CEA and its members “are concerned about what we're hearing” is in a draft FCC order and accompanying further NPRM on availability of emergency programming on apparatus, said Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Julie Kearney. She cited a report (CD March 12 p3) that DVD and Blu-ray players would have to pass onto users video descriptions of emergency on-screen crawl information in TV-station and multichannel video programming distributors’ secondary audio program (SAP) channels. Concerning a report that the further notice tentatively finds MVPDs’ programming sent to tablets, smartphones and other devices also would face apparatus emergency programming accessibility rules, Kearney said that may not “necessarily square with the statute.” The FCC is conducting the proceeding under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Advocates for the hearing-impaired continued to tell the agency the act requires such MVPD Internet Protocol content to pass on such SAP channels. Such groups said the forthcoming order should find, as a previous order on MVPD and TV station’s IP captioning found, that fixed media players fall under the act’s rules. “CEA’s argument that Section 303(u)(1) should be interpreted inconsistently in the emergency information proceeding” from the order requiring traditional TV content be captioned when put online should be rejected, said two groups, a professor at a school that teaches the hearing impaired and their lawyers. “If the Commission seeks to exclude playback-only fixed media players from the scope of the emergency information and video description rules, it must do so pursuant to some other method, such as its general waiver authority.” Officials at Gallaudet University’s Technology Access Program, Georgetown University’s Institute of Public Representation and National Association of the Deaf met with aides to Chairman Julius Genachowski, and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing met with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 12-107 (http://bit.ly/YYq25q), where CEA has discussed its opposition to the IP captioning order’s inclusion of removable media players (http://bit.ly/10J9ZfU).
The California Public Utilities Commission should tell the FCC it supports the federal agency’s rulemaking on call completion problems (CD Feb 8 p8), CPUC staff told the state’s commissioners in a Tuesday memo (http://bit.ly/ZGrbA1). The CPUC should support the general direction of the NPRM and also “should urge the FCC to start enforcing its rules,” staff recommended. “The inability to complete long-distance calls to California’s rural customers is a significant threat to the integrity of the public switched telephone network and has the potential to compromise public safety.” Staff want “the FCC act as soon as possible to halt any industry malpractices that contribute to the problem, and penalize carriers as appropriate,” said another proposed CPUC recommendation, according to the memo. The FCC on Tuesday announced enforcement actions related to an investigation Tuesday. (See separate report in this issue.) States should also be able to see their own state-specific carrier data filed at the FCC as a result of FCC investigations into the problem, the CPUC staff memo proposed. California has encountered such problems, too, which “may not be as acute” as in some states but very real, as the state regulator found in a data collection from late 2012 through early February, the memo reported. “Ten of the 14 carriers reported a combined 213 non-terminated calls over a period of several weeks, 64 of which were reported as interstate calls, and 149 reported as intrastate calls,” the memo said. “This data indicate that approximately 30 percent of the non-terminated calls originated from out-of-state numbers."
As some telcos transition from so-called plain old telephone service, FCC Chief Technology Officer Henning Schulzrinne said POTS has some benefits. His comments came at the opening day of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Orlando. With voice becoming just one application inside browsers -- a development mirrored by ongoing IETF new standards work on real-time Web communication -- the engineering community urgently needs to address open challenges of Internet Protocol-based telephony, speakers said at the conference here. There are some things to keep from POTS, like availability regardless of geography, income and disability, and also some security features, Schulzrinne said. Conversations traveling over the old phone system had relatively strong privacy protection, which isn’t true for Internet conversations, he said. Availability and quality issues of IP-telephony had to be addressed, he said. “We as a community need to grow up.” Schulzrinne was a regular contributor to the IETF before becoming FCC CTO in 2011 (http://fcc.us/X3Soca). “We were used to having a second network to call our provider if the Internet did not work,” he said. Other issues the FCC is concerned about are reliability of emergency call channels, he said. The agency will start open consultations of its Technology Transitions Policy Task Force on Monday, he noted. Asked if regulatory steps were in the basket of the task force’s work, Schulzrinne said the commission is looking for an analysis of changes so far from copper to fiber, from fixed network to mobile and from circuit to packet switched technology. He said he hopes the IETF community steps up and tackles open issues.
Newtec’s very small aperture terminal hub will be part of NIGCOMSAT’s effort to offer Ka-band services for Nigeria. The platform “will enable optimal and cost effective voice, data, video, Internet and application service solutions over Nigeria via the NigComSat-1R satellite,” Newtec said in a press release (http://bit.ly/13TZ5Vu). The installation of the first Newtec broadband hub is complete and NIGCOMSAT plans to operate several thousands of satellite modems within the first year of operation, Newtec said.
