Qwest Communications voluntarily dismissed its two-year-old allegations of intrastate switched access rate discrimination against Granite Telecommunications, according to a Tuesday Florida Public Service Commission order (http://xrl.us/bntehz). The parties have settled, the PSC said. The complaint continues against several other companies and is set for a formal administrative hearing with them, the PSC added.
SES selected Boeing to build SES-9. The satellite will be used to “provide direct-to-home broadcasting and other communications services in northeast Asia, South Asia and Indonesia, as well as maritime communications for vessels in the Indian Ocean,” SES said in a press release (http://xrl.us/bntehe). It will be at 108.2 degrees east and provide incremental and replacement capacity over Asia, “where it will be co-located with the existing SES-7 and NSS-11 satellites,” it said.
Strong telecom investment is “a long-term way of life” and not “a fad,” Chanute, Kan., City Manager J.D. Lester said on an Institute for Local Self Reliance podcast released Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnteba). The D.C.- and Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self Reliance is a 38-year-old nonprofit advocating for local communities. The town has 9,000 residents but offers broadband transmission speeds above 1 Gbps and 4G WiMAX Internet, the subject of a recent institute report that emphasizes the 26 years of patience in Chanute’s “proactive plan and vision” (http://xrl.us/bntebc). The town doesn’t want to be the retail provider of voice and video services, but would rather transport Internet Protocol packets, Lester said of his vision for an open access network. Chanute Utilities Director Larry Gates wants to leverage the fiber network with the community’s schools, hospitals and libraries and for public safety needs -- “any opportunity we can,” he said. The debate surrounding municipal networks “misses a key point,” the institute’s report said. “When a community is stuck with slow, unreliable, or high priced service from one or two monopolistic firms, both public and private suffer. When everyone has access to fast, affordable, and reliable broadband, the whole community thrives.” The two officials and Christopher Mitchell, a telecom director at the institute and the report author, discussed the Chanute network pricing models and the way the faster networks have served as an incentive for new businesses. One new business is bringing an estimated 125 jobs over the next two to three years, Lester said. The $250 gigabit connectivity fee is a “heck of a deal,” Mitchell said. “It’s a fun tool to have,” Lester said. The town’s new business is Spirit AeroSystems, a former division of Boeing, Lester told us. Spirit opened its 55,000-square-foot manufacturing center in Chanute last spring, that company said, citing infrastructure as a factor in selecting Chanute (http://xrl.us/bntewr).
The FCC established a pleading cycle on a proposed spectrum swap between failed merger partners AT&T and T-Mobile. In the proposed swap, AT&T would get 5 to 20 MHz of PCS spectrum in 54 cellular marketing areas. T-Mobile would get in return 10 to 20 MHz of PCS spectrum in 43 CMAs. “Our preliminary review further indicates that in 35 CMAs, AT&T and T-Mobile would exchange equal amounts of PCS spectrum; in 12 CMAs, AT&T would gain 10 megahertz of PCS spectrum; and in 8 CMAs, T-Mobile would gain 5 to 10 megahertz of PCS spectrum as a result of the proposed transaction,” said the notice from the Wireless Bureau (http://xrl.us/bntd7i). T-Mobile would also pick up a 10 MHz AWS-1 license covering Spokane, Wash. Petitions to deny are due Oct. 23, oppositions Nov. 2 and replies Nov. 9. In June, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless agreed to a spectrum swap for the purchase and exchange of AWS licenses in 218 markets (CD June 26 p1). The companies did not make formal announcements about the deal, but applications were filed at the FCC Aug. 10, a T-Mobile spokesman said Wednesday.
Covington & Burling has a blog on media, Internet and technology issues (http://xrl.us/bntech), the firm said Monday. The blog had a “soft launch” this summer and was recently publicized by the law firm, a spokeswoman said.
