Kansas lawmakers continued to advance a telecom deregulation bill last week. The Senate approved 36-4 an amended version of House Bill 2201 and returned it to the House, which had previously approved it 118-1. One proposed amendment was accepted, and one was canceled, but neither substantively proposed to change the industry-backed bill. The bill proposes the creation of a Telecom Study Committee, a request to the Kansas Corporation Commission to report on IP-to-IP interconnection issues, a change to how the state USF functions and the removal of certain carrier-of-last-resort obligations, among others, according to the bill’s latest supplemental note (http://bit.ly/YO3b0z).
CEA repeated its stance that the scope of Sections 204 and 205 of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act is limited to increasing accessibility for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Those sections address the user interfaces on digital apparatus and access to programming guides and menus on navigation devices. It urged the FCC to preserve industry flexibility as it crafts the NPRM to implement those sections, it said in an ex parte filing in dockets 12-108 and 11-154 (http://bit.ly/YkOnUE). CEA said it had a meeting with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, his staff and staff from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.
CenturyLink supports the Colorado Public Utilities Commission’s pending FCC request for a waiver of the Lifeline Reform Order uniform eligibility requirement (CD March 25 p15), company representatives told the Wireline Bureau, according to a Thursday ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/10kE1Ro). The request concerns the complicated timing of state legislation and federal Lifeline deadlines. CenturyLink calls the extension from the existing April 1 deadline to July 1 “modest.” Colorado will need time to shift the Lifeline administration from the government to the carriers, the telco said. CenturyLink has begun preparatory steps but called the transition “unexpected,” and if there’s no waiver, it would have “no choice but to delay” processing Lifeline applications as the changes get sorted out.
The Department of Commerce will host a workshop April 3 to discuss a voluntary framework to reduce the cybersecurity risks to critical infrastructure, according to a department news release. The workshop aims to help the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “collect information about current risk management practices; use of frameworks, standards, guidelines and best practices; and specific industry practices,” the release said. The president’s cybersecurity order, issued last month, directs NIST, in collaboration with U.S. companies, to lead the federal development of voluntary cybersecurity standards and best practices (CD Feb 14 p5). The event will be led by Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, NIST and White House officials and will include representatives from Visa, Merck, Fidelity, Northrop Grumman, and St. Luke’s Health System. It will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1401 Constitution Ave. It will also be webcast at http://1.usa.gov/XMEP13.
Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition Executive Director Preston Padden met with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, his aides Zac Katz and Renee Gregory, along with Incentive Auction Task Force Chair Gary Epstein and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, to urge the agency not to “score” TV stations that participate in the incentive auction, an ex parte notice shows. “The threat of arbitrary scoring or other efforts to interfere with the market-based pricing will discourage broadcaster participation and could result in an insufficient supply of broadcast spectrum,” the notice said. Padden also urged the officials to adopt flexible rules with regard to channel sharing within designated market areas and stations that are operating under special temporary authority, the notice said.
State and local officials shouldn’t blame FirstNet for perceived problems so much as ask how they can help, said Richard Mirgon, a partner at Presidential Partners Consulting and former president of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, in an op-ed for Urgent Communications (http://bit.ly/ZsS8mw). FirstNet has made “excellent progress” in its first six months, according to Mirgon. “It is also interesting to note that some states are trying to shape this broadband project as a cash cow, with some states posturing to determine how they can generate revenue from this spectrum,” he wrote. “Maybe the better perspective is consider the millions of dollars the states will save by not having to build, manage and update a network that will be more extensive and comprehensive than they have today.” People should be thanking NTIA and the FirstNet board, he said.
Comments on the FCC proposal to ease the process for allowing Internet access on planes are due May 22, the commission said in a Federal Register notice (http://1.usa.gov/13EtZ59). Replies are due June 21, it said. The notice corrects a previous notice that said the deadline was April 8, it said. The proposal aims to establish earth stations aboard aircraft as a licensed application for communication with fixed satellite service stations (CD Dec 31 p8).
The IP transition “holds the potential for enormous benefits,” but the FCC still has a big role to play ensuring continued competition, said T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham in a Friday blog post. “Although conversion to a different technology has been underway for years, regulators cannot afford to simply assume the transition by itself eliminates the need for all oversight of the relationship between incumbents and other carriers,” Ham wrote (http://t-mo.co/10kg2lt). “The incumbent carriers’ arguments for removing FCC regulation in this area are as antiquated as the technology to which they continue to cling. Simply put, they want the authority to raise prices and refuse network interconnection to competitors (or offer it only on their own unilateral terms). Because no telecommunications network can stand entirely on its own -- on the simplest level, one carrier’s customer must be able to call another carrier’s customer -- deregulating, as these largest carriers suggest, would be devastating to competition and consumers.”
Dish Network urged the FCC to dismiss a petition from wireless carrier NTCH that asks the commission to reconsider its modification of the 2 GHz licenses held by Dish subsidiaries. The commission granted Dish the modification after Dish was granted authorization to use mobile satellite service spectrum to deploy a terrestrial network (CD Feb 19 p10). NTCH filed the petition “to ensure that the commission retains the right to reverse the modifications consistent with its resolution of the issues” presented in docket 12-70, NTCH said in its petition in that docket (http://bit.ly/XpeYR5). The FCC “has examined the appropriateness of MSS use of the band already twice in the past two years,” Dish said in its opposition (http://bit.ly/11Wh7pL). NTCH’s suggestion that the commission prohibit MSS use of the band by rule “is the same request addressed in a new cloak.” Dish and the public “would be irreparably harmed by a rescission of the license modifications, as such an action would halt deployment of Dish’s MSS and terrestrial mobile broadband deployment,” it said.
Google has pledged “not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked,” the company said in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/13AuL2Z). Currently, Google’s pledge covers 10 patents (http://bit.ly/11SijHa) concerning MapReduce -- “a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google” -- and will extend to other technologies in the future, the post said. Google said it’s pledging not to sue over the open-source software patents in the hopes of encouraging other patent holders to make a similar pledge, and fostering an open Internet “that protects real innovation and continues to deliver great products and services.”