The Fiber to the Home Council Americas released a six-page document (http://bit.ly/1415zAq) on how to become a “fiber-friendly community,” released Wednesday in tandem with its gigabit conference in the Kansas City area this week. “A community can make a real difference in whether a network gets built,” it said. The document offers several tips for municipalities. It recommends they develop clear broadband plans with a committed community of stakeholders involved, expedited permitting and innovative construction techniques. Municipalities should “make poles available on clearly defined, reasonable terms through a rapid approval process,” it said. Communities should coordinate maintenance of these poles and other assets and proactively improve existing infrastructure, the council said. “Comprehensive approval for an entire project, instead of repeated approval requirements for different stages of a project, greatly reduces delays that add costs to a project,” it said. Communities that want better broadband should consider different ways to crowdsource their support, said broadband analyst Craig Settles, a consultant for municipalities, in a Thursday op-ed on the news website Gigaom (http://bit.ly/18yIXuD). Settles focused the op-ed on a meeting in the Kansas City area. Settles described the success of Kickstarter and discussed how communities may make use of opportunities tied to Neighbor.ly and the Free Network Foundation. “Neighbor.ly plans to soon announce support from a major foundation, which will allow it to build out a lot more of the platform infrastructure the company wanted to build initially,” Settles said. The company has a strong interest in helping communities set up wireless mesh networks, he said. “Adding to the company’s horsepower, it also is working with a civic business accelerator that will enable them to help neighborhoods implement high speed networks.” Civic pride and fundraising become important considerations in crowdsourcing broadband networks, he said.
Dish Network assured the FCC that it can adopt 700 MHz interoperability rules without changing the lower 700 MHz E block authorized power level. Executives from the DBS company presented a technical analysis to staff from the Wireless Bureau, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/16tkc3j). The analysis shows that, as the result of the strict ground-level power flux density limits applicable to the E block, a high-power lower E block broadcast transmission causes less ground level signal “than would a typical, lower power 1 kw/MHz base station transmission ... in the same block,” it said. Parties requesting modification of the lower E block technical rules “have provided no evidence that the existing rules are insufficient to protect adjacent operations,” Dish said. AT&T and Qualcomm have participated in docket 12-69, where Dish’s filing appeared (http://bit.ly/Zhjuk4).
The FCC approved a waiver allowing the sale of WNYA-TV Pittsfield, Mass., from Venture Technologies Group to WNYT-TV, licensee of a station with those call letters in the same Nielsen designated market area as WNYA. Both NBC affiliate WNYT Albany, N.Y., and WNYA are in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy DMA, said a Thursday letter to lawyers for the buyer and seller from Media Bureau Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman. Because the DMA has fewer than eight independent stations and even though WNYA isn’t a top-four station in the market, the buyer needed the waiver, she wrote (http://bit.ly/18z9qbr). She said the buyer got a failing-station waiver for WNYA because it met all four tests for such status, including low audience share and negative cash flow in the three years through 2012.
The FCC is processing Bay City Television’s request for renewed authorization to deliver programming via satellite to Tijuana TV station XETV, and opposition to the U.S. broadcaster’s permit to deliver programs to the Mexican station is due in 30 days, said a public notice Thursday (http://bit.ly/Zwet9P).
More Texas companies want money from the state’s USF to make up for federal high-cost support lost due to the FCC November 2011 USF order. The Texas Public Utility Commission issued two notices Wednesday noting requests from Alenco Communications and West Texas Rural Telephone co-op. The PUC granted a similar request to Hill Country co-op this spring after a lengthy proceeding that began last fall, which inspired other Texas telcos to follow suit (CD April 4 p5). Alenco wants $146,049 (http://bit.ly/11e1gRt) and West Texas (http://bit.ly/18Bpp6m) wants $173,069 to replace lost revenue in 2012, according to the notices. Neither request involves any rate increases. The notices said there will be an opportunity to comment and intervene on the requests.
The FCC International Bureau dismissed a Univision application for a fixed earth station license in Chicago. The application “is inconsistent, incomplete or otherwise does not substantially comply with the commission’s rules,” the Satellite Division said in a letter to a Univision executive (http://bit.ly/135YNIM). Univision didn’t provide a frequency coordination report and it didn’t list the proposed points of communication, it said.
The data center security market will hit $13.77 billion by 2018, said a new report from MarketsandMarkets (http://prn.to/16t8DsR). “The major forces driving this market are the increasing data traffic and network connections, virtualization of the data centers, increasing cyber attacks with physical attacks and insider threats,” said a Thursday news release from the industry research firm.
