Data-driven innovation will create 1.9 million U.S. jobs by 2015, said a white paper released Monday by the Software and Information Industry Association (http://bit.ly/18cZmSU). The association said in a news release that, in addition to recognizing the economic potential, “we have to address the very legitimate questions about the storage and use of data without strict regulation that stifles economic opportunity.” The release outlined what the paper said were 10 essential policy recommendations to achieve a balance between economic opportunity and privacy and other concerns.
The House Communications Subcommittee plans a hearing to examine the state of the video market, industry officials told us Monday. They said the hearing, which has not been announced, will likely take place in June and may include witnesses representing Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, NAB and Aereo. The hearing will likely touch on the December 2014 expiration of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act and other topics covered at last week’s Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on the state of the video market, said industry officials. A committee spokesman had no comment.
San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee approved a settlement last week in CTIA v. City and County of San Francisco, said law firm Wiley Rein (http://bit.ly/10QlYDE). It represents CTIA and called the settlement another win in “a series of significant court victories” over the last three years. The case involved San Francisco’s cellphone right-to-know ordinance, designed to inform people of alleged risks of mobile phones. San Francisco officials are ending the ordinance as part of the settlement, the law firm said. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel, located in San Francisco, sided with CTIA last fall, and the city’s call for a rehearing en banc was denied this February, it said. The Environmental Working Group slammed this then-pending settlement May 6 (http://bit.ly/10gOqBP): “EWG has been a strong supporter of this groundbreaking ordinance from day one and worked with the city on its implementation,” said Research Director Renee Sharp in a statement. “We are disappointed that residents of San Francisco will not have access to important public health information about radiation emissions from wireless devices at the point of sale. We strongly believe consumers have the right to know about the potential health effects of cell phone radiation and how they can reduce their exposures.” Wiley Rein called these fears “unfounded.”
Caching platform provider PeerApp will collaborate with content delivery networks (CDNs) EdgeCast and Limelight to find solutions for better delivery of over-the-top content, it said in a Monday news release (http://mwne.ws/18cQtbZ). As consumer demand increases for over-the-top services, network operators face increased expenses related to traffic growth with no associated increase in revenue, it said. PeerApp’s Content Service Extension will integrate operator resources into existing CDNs, letting operators offer faster and better service to consumers, and allowing them to monetize on the delivery of over-the-top content, Chief Technology Officer Alan Arolovitch told us. The companies hope to begin rolling out solutions sometime this year, with market trials scheduled for the second half of 2013, he said. Arolovitch said the technology could be useful for existing CDNs as well as content providers like eBay and Facebook which might consider developing their own CDNs as traffic continues to grow.
The 13 largest multichannel video programming distributors, as a group, had the first-ever loss of total video subscribers over four consecutive quarters, an industry researcher said Monday. Q1 subscriber gains of 195,000 to 94.9 million total among the MVPDs, a growth rate 44 percent of the year-ago quarter’s net adds, “were not enough to offset subscriber losses from Q2 and Q3 2012,” said a Leichtman Research Group report. That leaves “major multi-channel video providers with a net loss of about 80,000 subscribers over the past year, compared to a net gain of about 380,000 over the prior year,” it said. The first such four-quarter decline in the decade-plus that the firm has tracked the industry reflects “a combination of a saturated market, an increased focus from providers on acquiring higher-value subscribers, and some consumers opting for a lower-cost mixture of over-the-air TV, Netflix and other over-the-top viewing options,” said President Bruce Leichtman. The report said cable operators lost subscribers, DBS added “57,000 subscribers in Q1 2013 -- the fewest in any Q1 over the past decade,” and phone companies added 401,000 for 9.7 million total.
Satcom Direct agreed to distribute avionics equipment for Inmarsat’s forthcoming Global Xpress. Satcom signed an agreement with Honeywell to allow customers to buy GX aviation services through Satcom Direct, “and package it with existing services for a complete aircraft communications solution,” it said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18aX5HT). Global Xpress avionics equipment will be available from Satcom Direct and the Honeywell authorized dealer network, it said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that the top four U.S. carriers didn’t infringe on Greenville Communications’ telephone message marketing patents. Greenville claimed in 2007 that the companies that are now Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA had infringed its patents on technology that substitutes messages or music in the place of a busy signal. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Cooper had ruled in her Trenton, N.J., court that the carriers’ ringback tones option targeted specific callers with a specified message or other sound. She found Greenville’s patents used the same message or other sound for all callers. The Federal Circuit affirmed her ruling on Friday, though Judges William Bryson, Richard Linn and Kimberly Moore didn’t issue an opinion (http://1.usa.gov/19VPEDx). Attorneys for Greenville and the carriers had no comment.
