Russia wants to include the Internet under revised definitions for the International Telecommunication Regulations, said a Russian language copy of a proposal to the December World Conference on International Telecommunications we obtained. Russia cited an outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society to back its proposal that said a government has the sovereign right to manage the Internet and national domain names in its territory, an unofficial translation said. The proposal also calls for language that requires other governments and operating agencies to cooperate in the development of the Internet on its territory. The proposed text would also require governments and operating agencies to cooperate on the security, integrity and sustainability of the national segments of the Internet. It also said governments have equal rights in the international distribution of Internet addressing and identification resources.
The Ohio Public Utilities Commission is losing one commissioner early. Commissioner Cheryl Roberto announced her resignation from the commission effective Dec. 31, the commission said Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnzujy). Roberto’s term began in 2008 and was to expire in April. The commission had already begun the replacement process with Ohio’s 12-member nominating council, a PUC spokesman told us, a process that will be expedited by her early decision: “We'll likely move that timetable up.” In Ohio, the state commission solicits applications for its commissioner positions with advertisements, and the nominating council then does interviews with select candidates and submits recommendations to the governor’s office which appoints a commissioner, he said. The spokesman also described a limit to how many commissioners can belong to any one political party and said that because the five-member PUC has three Republicans now, the new commissioner will need to be either a Democrat or Independent. The entire process takes roughly 60 days, and the council will likely initiate the process in early December, he said. The governor will need to decide whether to appoint the same person to both finish the remainder of Roberto’s term and assume her role for the next term.
Among the 10 700 MHz licensees seeking an extension of a June 13 FCC deadline to provide coverage and sell service to at least 35 percent of an area are Cellular South, Cincinnati Bell, Cox Communications and MetroPCS, said a Wireless Bureau public notice this week and a filing of Cox’s previous request. Both were posted to docket 12-332. Comments are due Dec. 13 in that docket, replies Dec. 28, the notice said (http://xrl.us/bnzuf4). A lack of interoperability in the band was cited in the requests, the notice said. “All of the Licensees also claim that they have each undertaken ‘meaningful efforts’ to utilize their spectrum and meet the Interim Construction Benchmark.” Cox’s filing last month sought a buildout deadline delay until at least two years after the agency finishes a rulemaking on interoperability rules for the lower part of that band.
The FCC should judge that a violation of its truth-in-billing rules is an “unjust and unreasonable practice,” as it has ruled on cramming and said in adopting its truth-in-billing rules, said the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. The association is responding to the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau’s Oct. 16 request for comments (http://xrl.us/bnzucz) on the petition for declaratory ruling of Gregory Manasher, et al., on the applicability of the Communications Act and FCC’s truth-in-billing rules. The case in question, Manasher, et al. v. NECC Telecomm, is ongoing in the U.S. District Court in Detroit, the bureau said. “There may have been cramming here” in the Manasher case, NASUCA said, calling the “fees [the plaintiffs] did not agree to” the “essence of cramming.” Misleading billing deserves condemnation, NASUCA said in the FCC filing dated Thursday and not yet posted online. Any misleading billing practices that facilitate cramming amount to the same violation, it said. Comments were due Thursday and reply comments by Nov. 30. The association slams vague and misleading billing statements as a “chronic problem” that’s “persisted for well in excess of a decade."
Hawaii’s Enhanced 911 Board asked the FCC to “take affirmative action that will enable the deployment of text-to-9-1-1,” Chairman Clayton Tom and Executive Director Thera Bradshaw said in a filing. The Hawaii Enhanced 911 board supports FCC efforts to impose text-to-911, they wrote. “We encourage the Commission’s action as soon as possible to ensure at least the basic requirement that wireless carriers deliver 9-1-1 text messages to Public Safety Answering Points that are ready and willing to accept texting.” The board said it also wants the FCC to require the use of a “bounce back” message that would alert the sender “that they need to make a 9-1-1 voice call when a text cannot be delivered to a PSAP.” While the board knows additional compliance deadlines and other rules for text-to-911 need to be considered in a further notice of proposed rulemaking, “we encourage the Commission not to delay the first step and to adopt basic requirements now,” Tom and Bradshaw said (http://xrl.us/bnzuec).
