“The dictum, ‘first, do no harm,’ is a duty commonly assigned to physicians” and would be a good rule to live by for the FCC as it pushes forward on an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, said Robert Hahn and Peter Passell of Regulation2point0 in a Wednesday blog post. The two said the FCC should be especially wary about excluding any carriers from participating in the auction. “The U.S. market is working remarkably well,” they said (http://bit.ly/WWm91D). “Restricting participation in the next spectrum auction could well slow innovation if the ‘reward’ for market success is to make it harder to acquire additional spectrum for continued growth.”
Shipments of outdoor metrocells and indoor capacity nodes should surpass shipments of residential femtocells by 2016, Mobile Experts said Wednesday in a new forecast. Residential femtocell shipments were weak in 2012, and Mobile Experts now predicts shipments will only grow by about 12 percent per year over the next five years. Mobile operators are pushing for high-capacity small cells, helping drive stronger growth through capacity upgrades, Mobile Experts said. The Asia-Pacific market has led in small cell adoption, and is “stretching the femtocell into areas where the small cells are handling capacity effectively for operators like KT, SKT, and NTT DoCoMo,” said Joe Madden, principal analyst for Mobile Experts, in a news release. “Many other operators around the world will follow this example, as the LTE macro roll-out is completed and capacity tightens up in North America, China, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. The bottom line is that small cells are 65 [percent] less expensive than macro base stations, for adding mobile capacity."
Dome Productions requested a special temporary authority to operate a 1.8 meter Ku-band transmit/receive earth station in Kansas City, Mo. The earth station will be used to transmit to the Galaxy 17 satellite at 97 degrees west on April 12, “in support and demonstration of the applicant’s equipment,” it said in an application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/YfxV85).
All that stands between Kansas and a state law restricting state regulation of VoIP and IP-enabled services regulation is Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature. House Bill 2326 passed the Kansas Senate Tuesday and passed the House weeks ago.
Hughes’ broadband global area network machine-to-machine terminal received Hazardous Locations Accreditation. The Hughes 9502, “a global-use terminal designed and manufactured by Hughes for operation over Inmarsat’s BGAN service, has successfully completed testing by Met Laboratories,” Inmarsat and Hughes said in a joint press release (http://bit.ly/YEBzIn). The terminal was certified for operation in hazardous locations “where explosive gaseous atmospheres may potentially be present,” it said. It delivers affordable, end-to-end IP data connectivity for a wide range of sectors, including environmental monitoring, weather and tsunami warning systems, Hughes said.
In an advertisement, AT&T is critiquing old communications law and asks the Illinois Legislature to take action. “In 2013, the state should adopt a modern communications law to attract more private investment in the broadband networks that help make Illinois safer,” said the advertisement in Capitol Fax (http://bit.ly/YbKzaw), a political news website in Illinois. “Remarkably, Illinois’ communications law still requires some companies to invest in 100-year-old technology, diverting limited resources from new broadband networks.” Much of the advertisement focuses on public safety groups in the state and why they support modernizing communications law, specifically emphasizing the benefits of wireless broadband technology.
A three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed an appeal of a lawsuit jointly brought by Luvdarts, a company that creates digital greeting cards and other content for delivery on MMS networks. The suit claimed the top four U.S. wireless carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA -- were liable when their customers forwarded Luvdarts-created content in violation of the company’s copyright. The court affirmed U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit when it came before his court in Los Angeles. Luvdarts failed to prove “that the Carriers had the necessary specific knowledge of infringement” and failed to prove “that the Carriers had the necessary right and ability to supervise the infringing content,” Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said in the panel’s opinion (http://1.usa.gov/108NECw).
Public interest groups are planning an expanded push to raise questions about the possible nomination of Tom Wheeler as the next chairman of the FCC, interest group sources confirmed Tuesday. The groups will cite concerns about Wheeler’s ties to industry given his record as president of both CTIA and NCTA (CD March 26 p1).
House Commerce Committee members said they plan a hearing to examine the FCC’s Lifeline program on April 25, according to a letter sent Tuesday. The letter, sent to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, asked whether the USF program should be frozen until additional reforms can be implemented to reduce waste and abuse in the program. The letter also asked whether the FCC should reconsider providing waivers for carriers to receive funding “even if they deploy no facilities of their own,” and if the Lifeline program should be put on a budget or capped. The letter was signed by Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.; Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Joe Barton, R-Texas; Bob Latta, R-Ohio; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; and Tim Murphy, R-Pa. Witnesses for the hearing were not announced.
Like President Calvin Coolidge, the next chairman of the FCC should “more highly value restraint over regulatory action,” former Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate said in a Free State Foundation piece Tuesday (http://bit.ly/ZVfswC). Tate said the commission should “return to a time when individual commissioners could bring an item before the body for a vote in order to eliminate outdated or unnecessary regulations or rules more efficiently.” She applauded Commissioner Ajit Pai for proposing internal shot clocks and a “dashboard” to give the agency more transparency (CD Feb 22 p6). The FCC should show regulatory restraint in the still-pending Title II proceeding, the addition of extraneous “voluntary conditions” to mergers, and the imposition of overly restrictive rules for spectrum auctions, Tate said. The Title II proceeding looked at reclassifying broadband as a Title II common carrier service, which could subject it to more FCC regulations. “The FCC should be doing everything possible to enable innovation, entrepreneurship, investment, and job creation by removing unnecessary regulatory barriers and refraining from instituting new obstructions to this impressive progress,” she said. “The FCC should remember that every action -- every regulation -- has a cost, which is usually passed on to the consumer."