A spokesman for the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) said Monday that the agency had no comment on Cisco’s argument that the FCC should overturn USAC’s decision that audio communication components in Cisco’s WebEx conferencing service are a telecommunications service under the 1996 Telecom Act. Designating those components as a telecommunications service rather than as part of an integrated information service would make a portion of revenue from WebEx eligible for assessment for Universal Service Fund contributions (CD May 20 p6). USAC does not comment on ongoing appeals, the spokesman said.
Norwegian security firm Norman Shark said Monday that evidence from its investigation into cyberattacks on Norwegian telco Telenor and Pakistan’s government shows the ongoing series of attacks are originating in India. Norman Shark began investigating after Telenor reported to police it was the victim of unlawful computer intrusion; Telenor had been infected through spear phishing emails that targeted its upper-level management. Norman Shark said its analysts found “surprisingly large” amounts of malware that matched the malware used in the Telenor attack, indicating it was part of a larger effort to compromise governments and corporations. The attacks targeted victims in more than a dozen countries, including government, military and corporate targets, Norman Shark said. The firm determined the attacks originated in India based on an analysis of IP addresses, website domain registrations and identifiers within the malware. The attacks, which Norman named “Operation Hangover,” relied on known vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word documents, Java and Web browsers; such attacks have previously mostly originated in China, the firm said (http://bit.ly/11QS20y). The attack “may have employed multiple developers tasked with delivering specific malware,” said Snorre Fagerland, Norman Shark’s head of research, in a news release (http://bit.ly/1179QNo). The word “Appin” appears in a “great number of isolated cases and contexts” within evidence of the attacks, which may have a connection with India’s Appin Security Group, Norman said in the report. Norman said it is not suggesting Appin is involved in “inappropriate activity,” noting that “getting to the bottom of that is beyond our visibility.” Appin did not respond to a request for comment, but a notice on its website said it believes “some individuals/entities are misusing the good name of ASG/Appin/Appin Security Group.” Appin said the public should not “be misled by any communication through fictitious domains” that claim to be from the company (http://bit.ly/18cJaRI). Norman Shark has previously investigated other cyberattacks; it issued a report in November detailing a series of attacks on Israeli and Palestinian targets that had lasted at least a year (http://bit.ly/W3DD8b). The firm had previously been part of Norman ASA, which split in two in late 2012; Norman Shark focuses on cybersecurity in the enterprise market, while Norman Safeguard focuses on consumers in Europe, a spokesman said.
The FCC is requiring all carriers and interconnected text messaging providers to send an automatic bounceback text message to consumers where text-to-911 service is not available, it said in an order released Friday. The order had been adopted May 8 on a 4-0 vote with Commissioner Ajit Pai concurring. The nation’s four largest carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, have already committed to providing bounceback messages by June 30. The requirement now applies to other carriers and interconnected “over-the-top” text providers by Sept. 30 (http://fcc.us/12PR7sF). “Requiring all CMRS providers and interconnected text providers to implement a bounce-back mechanism is particularly important because while deployment of text-to-911 has begun, the transition is still in the very early stages and will not be uniform,” the order said. “During the transition, text-to-911 will be available in certain geographic areas sooner than it is available in others and may be supported by certain service providers but not by others. At the same time, as text-to-911 becomes more widely available, it is likely to generate increased consumer expectations as to its availability, which makes it increasingly important for consumers to be made aware when it is not available in an emergency.” “For too long, when a call for help went out as a text message, the only response was painful silence,” said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “But no one should be left wondering in an emergency if they have been heard.” Pai’s concurrence notes that he has fundamental questions about the FCC’s jurisdiction arguments. “I cannot support the lengthy legal analysis contained in this item, which offers a grab bag of theories, some far-reaching and questionable,” he said. “For example, the Commission today claims sweeping authority to prescribe ‘rules that prevent the transmission of potentially misleading text messages.’ This remarkable assertion of power raises serious First Amendment questions and should give pause to anyone who has ever sent a ‘potentially misleading’ text message."