A joint letter by Greenpeace International and the International Trade Union Confederation on the World Conference on International Telecommunications is “misleading, inaccurate and grounded in conjecture,” said Paul Conneally, head of ITU’s communications division, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/UssiwU). The letter, sent to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said the two organizations “believe the Internet ... is at risk from an attempt by some governments to impose solely governmental control over this extraordinarily valuable global resource, which has until now benefitted from a unique system of multi-stakeholder direction.” The organizations also complained about a perceived lack of transparency, and that the conference will be held “behind closed doors” with only government officials “fully party” to the talks. The ITU has members from the private sector, Conneally said. The preliminary list of participants includes representatives of the private sector and civil society, he said. The list isn’t public. “There are no limitations whatsoever on the composition or size of delegations,” Conneally said. “Governments are encouraged to include both private sector and civil society representatives on their national delegations,” he said. The ITU secretary general met with the trade union and invited UNI Global Union, a group that represents trade unions, he said. The union “is the voice of 20 million service sector workers,” including the telecom industry, its website said.
Royal KPN agreed to sell its more than 2,000 tower sites in Germany to Boston-based American Tower for €393 million ($501 million). KPN’s sites in Germany are used by KPN-owned No. 3 German carrier E-Plus and other smaller carriers, the companies said. KPN said Thursday it will lease back space for E-Plus as needed. KPN, the Netherlands’ largest telco, said it’s selling off the towers as part of its larger strategy to pay down debt and invest further in its rollout of an accelerated mobile network in Germany. “We do not consider the ownership and development of mobile towers to be a core part of our operations,” KPN Chief Financial Officer Eric Hageman said in a statement, saying it previously sold off a large part of its tower network in the Netherlands (http://xrl.us/bnzt8n). The transaction is expected to close in Q4, pending approval by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, American Tower said. “With over [100 million] subscribers and its significant growth in wireless data demand, Germany represents the largest wireless market in Europe and an attractive complement to our overall international portfolio mix and expansion strategy,” American Tower CEO Jim Taiclet said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bnzt9q). Each site will cost American Tower more than $250,000 -- “more expensive than prior emerging market acquisitions but cheaper than most recent US comps,” New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors.
The FCC should reconsider its elimination of the Safety Net Additive support mechanism, part of the reforms adopted in the USF/intercarrier compensation order, OPASTCO, NTCA and the Western Telecommunications Alliance told Wireline Bureau officials and aides to commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnzt7h). By denying SNA support to carriers that had a qualifying 2010 or 2011 increase in their total per-line telecom plant in service cost -- prior to adoption of the order -- the commission “blindsided” the telcos with its “retroactive elimination of this critical source of cost recovery.” It is “not reasonable to expect carriers to refrain from making investments that qualify for support under current rules because those rules might change in some unforeseeable way in the future,” the groups said. “This is the antithesis of ‘predictable’ support” required in the Communications Act, they said.
The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communication (BEREC) adamantly opposes policies proposed by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) for the future International Telecommunication Regulations, it said. For the World Conference on International Telecommunications in December in Dubai, ETNO proposed a “sender party network pays” accounting regime and an “end-to-end quality of services” principle. But BEREC warned against what it said was an antagonistic “interconnection philosophy” which was based on “connection-oriented circuit switched old generation PSTN [public switched telephone network] and voices services” clearly “at odds with the principles of connection-less packet switched networks underlying the success of the Internet to date. … It is in all our interests to protect the continued development of the open, dynamic and global platform that the Internet provides, which has evolved over time (without regulatory intervention), and helped enable so much innovation at the network endpoints. ETNO’s proposal could undermine this and therefore lead to an overall loss of welfare.” It said users would not be willing to pay for premium services if the best-effort offer is working well enough, and end-to-end service level agreements are costly and neither commercially nor technically realistic. BEREC said ETNO is just “trying to extract additional revenues from its existing network assets, in a bid to reassert control over a changing communications ecosystem."
The videogame industry needs a universal ratings system, said Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello during a speech Wednesday evening at a Media Institute banquet (http://xrl.us/bnzt2z). The Entertainment Software Rating Board and its global counterparts are working on a proposal to move beyond the current ratings system and “consolidate around a single standard, that consumers will recommend and ultimately demand,” he said. “We need to do a much better job of informing the consumer, no matter the channel, the platform or the geography,” he said. “We must adopt a self-regulated, global rating system across every format and every geography.” In a separate speech, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said four guidelines should govern media policy for the future: Consumer choice, competition, universal access and adherence to the First Amendment.