The LG Spirit 4G smartphone had 35 percent better power consumption while making Voice over LTE (VoLTE) calls than its previous generation, Spirent Communications said Tuesday in a report. Spirent tested the battery performance of first-generation and second-generation VoLTE smartphones on MetroPCS’s network in the Dallas market. Spirent said it tested performance on CDMA and VoLTE, as well as multi-service CDMA/LTE and VoLTE/LTE simultaneous voice and data calls. Spirent found the LG Spirit 4G had 18 percent better power consumption while making calls on CDMA than its previous generation. Spirent also tested smartphone power consumption while using Skype to make VoIP calls; it found calls made using Skype on the LG Spirit 4G consumed 33 percent less power. Battery life on the newest VoLTE smartphones now “compares favorably” to previous-generation devices that used CDMA, Spirent said (http://bit.ly/YpF6Gg).
CableLabs said it licensed its Wi-Fi application software to mPortal, a connected device software vendor, for further distribution to the cable industry. CableLabs partnered with Cablevision and member companies to design and test the software, which measures subscribers’ quality of service on cable Wi-Fi networks and helps operators direct subscribers to locations where they can connect to cable Wi-Fi networks. Cablevision partnered on the software because it wanted “software that helps our customers obtain better connectivity when using Optimum Wi-Fi,” said Timothy Farrell, Cablevision’s vice president-broadband product management, in a CableLabs news release Tuesday. “We believe this software will improve the cable Wi-Fi offering and we are pleased to share it with other CableLabs members.” MPortal will package the CableLabs software with its own Wi-Fi product suite, which will allow cable operators to help their customers find the nearest Wi-Fi access point (http://bit.ly/13RfTME).
France’s National Digital Council recommended the government legislate net neutrality. The Conseil nationale du numérique (CNNum) believes that freedom of expression isn’t sufficiently protected in French law given the development of Internet filtering, blocking and slowing, it said Tuesday in an opinion. Neutrality must be recognized as a fundamental principle necessary for the exercise of freedom of communication and of expression, which is enshrined at the highest level of the law, it said. Because net neutrality is a fundamental right, its application must be controlled directly by a judge and continually updated to new technologies, it said. Finally, indicators to measure the level of net neutrality in networks and services available to the public should be collaboratively developed by political, economic and social actors and regulatory authorities, at the EU level. The report calls for broadening the scope of net neutrality to include search engines and other online services, said French citizen’s advocacy group La Quadrature du Net. But making the principle too broad could result in a meaningless law, it said. Bringing in all kinds of Internet players overlooks the main issue at stake —- establishing specific measures relating to telecom operators’ obligations, La Quadrature said. CNNum didn’t propose any actual penalties to implement net neutrality in the face of restrictions imposed by operators, it said. The council “has failed to propose a strong and effective protection” for net neutrality, said La Quadrature spokesman Jérémie Zimmermann. By trying to solve different problems with one magic bullet, the opinion “could result in a neutralised neutrality that won’t solve anything,” he said in a written statement. France must follow the lead of the Netherlands, Slovenia, Chile and Peru in legislating to safeguard neutrality and including sanctions against companies that illegally restrict access to online communications, he said. CNNum’s version lacks legs, he said. The council was established in 2011 to advise the government and contribute to public debates about digital issues, its website says.
The E-rate program funding cap for FY2013 is $2,380,314,485, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Monday (http://bit.ly/ZFWrNx). The cap is a 1.8 percent inflation-adjusted increase from last year.
Version three of the Connect America Cost Model is available, the FCC Wireline Bureau announced (http://bit.ly/ZFq0Rt). The model calculates costs based on “a series of inputs and assumptions” for implementation of Phase II of the Connect America Fund, the commission said. This version builds on version two, incorporating updates to the model’s demand data, it said. The model includes geocoded locations for residences and businesses where available, and gives users the ability to identify census blocks marked as “unserved” by the June 2012 National Broadband Map. It also allows for toggling between per-subscriber and per-location data in reporting model results. The model is at http://fcc.us/ZFpZwV.
Submitting Form 477 broadband subscription data on the basis of census blocks would be “substantially more burdensome” than the current requirement of submitting such data on the basis of census tracks, the American Cable Association, NCTA, NTCA and USTelecom told FCC Wireline and Wireless bureau officials Friday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/ZFsKye). Any “app” being developed could affect companies’ ability to certify the accuracy of the data, and must be tested before the FCC adopts any new rules, they said. Transitioning from the current voluntary regime to a mandatory system operated by the commission “would require a significant transition for the thousands of broadband providers that would be required to submit data,” the groups said. They encouraged a notice and comment period before the commission decides which data would be required. The groups generally supported “revising and simplifying” the speed tiers used on Form 477.