks and preempt any local government or agency policy that allows shut down of service without court review.” It will also protect the public’s access to 911 services, he said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau granted 36 requests from school districts seeking review of decisions by the Universal Service Administrative Company under the E-rate program (http://xrl.us/bmtwj9). The order, adopted Wednesday, said 24 of the districts “conducted a fair and open competitive bidding process under the Commission rules in effect at the time.” The other 12 districts “have demonstrated good cause” to waive certain rules because the ministerial or clerical errors in their applications “do not warrant a complete rejection of their applications,” or technical violations did not compromise the competitive bidding process, the order said. The bureau remanded the applications to USAC for expedited action.
American Tower posted a Q4 profit of $201.3 million versus $83.5 million a year earlier. It expects 2012 revenue of $2.67 billion to $2.71 billion, the company said. For the full year 2011, net income was $392.7 million vs $372.9 million in 2010. Carriers’ LTE buildout would be positive for tower companies this year, UBS analysts said. The company continued to expand its footprint domestically and internationally, it said. It expects to close on about 750 communications sites in Colombia, about 500 sites in Mexico and 1,000 sites in Uganda during first half of the year, it said.
MetroPCS posted Q4 profit of $91 million, up from $14 million a year earlier. It had 9.35 million subscribers at the end of 2011, up from 8.16 million a year earlier. The company plans to offer Android smartphones on its LTE network in the second half of the year, CEO Roger Linquist said Thursday.
Any second digital dividend gained from reallocation of spectrum in the 700 MHz band requires “coexistence” between new mobile services and existing equipment and services already in the band, Cable Europe and the German Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association Thursday said. As with the first digital dividend, in the 800 MHz band, there has been no mention of further studies on the impact new mobile services could have on other devices and services currently used by European consumers, they said. If the issue isn’t acknowledged and a comprehensive assessment made, investments by consumers and businesses in existing and future equipment may be at risk, the groups told the European Commission. The EU should make coexistence a cornerstone of its spectrum policy, they said.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking comment on a Sprint Nextel petition asking the FCC to clarify that its rules permit larger than 25 kHz bandwidth operations in the enhanced specialized mobile radio (ESMR) portion of the 800 MHz band, FCC officials told us. Sprint filed the petition in June (http://xrl.us/bky38d). The carrier said it owns 14 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum, including ESMR spectrum, across much of the U.S. and noted that the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 directed the FCC to establish “parity among commercial licensees in the 800 MHz, cellular and PCS spectrum allocations.” Eliminating the 25 kHz bandwidth limitation provides licensees “with the same flexibility and technological neutrality enjoyed by other CMRS licensees, consistent with Congress’ OBRA 93 regulatory parity directive,” Sprint said. Sprint representatives met with various FCC officials this week to discuss the order, according to ex parte filings (http://xrl.us/bmtvdd). Sprint said it “addressed Sprint Nextel and public safety’s substantial progress in the 800 MHz band reconfiguration initiative as well as the technical measures Sprint Nextel is taking to ensure no harmful interference from its proposed CDMA operations in the 800 MHz band.” AT&T had recommended that the FCC seek comment on the petition through an NPRM (http://xrl.us/bmtvgv).
TracFone asked the FCC to reject a decision by the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board denying Lifeline support for at least a year to all its customers found to have received support from multiple eligible telecommunications carriers. Instead, the FCC should order the use of the Interim Duplicate Resolution Process, which has been used in 12 states, TracFone said (http://xrl.us/bmtuxw). The board’s policy is “inconsistent with Commission-established procedures governing de-enrollment of Lifeline-eligible low-income consumers enrolled in multiple ETCs’ Lifeline programs, and therefore is preempted,” TracFone said in its petition, asking the FCC to take up the matter on an “emergency basis.” TracFone has 193,000 low-income Puerto Rico consumers in its SafeLink Wireless Lifeline program. The carrier said Puerto Rico trails most of the states in average income and is a leader based on the percentage of households living in poverty. “Similarly, Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate for December 2011 (the most recent month for which statistics are available) was 14.7 percent,” TracFone said.
A group of online media companies will hold Digital Content NewFronts events in New York this spring, bringing the Digitas-backed meetings to the U.S. for the first time to sell online video ads, they said. AOL, Google, Hulu, Microsoft and Yahoo will each host NewFronts events in April and May, they said. The Interactive Ad Bureau will also participate, and host collateral events during the two weeks of NewFronts events in New York, the companies said. “The time is absolutely right for original digital video content to be offered up in an industry upfront marketplace,” said IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris reached an agreement Wednesday with mobile application platforms operators to improve customer privacy protections. Companies, including Google, Apple and Microsoft, agreed to establish privacy principles “designed to bring the industry in line with a California law requiring mobile apps that collect personal information to have a privacy policy.” The agreement is a positive step “to set clear guidelines for app makers while reassuring customers that their privacy is secure,” the Association for Competitive Technology said. Making practices clear in a privacy policy “improves consumer confidence in the safety of their personal information and helps users identify the right apps for their needs.” Unless an app company documents its practices and figures out how data is actually being used, “its staff has no chance of complying with any set of rules,” Future of Privacy Forum said in a blog post supporting the action. Consumer Watchdog called the move an improvement. But “Do Not Track” legislation is needed, CW said: Trying to decipher “what’s going on through a privacy policy written by lawyers, paid by the word to obfuscate can be extremely frustrating.”
Several carriers agree with Windstream and Frontier’s assertion that the commission’s Universal Service Fund/Intercarrier Compensation Order “did not intend to flash-cut originating access rates for PSTN-to-VoIP calls,” the companies said in a reply petition filed Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmtaby). Cbeyond, EarthLink, Integra and tw telecom asked the commission to say that, Windstream/Frontier wrote, saying NECA, OPASTCO and the Western Telecommunications Alliance have requested a similar clarification. “Even AT&T, which disagrees with the Petition, agrees that the access recovery mechanism would need to be expanded if PSTN-to-VoIP originating access rates are flash-cut to interstate levels,” they wrote. The two LECs have been sparring with interexchange carriers over how to handle intrastate originating access rates for calls that start over the public switched telephone network and terminate on the Internet (CD Feb 14 p13).