An ITU “collaboration” with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and others aims to create a workspace “for the creation of an internationally accepted, globally harmonized” set of intelligent transport systems (ITS) communication standards “of the highest quality” as quickly as possible to spur “fully interoperable” related products and services in the global marketplace, said Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, in a letter to members. A meeting is scheduled for Dec. 17 in Washington, D.C. Spectrum near 5.9 GHz may be used for some public safety applications, draft communications requirements said. ITS might also use the spectrum for vehicle software, for delivering data and updates, or vehicle and road side unit data calibration, it said. Applications using the spectrum may also provide on-demand information to passing vehicles on either a commercial or non-commercial basis, it said. The draft requirements include a number of needed radio capabilities. Subsequent meetings are scheduled for March in China and June in Geneva.
Technology leaders asked Congress and President Barack Obama to make strategic spending cuts and reform taxes in order to avoid the legislative changes coming Jan. 1, collectively known as the fiscal cliff. In a letter sent Tuesday, nine CEOs of technology companies urged lawmakers to create a pro-growth framework for long-term fiscal sustainability and said failure to do so would undermine the U.S. economy and make business decisions more challenging. Rather than enact across-the-board cuts as prescribed in the sequester, Congress should make strategic cuts that preserve government investments in education, infrastructure and research, the letter said. The letter also advocated the debt reduction proposal offered by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and said business tax reform should focus on lower rates, a broader base and territorial treatment of international income. CEO signers of the letter include: Michael Dell of Dell; Greg Brown of Motorola Solutions; Ursula Burns of Xerox; Mark Duncan of Micron Technology; Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm; Paul Otellini of Intel; Ginni Rometty of IBM; Mike Splinter of Applied Materials; and Joseph Tucci of EMC. Separately, CompTIA urged congress to consider how certain expiring tax provisions would negatively affect small- and medium-sized technology businesses in the U.S. “An approach that balances revenue with spending cuts while prioritizing policies and programs that spur innovation and entrepreneurship can right the ship and set us on a steady economic course,” said CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux in a press release Tuesday.
Google Fiber began construction on its Kansas City network Tuesday, the company said in a blog post (http://xrl.us/bnzhkc). Google has tested installation on “a few homes” in recent weeks, and now installation begins in earnest, said Google Fiber Service Delivery Director Alana Karen. “First, we'll pull your Fiber from the street to the side of your house; we've already done this for several houses in Hanover Heights,” she said. “Then we'll get in touch with you to schedule the second stage, your in-home installation.” She explained the installation process and promised residents of Hanover Heights, Kan., the first neighborhood to receive the fiber, that Google workers will show up on time and not leave a mess. Her post includes a video highlighting the steps involved.
Globalstar urged the FCC to permit Globalstar to use its Big low-earth orbit (LEO) spectrum for terrestrial use. In a petition, the mobile satellite services company requested a rulemaking, as expected (CD Oct 30 p9). Globalstar proposed a long-term LTE-based service “over the entirety of its spectrum” and a near-term terrestrial low power service offering over its 2.4 GHz spectrum band, Globalstar said in a press release (http://xrl.us/bnzh35). With the buildout of frequency division duplex LTE operations, Globalstar isn’t proposing any terrestrial use of its spectrum that would compromise the accuracy or dependability of GPS services, the petition said (http://xrl.us/bnzh4w). The architecture will require “only low-power uplink transmissions from mobile handsets in its lower Big LEO spectrum.” Globalstar recommended the FCC modify the company’s Big LEO license to include AWS-5 terrestrial authority and eliminate existing ancillary terrestrial component gating requirements, “including the substantial satellite service requirement and the dual-mode equipment requirements,” it said. By implementing the necessary regulatory reforms to enable this hybrid approach, the commission “will add 22 MHz to the nation’s wireless broadband spectrum inventory,” it added.
