The Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Services plans a summit Feb. 7. The focus will be “best practices learned from broadband adoption programs and academic studies/surveys, and how implementation of these best practices can close the broadband adoption gap among Americans -- particularly low-income households, racial and ethnic minorities, seniors, rural residents, residents of Tribal lands and people with disabilities,” the FCC said Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bn5v7i). The meeting will be all day long at FCC headquarters and will be webcast, with further details to come.
CityLink Telecommunications NM wants New Mexico to create rules for competitive interconnected VoIP carriers. The telco sent a petition, released Monday (http://xrl.us/bn5v4s), to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission and asked it to initiate a rulemaking proceeding on what it calls VLECs. “All interconnected VoIP carriers presently doing business within New Mexico, and any interconnected VoIP carrier who might want to do business in New Mexico in the future” should participate, said CityLink, a national fiber company based in Albuquerque. It included a draft of a proposed rule and said its adoption would allow easier “interconnection, pole attachment, and right of way access” for interconnected VoIP carriers, “thus enabling a better competitive market and further economic development.” The proposed regulations call for these carriers to receive certificates of registration from and be under the jurisdiction of the state PRC. It points the growing number of VoIP carriers in New Mexico and adds that certified carriers can tout their certification in promotions. VoIP consumers should have the “same level of consumer protection regulations and mechanisms as afforded to customers of CLECs and ILECs,” it said. “The bottom line is that this regulation requires the VLEC to waive its right to contest Commission jurisdiction and in return provides the VLEC with the predictability and security of Commission oversight and dispute resolution as well as the benefit of the equivalent rights and treatment as a CLEC in areas concerning facilities development and expansion,” CityLink said. New Mexico regulators have previously fought for a right to assess state surcharges on interconnected VoIP carriers (CD Aug 21/08 p9).
A violation of net neutrality, defined as equal treatment of network traffic, is unlikely if all traffic is treated on a best-effort basis, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) said Tuesday. Such a system supports innovation by offering low barriers to entry on the open platform of the Internet, and end-user choice by allowing people to access and distribute any content or application, it said in a paper summarizing its positions on net neutrality (http://xrl.us/bn5vso). But those benefits can pit innovators and users against operators running the networks, themselves facing growing demands on their networks, it said. ISPs are increasingly able to restrict some data streams and differentiate to adapt to the heterogeneity and sustained growth of Internet traffic, especially on mobile networks, leading ISPs to question the principle of equal treatment even more, it said. The key question for BEREC in the net neutrality debate is “how much control operators can legitimately exert over the traffic on their networks,” it said. BEREC investigated traffic management and other practices, finding that application-specific restrictions aren’t widespread except for some specific practices, mainly on mobile networks. The inquiry showed, however, that there’s wide diversity among national markets. Specific practices such as blocking or throttling of peer-to-peer traffic or VoIP can create concerns for end-users, but there are also other ways to differentiate, including data caps or billing policies that distinguish between applications accessed using Internet access services, it said. BEREC’s analysis of the situation found that: (1) Traffic management forms are diverse and not necessarily harmful. (2) Internet Protocol interconnection has worked well so far, mostly operating on the basis of commercially negotiated transit/peering arrangements at the backbone level and “bill and keep” principles at the access level. Guaranteed quality of service is neither technically nor commercially realistic, and in best-effort networks, alternative mechanisms for improving performance have proved to be more efficient and effective. There’s no evidence at this point that operators’ network costs aren’t already fully covered and paid for in the Internet value chain, despite what some ISPs claim in the net neutrality debate. (3) Some traffic management practices can be problematic to regulators if they degrade or prioritize or offer differentiated quality levels. (4) National regulators should scrutinize some traffic management techniques carefully because of their greater potential for harm. Measures aimed at ensuring network security and integrity shouldn’t go beyond what is necessary by for instance, affecting content. (5) Even with legitimate underlying reasons and careful implementation, some measures might still reduce users’ welfare. One area of concern is the possibility of a shift from the current model where content and application providers (CAPs) generally don’t interact with the ISPs who control access to end-users, and ISPs don’t charge CAPs for transmitting their data streams, to a model of commercial negotiations which gives ISPs more chance to discriminate between CAPs based on non-objective criteria. While such practices would harm end-users, however, current market incentives mean the risk is limited, although regulators should monitor those markets and be ready to intervene if necessary. BEREC proposed to evaluate the reasonableness of traffic management practices through four criteria: non-discrimination among players; end-user control; efficiency and proportionality; and application “agnosticism.” Traffic management is likely to be deemed reasonable where it’s limited and clearly outweighed by its advantages, it said. Regulators must ensure that markets are competitive, and users are fully aware of the ISPs’ access offers and can switch providers easily, it said. But if those tools aren’t enough, national authorities may have to monitor Internet access services performance and availability to detect possible degradations and act when necessary, including imposing minimum Quality of Service requirements, it said. BEREC “is committed to the open internet” and believes that existing regulatory tools are enough to resolve any rare problems, it said. But it will continue to monitor the quality of Internet access service offers and look in more depth at available platforms for measuring, benchmarking and publicizing the quality of such services, it said in an accompanying overview of its approach to net neutrality (http://xrl.us/bn5vvn). Meanwhile, French citizens’ advocacy group La Quadrature du Net cheered the European Parliament for approving a resolution calling for EU net neutrality laws to protect the Internet and user freedoms.
