The effective date of an FCC requirement that all carriers and certain providers of interconnected text messaging services provide a bounceback message to customers that try but fail to send an emergency text to 911 is June 28, the Public Safety Bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/15loNjj). The deadline comes after an FCC report and order was published in the Federal Register Wednesday. “The automatic bounce-back message will provide consumers with an immediate response that text-to-911 is not supported and to contact emergency services by another means, such as by making a voice call,” the notice said.
Global IP traffic will grow three-fold by 2017 to an annual run rate of 1.4 zettabytes -- more than a trillion gigabytes per year, Cisco said Wednesday in its annual Visual Networking Index report. More traffic will traverse global networks in 2017 than all prior “Internet years” combined, Cisco said. There will be 3.6 billion Internet users by that year -- 48 percent of the world’s projected population of 7.6 billion. There will be more than 19 billion global network connections in 2017, up from 12 billion connections in 2012, Cisco said. The average fixed broadband speed in 2017 will be 29 Mbps, up from 11.3 Mbps in 2012 (http://bit.ly/11y6rNA).
Time Warner Cable petitioned to be excluded from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices in 11 New York communities this week, said filings posted in FCC docket 12-1. The petition cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The proposed deregulation would affect just under 21,000 households, including the communities of Falconer, Lakewood and Jamestown (http://bit.ly/13ZeX7Q).
The world’s content is increasingly “findable,” said venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report, released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/16pZelO). The amount of global digital information created and shared has grown nine times over the past five years, to nearly two zettabytes in 2011, the report said. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes. YouTube uploads are continuing to skyrocket, with 100 hours of video uploaded every minute, compared to around 75 million hours last year, the report said. The Internet is seeing continued robust growth, with 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide, it said. But Americans are below average in survey respondents indicating they share “everything” or “most things” online, the report said: Fifteen percent of surveyed Americans say they do, compared to a world average of 24 percent. For the first time, China has surpassed the U.S. in the number of active iOS and Android devices in use, the report said.
The Coalition for Broadcast Investment asked the FCC to relax rules limiting foreign investment capital for broadcasters in a meeting with aides to all three commissioners, according to an ex parte letter filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/12iZVw3). According to the letter, the coalition said broadcasters are facing increasing competition from “pay-television program networks, ‘over the-top’ providers and online services that are not subject to foreign investment limitations.” The coalition also said increasing access to capital would improve opportunities for minority media ownership and that “national security concerns” could be vetted with other agencies.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology hopes its second cybersecurity framework workshop will conclude with an “initial consensus” on standards to be included in the industry-developed framework, said Director Patrick Gallagher Wednesday. NIST expects participants at the event, which is being webcast and continues through Friday at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to begin creating the initial set of standards, best practices and procedures that will be included in the voluntary framework. NIST and the Department of Homeland Security are leading development of the framework as directed by President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order (CD Feb 14 p1). The participants will also begin identifying themes that cut across the different critical infrastructure sectors that are involved in the framework’s development. Participants will base their discussions on the comments NIST collected in its initial request for information, as well as a NIST analysis of those comments that identifies common themes and issues (http://1.usa.gov/10u8IYf). It’s important that the workshop result in a “best in class” initial consensus because the workshop’s output will directly affect what’s discussed at the next workshop, scheduled to run from July 10-12 at the University of California, San Diego, Gallagher said. “These workshops must build on each other.” NIST hopes the July workshop will be able to focus on selecting framework components, said Adam Sedgewick, NIST senior information technology policy advisor. A fourth workshop, to occur in September, will help finalize what’s included in the draft framework that goes public in October, he said. While there will eventually need to be a consensus on the entire framework, “not all of the discussions this week will meet with unanimous consent,” Gallagher said. A lack of consensus in some areas is fine, however, because “the framework will be better if we bring in all viewpoints” at this stage in its development, he said. NIST’s role is only to support the industry participants, not to “choose or develop particular standards or solutions,” Gallagher said. “This is your work product, not ours.”
Measurement data for multi-platform video content viewing is “only starting to improve,” but the much-needed improvement is “visible now,” Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman told the Nomura investor conference in New York Wednesday. “There’s a huge opportunity” to make TV Everywhere, which has been discussed for a long time, “a reality” now, he said. That’s “good for everybody,” including consumers, distributors and content owners, he said. The one major obstacle to providing TV content outside viewers’ homes remains the lack of a measurement system, he said. “We would like to see it happen more quickly,” and “a lot of progress has been made,” but “a lot of work needs to be done” still to achieve TV Everywhere, said Dauman. “I'm very excited by the mobile opportunity overall,” he also said. Viacom will “continue to develop” and improve its Nickelodeon app, and “it has been very successful” so far, he said. Viacom will start an MTV app “very soon and our other brands will be rolling out apps” in addition to the existing, “standard” apps that it has for individual TV shows including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, he said. “We will innovate in this area. We are applying more and more internal resources” towards app initiatives, he said.
Central Texas will soon require 10-digit dialing for customers in the 512 area code, the Texas Public Utility Commission said in a press release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/17u1eJX). Callers will need to dial all 10 numbers starting June 1. The 512 area code will be exhausted by late 2013, it said. “The change is needed to accommodate new area code 737,” the PUC explained. “Telephone providers can issue new numbers with the 737 area code beginning Monday, July 1, 2013.” It noted that the new area code is needed to “handle regional growth along with the added demand for new wireless phone numbers and business landlines.”
CEA attacked a Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing report (CD May 17 p7) on problems with closed captions over Internet Protocol and said it should be disregarded. The TDI report complained of a lack of captions on mobile Web browsers more than seven months before the deadline for compliance, the association wrote the FCC Wednesday in docket 11-154 (http://bit.ly/117QWHx). “TDI’s failure to even acknowledge the January 1, 2014, compliance deadline for the apparatus closed captioning rules casts serious doubt on the credibility of the TDI Report,” wrote CEA Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Julie Kearney. “Any claims made in the TDI Report regarding apparatus closed captioning capability are at best premature and should be disregarded."
Adak Eagle Enterprises and subsidiary Windy City Cellular have spent a great deal of time, energy and resources “sincerely and diligently responding” to FCC Wireline Bureau requests for information to supplement their waiver requests, the companies told bureau chief Julie Veach May 23, said an ex parte filing released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/16pXyJ5). Given the applicable waiver standard and the commission’s promise of “no flash cuts,” there “must be a way to reach a positive result,” they said. The companies are “working rapidly” to submit a revised proposal based on FCC suggestions on how to further reduce operating expenses, they said. Adak Eagle and Windy City have sought waivers of some of the caps on high-cost USF support, without which they say operations would become unsustainable (CD Sept 19 p10).