Intelsat signed an agreement with South Africa-based Vodacom for Intelsat satellite capacity to help with cellular backhaul deployment. Vodacom plans to use capacity on Intelsat 906 and Intelsat 25 “to support its deployment of cellular backhaul service” in the Congo, Intelsat said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bnzhin). Vodacom is implementing its 3G network across the Congo, Intelsat said. The agreement will expand Intelsat-based cellular backhaul infrastructure for wireless services in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, like Tanzania and Mozambique, it said. Vodacom also uses Intelsat satellites for international trunking, corporate networking and in-flight broadband, Intelsat added.
The steep cost of rolling out high-speed broadband infrastructure in Europe could be cut by a combination of five regulatory measures aimed at reducing the expense of civil works, said Analysys Mason consultancy Tuesday. Civil works can add up to 80 percent of the cost of providing infrastructure, and the European Commission has identified three potential areas for cost reduction: sharing existing networks, co-deployment of new infrastructure, and planning for infrastructure in new developments. Under those broad areas, the study assessed the potential impact of: (1) A centralized atlas of passive infrastructure. (2) Mandatory access to passive infrastructure. (3) A one-stop shop on rights-of-way and administrative procedures. (4) A database where all planned civil works must be listed. (5) A requirement to equip new buildings with 100 Mbps Internet, together with mandated open access to the terminating segment. A centralized atlas could be anything from a database with information on which network operators are active and where, to a map showing the exact routes of infrastructure, and details of ownership and capacity for network-sharing, the study said. It could enable broadband development using shared ducts, with potential cost savings coming from a reduction in the initial investment required for deployment, it said. That could also cut down on damage to existing infrastructure work, it said. Mandated access to passive infrastructure is already in place in many EU countries where incumbents must offer access to ducts or are subject to a further universal-access obligation, the report said. The initial cost to state or national regulators is low, and the ongoing price of maintaining the measure depends on what rules are needed and the number of disputes to be resolved, it said. The one-stop shop is rare in Europe, but some governments have simplified rights-of-way and administrative procedures, it said. Again, the cost to the nation of implementing such a system is considered low, with ongoing expenses depending on the number of disputes, it said. Putting a one-stop shop in place is likely to require a centralized database and, therefore, some information technology (IT) investment, but could spur self-deployment of broadband networks, it said. If handled well, this measure could reduce the administrative burden on operators during the planning phase of network development and lead to greater coverage, it said. The point of a database where all planned civil works are published is to lower deployment costs by sharing excavation costs between operators and utility companies, it said. But such a system poses challenges for operators, and there are examples where coordinating civil works costs them more than deploying networks alone, it said. The requirement that all new buildings have 100 Mbps Internet and mandated open access to the terminating segment is already in place in Spain and France for all new and refurbished buildings, Analysys Mason said. The regulatory cost is low but estimates of the expense of installing the wiring in a building during construction vary widely, it said. Cost savings of pre-wiring a building during construction are thought to be up to 60 percent, it said. Mandated access to passive infrastructure “is the measure that performs most strongly in a cost-benefit analysis” although experience has shown that it’s mainly the ducts owned by incumbent telecom operators that are most used in next-generation access (NGA) deployment, and that EU-level regulation is already in place to enable that. Coordinating civil works could also offer significant benefits because of the low implementation cost, it said. Requiring in-building wiring won’t cost regulators much but could take some time for the benefits to materialize, it said. A one-stop shop for rights-of-way and administrative procedures is mostly a time-saving device, but it could enable faster NGA deployments, bringing operators revenue sooner, it said. A centralized atlas of passive infrastructure would enable mandated access to passive infrastructure but putting such a measure in place could be extremely pricey, it said. All five measures are interlinked, particularly the centralized atlas, one-stop shop and database of planned civil works, the report said. If done in parallel, it’s likely that a lot of the IT costs would overlap, and the resulting system would allow implementation of mandated access to passive infrastructure, encouraging deployment in shared ducts and self-deployment, it said.