There’s a “remarkable amount of opportunity ahead” for Microsoft in the next decade, CEO Steve Ballmer wrote shareholders. There are “several distinct areas of technology that we are focused on driving forward -- all of which start to show up in the devices and services launching this year,” he said. Those areas include developing “new form factors that have increasingly natural ways to use them including touch, gestures and speech,” he wrote in a letter posted on the company’s website (http://xrl.us/bntep6). The areas also include making technology “more intuitive and able to act on our behalf instead of at our command with machine learning,” “building and running cloud services in ways that unleash incredible new experiences and opportunities for businesses and individuals,” “firmly establishing” Windows “across the PC, tablet, phone, server and cloud to drive a thriving ecosystem of developers,” and “delivering new scenarios with life-changing improvements in how people learn, work, play and interact with one another,” Ballmer said. There are 1.3 billion people using Windows devices globally and 8 million developers building apps for Microsoft devices, he said. Those devices include ones compatible with its new Windows 8 operating system, launching Oct. 26. “There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox” and the recently announced Microsoft Surface tablets, he said. Microsoft still has “a lot of hard work ahead,” he conceded. Ballmer’s salary for the fiscal year ended June 30 grew only slightly from the prior year, to $685,000 from $682,500, the company said in an SEC proxy filing. The company said his salary was lower than that of many other CEOs. Ballmer also earned a $620,000 bonus, down from $682,500 the prior year. His total compensation dipped to $1.3 million from $1.4 million. Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein’s salary grew to $580,000 from $525,000 and his bonus grew to $950,000 from $720,000.
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials and the National Emergency Number Association jointly released draft educational materials for smartphone app developers on E-911 system capabilities and limitations (http://xrl.us/bnteaw). “Due to the increase of smartphone apps entering the market involving public safety and emergency communications, APCO felt that there was a strong need to better inform current and potential app developers of the systems’ capabilities,” APCO said. “Many of these new apps display a high degree of creativity and innovation, but they need to take into consideration the E911 technical architecture as well as the operations of public safety answering points which may influence these product offerings."
The Daily Caller, a conservative website, called attention Tuesday to President Barack Obama’s attendance at the 1991 wedding of ABC senior foreign correspondent Martha Raddatz, tapped to moderate the vice presidential debate Thursday (http://xrl.us/bntd9x). Raddatz married FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, though they later divorced. Obama and Genachowski were classmates at Harvard Law School and members of the Harvard Law Review. Genachowski had no comment, a spokesman said.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., asked nine data brokers how they collect, use and sell consumer information (http://xrl.us/bntd4h). His letters made public Wednesday were sent to Acxiom, Experian, Equifax, Transunion, Epsilon, Reed Elsevier (Lexis-Nexis), Datalogix, Rapleaf and Spokeo. More transparency is needed to determine what impact their practices have on consumers, Rockefeller said. “Collecting, storing and selling information about Americans raises all types of questions that require careful scrutiny,” he said. “While these practices may offer some benefits to consumers, they deserve to know what’s being collected about them and how companies profit from their information.” Rockefeller asked each company detailed questions about who it collects data from, what mechanisms it uses to collect data, what specificity of consumer data it collects, who the companies sold the data to, and whether and how the companies provide consumers with the ability to access, opt out, correct or delete data that are collected about them. Responses are due Nov. 2. In July eight House lawmakers sent similar letters to nine data brokerage companies with a warning that their large-scale aggregation of personal information raises serious privacy concerns (CD July 26 p13).
The Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to revive wiretap lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel, in which a lower court found companies were immune from suits for cooperating with the federal wiretapping program. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in Hepting v. AT&T that the telcos and carrier couldn’t be held liable for warrantless wiretapping of their customers (CD Dec 30 p9). The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which brought the suit, was disappointed in the high court’s decision, “since it lets the telecommunications companies … off the hook for betraying their customers’ trust,” said Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Legal Director. EFF hopes to “try to stop the spying” in Jewel v. USA, which, based on the same evidence, “including the secret room in AT&T’s Folsom Street facility in San Francisco where copies of customer communications bound for the Internet are sent to the NSA,” she told us. That suit is set for hearing in December.