The Idaho Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday issued am order (http://bit.ly/Z3DYvt) approving loans and agreements for the $30-million sale of certain FairPoint properties to Blackfoot Telecom Group, the sale of which closed at the start of February (CD Feb 4 p13). Blackfoot acquired several thousand customers through the purchased FairPoint properties, located in eastern Idaho. The order approved both “the structure of the financing provided in the Loan Documents” and “all the terms and conditions of the Loan Documents” as being in compliance with PUC rules. CoBank loaned Blackfoot money for the sale, the PUC said. It described the loan agreements, which place FairPoint-owned Fremont as co-borrower rather than guarantor, with the Fremont assets sold to Blackfoot pledged as collateral. Blackfoot and the PUC arranged a memorandum of understanding “addressing regulatory items associated with the stock purchase and ongoing operation of Fremont to protect Fremont customers,” the PUC said. “Ratemaking issues, if any arise, will be addressed in a future proceeding."
AT&T must pay $27.5 million in damages to Two-Way Media for infringing on Two-Way’s multimedia streaming patents, a federal jury in Dallas said Thursday. The jury found AT&T’s U-verse TV service had violated two Two-Way-owned patents on digital live-streaming technology and data usage recording. The jury did not find there was infringement related to a third patent Two-Way Media claimed in the lawsuit. AT&T failed to convince the jury that the other two Two-Way Media patents were invalid. Two-Way originally sued AT&T, Akamai Technologies and Limelight Networks in 2008; Akamai and Limelight previously settled with Two-Way Media, according to Susman Godfrey, the law firm that represented Two-Way. “This was a very hard-fought case, and we are thrilled that the jury agreed with our argument,” said Parker Folse, Susman’s lead counsel on the case, in a statement (http://bit.ly/WOpot0). AT&T plans to appeal the verdict; a spokesman said “the verdict was a small fraction of what the plaintiff sought in this case; we will challenge the amount that was awarded.”
Hughes Network Systems selected Space Systems/Loral to build EchoStar 19. Hughes expects the satellite to be the world’s highest capacity broadband satellite, it said in a press release (http://bit.ly/YcsEAC). With more than 150 Gbps throughput, the Ka-band satellite “will have 50 percent greater capacity” than EchoStar 17, it said. It’s being designed with a “next-generation architecture” having more than 120 spot beams, “facilitating optimization of high quality Internet coverage across the U.S. and parts of Canada,” it said. Hughes said EchoStar 19 is planned for launch in 2016.
The West Virginia Legislature is moving forward the bill commonly known across the country as “Kelsey’s Law,” introduced in different states throughout the last year. It requires carriers to release cellphone location information about missing people in a timely fashion. House Bill 2046 passed the West Virginia House 96-1 with three abstentions earlier this week and has been forwarded to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
North Dakota may create a prepaid wireless 911 fee. The North Dakota Legislature sent off Senate Bill 2261 to Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, this week, which addresses the charge. The bill passed the Senate unanimously Feb. 13 and the House 78-15 on March 13. It proposes a “prepaid wireless emergency 911 fee of two percent on the gross receipts of sellers from all sales at retail of prepaid wireless services in this state,” according to the text (http://bit.ly/10oekmi). The fee proceeds will go to “the implementation, maintenance, or operation of the emergency services communication system” specifically, it said.
