The West Virginia Public Service Commission “assigns the 511 abbreviated dialing code in West Virginia to WV Highways to establish a statewide traffic and transportation information system,” it said in an order Thursday. The PSC asked all incumbent and competitive wireline providers to submit a tariff on 511 to the PSC (http://xrl.us/bnvz2t). The West Virginia Department of Transportation had requested use of the 511 dialing code, federally reserved for providing traffic updates, in June. “The proposed 511 service will assist motorists in West Virginia and enhance public safety by allowing the public to avoid accidents or adverse travel conditions,” and “will not burden either carriers or ratepayers with additional costs,” the PSC said.
National and international cyberexercises are increasing as cybersecurity and cybercrisis cooperation receive more attention, the European Network and Information Security Agency said Thursday. ENISA surveyed (http://bit.ly/S8RITV) 85 national and international exercises from 2002-2012, 71 percent of which took place over the past two years. EU governments are placing more emphasis on cyberstrategy and the increasing threat of cross-border attacks, the agency said. There’s an “essential need” to boost public-private coordination on the exercises, because most of the information about critical information infrastructures is held privately, it said. ENISA’s recommendations are: (1) Establish a more integrated global cyberexercise community. (2) Ensure exchange of good practices. (3) Support development of exercise management tools for better planning, execution and assessment. (4) Hold more complex exercises at inter-sectoral, international and European levels. (5) Include exercises in the life cycle of national cyber contingency plans. (6) Promote good practices for national exercises and use a step-by-step methodology for cross-border cyberexercises. (7) Develop feedback mechanisms to ensure that lessons are learned.
The FCC Wireless Bureau formally terminated a proceeding on a July 2008 petition by the Rural Telecommunications Group asking the agency to initiate a rulemaking on spectrum aggregation limits. “In a recently released Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Commission declined to initiate the rulemaking RTG requested in its petition and instead launched a broader rulemaking that will address policies regarding mobile spectrum holdings from a more comprehensive perspective,” the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bnvzt6). “In light of the broader rulemaking recently initiated, we now exercise our discretion ... and deny the RTG Petition and terminate this proceeding."
Verizon Wireless supports “the FCC’s objective of repurposing the maximum amount of broadcast TV spectrum for mobile use” in the proposed incentive auction and will file comments to that effect, CEO Daniel Mead told FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, said an ex parte filing. Mead spoke with Genachowski Monday to offer “an update on the state of the business,” the filing said (http://xrl.us/bnvzth). It said Mead “also underscored that the Commission must not adopt eligibility rules that prevent some companies from participating in any future auctions.” Mead discussed Verizon concerns about pending rules for texting to 911. “He stated that Verizon Wireless remains supportive of a voluntary framework for deploying text-to-911 and expressed concern how adoption of an order might relate to Verizon’s chosen SMS-to-911 solution,” the filing said. “He also discussed the status of interim SMS-based text-to-911 technologies, including Verizon Wireless’s current trials in Durham, North Carolina and the State of Vermont.”
The outlook is improving that the TV white spaces will become the super Wi-Fi promised by the FCC, Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute said. The white space provisions in the February spectrum law turned out better than expected, he told us. “It’s certainly better than we expected when the legislation was first introduced.” Calabrese conceded there’s still some uncertainty. “Both standard development and initial deployments and device and data base certifications are all proceeding apace so there’s a lot of activity developing,” he said. “There is some uncertainty because we need to see what the take up will be among broadcasters and how much white space will be lost and where. On the other hand, a very hopeful sign is in the FCC’s [notice of proposed rulemaking] because they do propose to have a minimum amount of contiguous, nationwide unlicensed spectrum in the guard bands.” The two guard bands, as proposed by the FCC in an Oct. 2 NPRM (http://xrl.us/bnvzq5) should each offer 6-10 MHz of unlicensed spectrum, Calabrese said. “There are a few markets, including Los Angeles, where there are really no white spaces channels available today so this would give us at least a few channels in every market,” he said. “Secondly, today all the channels are fragmented geographically and this would mean the same channels being available nationwide."
An extraordinary General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organization is set to decide the date for a diplomatic conference to approve a treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons and those with so-called print disabilities. Such disabilities can include learning disabilities and make it hard to read. The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights last week tried to narrow down differences between the 185 member states to prepare for a successful diplomatic conference. Dan Pescod, from the U.K. Royal National Institute for the Blind that’s a member of the European and World Blind Union, said there’s still the possibility of failure. “The most pessimistic reading is that even the extraordinary General Assembly might get canceled; the second most pessimistic scenario is that the extraordinary General Assembly takes place but decides not to call a diplomatic conference,” he said. During last week’s negotiations, some differences were narrowed down, Pescod said. That included the definition of what constituted an accessible format copy and also the definition of “beneficiaries,” he said. Despite the progress, Pescod said “the discussions overall were quite disappointing, [and] member states suggested too many new amendments rather than whittling down the text into nearly final form.” One of the biggest open issues is “a final definition of authorized entities, the rules for cross-border sending of works, as the European Union is worried about piracy as a result of cross-border activities, something which is unfounded,” he said. The EU still firmly supports including a reference to the three-step test, which many stakeholders opposed. At the recent Frankfurt book fair, Anne Bergman-Tahon of the Federation of European Publishers said her organization prefers a self-regulatory approach to facilitate access for blind and print-disabled people, rather than an international treaty. “The discussions on the international level are slowing down the work on ETIN, the European Trusted Intermediary Network,” she said. Allan Adler, vice president-legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers, said WIPO efforts were being slowed by still-arriving new proposals for the text. India has raised the question of accessibility of works that the country calls “interactive,” and that include excerpts of audiovisual works, of sound recordings or computer programs, for example, he said. There’s still a question if a full-fledged treaty is the way to go, he said. “It could be more useful to have a model law, a recommendation or joint statement.” Such actions could take effect more quickly than a treaty. Several draft treaties including the Broadcasting Treaty have sat on the WIPO agenda for many years, Adler said.
Nexstar said a subsidiary will offer up to $200 million in senior unsecured notes due 2020 and use the proceeds to refinance some other debt. Separately, Standard & Poor’s said it upgraded Nexstar’s credit rating to B+ from B. “The stations that Nexstar will acquire from Newport will improve the company’s business risk profile” and improve its earnings-to-debt ratio, credit analyst Daniel Haines said.
The city of Philadelphia said its restrictions on satellite antenna placement are consistent with the FCC’s Over-the-Air Reception Devices (OTARD) rule. The city’s rules “are neither severe nor illegitimate,” it said in reply comments in docket 12-203 (http://xrl.us/bnvurx). The rule doesn’t require “that any restriction on satellite antenna placement be justified with public safety or historic preservation considerations.” The restrictions are reasonable “and certainly do not impair satellite MVPDs [multichannel video programming devices] from delivering their service or their current and potential customers from receiving it,” Philadelphia said. Philadelphia, Boston and other city government groups previously opposed a petition from DirecTV and Dish Network to amend OTARD rules and bar state and local governments from restricting the devices (CD June 11 p5).
Comcast and the CW Network reached a new agreement that will bring the network’s primetime TV shows to Comcast’s VOD service, they said. It’s the first VOD agreement between the CW and a cable operator, they said.
Comcast’s NBC Owned TV Stations will introduce a new multicast network called Cozi TV early next year. The programming service will include old TV series and movies and some original programming. “We're excited to make a significant investment in well-known premium movie titles and TV shows … as well as high quality original programming,” said Valari Staab, NBC Owned TV Stations president. Most of the programming will come from NBCUniversal’s TV and movie library, but some will come from other studios, it said.