AT&T’s “Project Velocity IP” plan to spend $14 billion on deploying high-speed Internet Protocol networks is “disruptive to the regulatory status quo,” wrote Fred Campbell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Communications Liberty and Innovation Project. Unlike other disruptive proposals that are usually greeted with substantial opposition, the “vast majority” of policymakers and industry participants welcomed the announcement, he wrote in a blog post Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnzg6z). There’s “a powerful consensus cutting across political and ideological lines that American consumers reap the benefits of broadband communications when we encourage private investment in all-IP networks,” he said. The few critics of the announcement have a “personal stake in maintaining the status quo,” he said.
State commissions should prepare for cyber threats, said Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat. He spoke at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Baltimore meeting Tuesday and emphasized what he described as the threat of an inevitable cyberattack. “You also sit in the epicenter of our nation’s cyberdefense,” he told regulators, describing the “mathematics Ph.Ds” at work in the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md. Public service commissions can issue orders to assess cyberthreats and consider how it would affect different grids, he said. These risk-management investigations and preparations “can develop national standards,” he added. “I would encourage you not to wait for the federal government when it comes to cybersecurity.” U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sees the cyberthreat to utilities as being in a “pre-9/11 moment,” said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs Paul Stockton Monday. He described a “vision of partnership” with states in which “I'm here to make my problems your problems.”
Research In Motion’s Blackberry 10 release in January will draw the company’s smartphones closer to the automotive software it inherited in buying QNX Software Systems two years ago, QNX executives said Monday at CEA’s CES Press Preview event in New York. The tying together of RIM’s much-delayed Blackberry 10 operating system and the software that QNX supplies carmakers to drive automotive infotainment systems has been RIM’s goal since it bought the company from Harman International. QNX’s Neutrino real-time operating system debuted in RIM’s Playbook tablets in 2011, but the company has long sought to spread the software across smartphones. With the expected release of QNX’s Car 2 operating system in December, RIM’s efforts to co-mingle QNX and Blackberry software will come to the forefront, QNX executives said. Car 2 was created using RIM’s WebWorks software that allows developers to take advantage of standard Web technologies like CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript to build applications. Developers can use popular mobile Web frameworks like Sencha, PhoneGap, jQuery or Dojo to speed development of applications by reusing existing Web assets. In Car 2, developers also can use RIM’s Ripple emulator to point to a website running WebWorks and emulate the WebWorks software development kit without compiling code. Ripple allows for editing source code and then refreshing it using the emulator. Car 2 will likely be added to vehicles in stages with the first versions arriving in 2014 models, said Kerry Johnson, senior automotive product manager at QNX. HTML5 compatibility will be delivered the following year. QNX Car 2’s HTML5 SDK will be released in Q1, he said. Car 2 allows developers to blend HTML5 applications with those created using Qt, Open GL ES and other user interface technologies on the same display. It allows developers to create browser-based or browserless applications in HTML5. The Car 2 operating system is contained in a maximum 300 to 400 MB file, well within the 1 GB to 2 GB flash memory automakers are increasingly installing in vehicles to handle software upgrades, Johnson said. While Car 2 can be upgraded using a USB stick, automakers are also weighing updating it via Wi-Fi or through a carrier, Johnson said.
State regulators adopted a resolution asking the FCC to address high prison call charges, at NARUC’s meeting in Baltimore. The telecom committee showcased the high rates that exist in many states. New Mexico prison calls amounted to $6 a minute before reform, said Public Regulation Commission Commissioner Jason Marks, adding they're now down to 65 cents a minute at state facilities. Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Gary Maynard has had oversight in four different states and described deriving revenue from the calls. CenturyLink provides for some prison calls, but it’s “hard to make excessive profits” in the business, said Assistant Vice President Jeff Lanning. No organizations complained to the prisons, Maynard said, saying the Association of State Correctional Administrators will likely look at developing best practices due to these concerns. The FCC has struggled with a proceeding for 11 years, said attorney Lee Petro, of Drinker Biddle, describing his fight against the charges. Commissioners initially worried the resolution would cause misinterpretation or create confusion over jurisdiction but passed it 12-2 in the telecom committee. Despite multiple no votes and one abstention, the NARUC board adopted the resolution Tuesday.