Lawmakers on the House Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology prodded private sector cybersecurity leaders during a hearing Thursday to identify practices that would help small businesses improve their cybersecurity defenses. Subcommittee Chairman Chris Collins, R-N.Y., said lawmakers must work to identify the “correct balance between imposing new onerous regulations for small business and protecting proprietary information and our digital infrastructure.” Collins asked witnesses what were the top three things that small businesses should focus on in order to improve their cybersecurity posture, besides migrating their IT services to the cloud. William Weber, senior vice president of cloud services provider Cbeyond, said cloud providers can help increase cybersecurity protections for small businesses by shifting the burden of maintaining firewalls, operating systems and updating virus software away from small business owners. Weber said he thinks most small businesses are using poor password protection practices. “It sounds so basic. You would think that today in 2013 people would know what they ought to be doing, but they don’t,” Weber said. “They are very dumb about password selection.” He said individuals should use passwords that are at least 12 digits long, include capitalized letters, lower-case letters and at least one number. “A password like that is not going to be cracked,” he said. “If every business in the United States started using appropriate passwords it would have a very significant effect on cybercrime.” Justin Freeman, corporate counsel for Rackspace said small businesses need to employ data encryption techniques into their operations. “Encryption is really the only means that has the fundamental integrity with which to protect data,” he said. Freeman said in his written testimony that lawmakers must avoid regulating small businesses by imposing “retrospective or overly burdensome requirements.” “Instead Congress should focus on requiring reasonable and appropriate controls to address threats in the context of a competitive business environment, disseminating critical information about current threats and best practices to the small business community and promoting a coherent set of sector specific regulations, privacy protections, security requirements and collaborative commitments,” he said. “Small businesses will be much more responsive to economic incentives rather than changing their behavior out of fear of punitive regulations,” he said. Dan Shapero, the founder of ClikCloud, said it’s critical for small businesses to ensure that their networks are compliant with antivirus, malware and firewall updates. Small businesses should also focus on cybersecurity training and education, “not just for the owner, but the staff as well.” Phyllis Schneck, McAfee chief technology officer, said small businesses need to create a “culture of resiliency” and develop a plan that fits each company’s cybersecurity needs. Lawmakers should promote policies that create tax breaks or insurance incentives for companies that adopt cybersecurity practices. “That is very attractive to small businesses,” she said. Collins said the witnesses offered “very common sense suggestions that in many cases are not that expensive.”
Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, praised his congressional aide, Michael O'Rielly, Wednesday but declined to say whether he would endorse O'Rielly as a candidate to replace outgoing FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, according to Cornyn’s spokesman. “Mike’s a talented and valued member of my staff, and he has a bright future in whatever he chooses to do,” Cornyn said via his spokesman. Government and industry officials on Wednesday named O'Rielly as a likely candidate to replace McDowell, also mentioning House Commerce Committee aide Ray Baum; Neil Fried, chief counsel to the House Communications Subcommittee; and former State Department official David Gross, now at Wiley Rein (CD March 21 p1).
The California Public Utilities Commission voted Thursday to broaden its Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program. The CPUC followed legislative encouragement to begin a proceeding to modify the program, “to institute rules and procedures that will govern the provision of speech generating devices to qualified individuals” and allow people with speech disabilities to make calls to 911 and other telecom services, the CPUC said of the approved proposal (http://bit.ly/Yc7mmz). It suggested a staggered timeline in how it would go about deploying these devices, with interim rules in place by Jan. 1 and final ones later. During the first phase of interim rules, the CPUC hopes to work directly with speech language pathologists on how to get the devices to the right people, it said. The commission noted that a second phase would address any issues it hadn’t looked at and may move toward “expanding speech generating device distribution to those who have not yet been assessed for a speech generating device."
SES Americom requested special temporary authority for an additional 60 days beginning March 20 to continue using earth station E970336 “to communicate with the foreign-licensed QuetzSat-1 spacecraft at 77.05 degrees west,” it said in its application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/14eVstG). The earth station will be used to perform tracking, telemetry and command functions, it said.
One Maine legislator insists the U.S. broadband model is working and sharply contrasts it with that of Europe, while noting an urban-rural digital divide. “Federal, state and local lawmakers should make bridging the rural digital divide their top hi-tech priority,” wrote Maine Rep. Diane Russell (D) in an op-ed for The Hill last week (http://bit.ly/11kSZJD). “Federal initiatives like the Department of Commerce’s Broadband Technology Opportunity [sic] Program, the FCC’s Connect America Fund and the [U.S. Department of Agriculture’s] recently reformed Broadband Loan Program reflect renewed commitment to that goal in Washington.” She praised the broader broadband initiatives in the U.S., however, and called Europe’s policies a “failure.” In an unsigned Thursday blog post (http://bit.ly/Yu7msc), Broadband for America praised her perspective and the overall U.S. broadband policies: “State Rep. Russell points out that our system in the U.S. is not broken. In reality, it is meeting the demands of consumers, content providers, software and app producers and every other entity along the line for more capacity and faster speeds -- all largely through massive private investment.”