Sirius XM and EchoStar seek reconsideration of the FCC decision on Part 5 rules for experimental radio service. The satellite companies asked the agency for a new definition of “emergency notifications” to clarify that “it intended to include all participants in the emergency alert system in that category,” they said in a joint petition in docket 10-236 (http://bit.ly/ZgNRHB). The failure to clearly explain which entities are included in that category “will create confusion on the part of experimental program license applicants and undermine compliance with the commission’s goal of avoiding interference threats to the EAS network,” said Sirius and EchoStar. The effect could extend well beyond the millions of Sirius subscribers because of Sirius’ role in ensuring reliable distribution of EAS messages to primary entry point stations “and ultimately those who rely on the EAS network for emergency information,” it said. In January, the commission adopted rules to streamline experimental rules and allow experimental licensees to operate in any frequency band. For experiments that may affect bands used for the provision of commercial mobile services, emergency notifications or public safety purposes, program experimental radio licensees must develop a specific plan to avoid interference to these bands prior to commencing operation, the order said (http://bit.ly/Zhi4Gr). It cited the list of commercial mobile radio service frequencies provided in the NPRM, “but does not discuss what it means by ‘emergency notification’ bands or even repeat the notice’s discussion of EAS participants’ central role in providing such notifications,” the satellite companies said Thursday. “Instead, the order is silent on the matter of what service providers come within the emergency notification category.” Ensuring that all EAS participants are entitled to the special protections for critical services “will protect the EAS network and facilitate program license applicants’ compliance with the additional requirements applicable when proposing operations in frequencies used for emergency notification services,” the two companies said.
EU lawmakers must push through a final telecom single market legislative package by Easter 2014, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Thursday. Speaking to the European Parliament Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO), Kroes said she hopes the package will include plans to end mobile roaming charges in Europe and, for the first time, guarantee net neutrality. The “open and neutral character of the Internet is carved in stone” for Kroes, she said. She asked committee members if they would join her “in building something special between now and the European elections” next year. “I want us to show citizens that the EU is relevant to their lives” and that it made digital rules catch up with their legitimate expectations, she said. She promised to spend the next year building a bridge with Parliament to European citizens, saying they “need this reform.” Everyone loves the benefits of cheaper roaming prices, which couldn’t have happened without the EU, she said. That fact is also a challenge, she said. While her mandate is the source of the “incredibly popular” policy, “we struggle to push other telecoms and digital issues to the top of the political agenda,” she said. Kroes called for a “radical legislative compromise” that puts in place all the pieces in the puzzle, not just everyone’s personal favorites or the “visible and sexy changes.” Kroes said she’s passionate about reform because it’s useless for her to rock the boat on her own, and because although there’s support from the highest levels in the EU institutions to move forward, she can’t do it without Parliament. All the political building blocks are there, she said. Citizens want their frustrations dealt with; more companies will invest if artificial barriers drop; and national governments are telling the European Commission to proceed, Kroes said. “This is the opportunity to stand up and be counted.” IMCO members flagged several issues they'd like to see tackled, such as ensuring that libraries have access to e-books and creating a system for online dispute resolution. European telecom network operators, meanwhile, said this week that a full revision of the regulatory framework must be an integral part of the digital single market initiative. When the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association met in Milan Tuesday, the association said the objective of reform should be to spur growth, innovation and employment and to guarantee that citizens continue to enjoy the benefits of technological progress. That can only happen if investment in the ICT sector increases, ETNO said. Investment lags in Europe because of fragmented markets and an “unpredictable and non-harmonised regulatory environment, which still favours access seekers over investors, focuses mainly on the number of players in the markets as an indicator for competition and places too little attention to a sustainable market structure,” ETNO said in a written statement Thursday (http://xrl.us/bo6mb7). Less-intrusive regulation will stimulate investment, it said. The telecom industry must “evolve or die,” and 2013 is the tipping year, said European Internet think tank IDATE on Thursday in the 2012 edition of its DigiWorld Yearbook (http://xrl.us/bo6mdi). The digital world had a 2.7 percent revenue drop last year, after two steady years of recovery, it said. Equipment markets were battered and the TV market was the hardest hit, dragging the entire consumer electronics market down 7 percent, it said. But more competition in the smartphone and tablet markets offers a glimmer of hope for the other two sectors, it said. Services markets appear to have weathered the storm but likely won’t ever go back to the high growth rates of the 1990s and mid-2000s, it said. The only exception is Internet over-the-top services, which continue to grow by an average 20 percent per year, said IDATE. Telecom companies have some leverage to deal with the change, such as by creating more value from network access now that OTT services are raising user consumption, it said. Next-generation network technologies let telcos boost speeds and introduce quality improvements to differentiate their offerings, said IDATE. “It is clear 2013 is a pivotal year and telcos must embrace innovation. A simple Darwinian case of evolve or die!” Digital innovation is far from over, and is being pushed by mobile, cloud computing and big data, IDATE said.
Alaska Communications is making more use of VoIP-enabled services in Alaska, the wireline telco and wireless carrier said in a Wednesday news release (http://bit.ly/10CfvQl). It first experimented with VoIP for small businesses last year and now will offer it to “large businesses and multi-location enterprises in Southcentral Alaska,” the company said. “Because it is a cloud-based system, it provides better functionality and lower costs than traditional phone systems.”