WatchDox, a secure enterprise file-sharing provider, bought app developer InstallFree. WatchDox said Tuesday the purchase will help it combine its file-sharing platform, which builds security into the files themselves, with InstallFree’s software capabilities for creating and editing files across platforms and devices. That will allow WatchDox users to securely edit files with a native Microsoft Office experience on mobile devices, PCs and within the WatchDox platform. InstallFree technology should be integrated into the WatchDox platform in early 2013, WatchDox said (http://xrl.us/bn5vwy).
Verizon Communications has less flexibility than AT&T to fund additional capital investments because Verizon has a lower rating and limited free cash, Moody’s analyst Mark Stodden said Tuesday in a report. AT&T was able to increase its leverage last month in a bid to fund further capital expenditures and continue its stock repurchasing plan, Stodden said. That move was likely meant to precede the threat of rising interest rates, he said. Smaller telcos like CenturyLink, Windstream and Frontier Communications will also have less flexibility to act, since they are attempting to reduce their debt, he said.
The Washington state attorney general attacked text spammers and filed a “first-of-its-kind” lawsuit against one spammer. “This lawsuit is a reminder to spammers that there are consequences for breaking the law,” Rob McKenna said in a statement Monday (http://xrl.us/bn5vmw). The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, focuses on Florida-based Dinav Holdings, which was “responsible for last spring’s spam strike” and may have been “violating the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the Washington State Commercial Electronic Mail Act (CEMA) and the Washington State Consumer Protection Act,” according to the attorney general’s office. Both the TCPA and CEMA allow $500 penalties per violation, the office added, which wants additional civil penalties of $2,000 per violation, plus cost recovery and attorney fees.
The new rules implementing the Local Community Radio Act will take effect Jan. 10, said a Federal Register notice. The FCC adopted a Fifth Order on Reconsideration and Sixth Report and Order last month to provide the opportunity for new low-power FM radio stations to enter the market (CD Dec 3 p1). The orders “will permit the commission to move forward with the long-delayed processing of over 6,000 FM translator applications and establish a timeline for the opening of an LPFM window,” the notice said (http://xrl.us/bn5vyq). This publication probably won’t have any immediate impact on things, the Fletcher Heald law firm said in a blog post (http://xrl.us/bn5v2h). “What will have an immediate impact will be the FCC’s public notice concerning the deadline by which applicants with more than the permitted number of translator applications must elect which of their applications they plan to dismiss.” Because the FCC appears keen on getting the LPFM show on the road, and dismissal elections won’t be made until the FCC sets a deadline for them, “our guess is that that deadline is likely to be announced sooner rather than later,” it said.
The state of Arkansas partnered with a Verizon company to help monitor traffic. The state’s highway and transportation department is working with Verizon’s Networkfleet to install GPS fleet tracking and to figure out how to best utilize about 2,400 state vehicles, Verizon said Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bn5vju). The National Joint Powers Alliance helped award the contract, according to Verizon, which credited Networkfleet’s “deep experience in the areas of engine diagnostics, installation, customer support, training and warranty.”
Consumer data usage will continue to grow dramatically in 2013, Juniper Research said in a report on what it believes will be the top mobile trends in the coming year. The continued rise in data usage will be accompanied by a “far greater demand for actionable/predictive analytics solutions from players across the mobile value chain, although in some countries adoption may be tempered by concerns about consumer privacy and data protection,” Juniper said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bn5viz). The “launch year” for wearable devices that are expected to come from Apple, Microsoft and other key players will also be 2013, Juniper said. Sales of these wearables will likely be fueled by the “adjunct” smartphone revolution “as they allow consumers to access information, particularly social information, constantly and in an unobtrusive way,” Juniper said in the report.
FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck officially said he’s leaving, in a video on the agency’s website Monday (http://xrl.us/bn5vkk). Though he’s returning to Georgetown University’s law school, he will continue as a consultant at the agency, he said in the video. “I've loved working here and I intend to continue my service to the agency,” he said. Vladeck unofficially disclosed his departure earlier this year (CD Nov 21 p3).