The depletion of IPv4 address pools creates different problems in different regions. An Iranian private Internet-by-satellite provider made an urgent call to the Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE) community for help finding a set of IPv4 addresses shortly after the announcement that the regular IPv4 address pool is empty. RIPE allocates IP addresses in Europe and the Middle East. With nationwide fiber infrastructure and the Internet gateway operated by the government and no short-term planning for regular addition of IPv6, there was a problem for the ISP. Tunneling, which some use as a transition mechanism, isn’t easily available to the ISP because “tunneling through international gateways is not allowed due to Legal Interception (LI) issues,” said Siavash Khorsandi, assistant professor at the Amirkabir University of Technology and participant to the Iranian IPv6 Forum. As for tunneling through IPv4 backbones inside, he said, “there should be no problems.” Iran had taken a number of steps to help ISPs to migrate, he said in an email. But experts are concerned that such action is slow, with 99 percent of networking in the hands of the government. For the private ISPs in Iran, trying to “buy” IPv4 addresses from the nascent IP address market might be quicker, though more expensive. RIPE data indicate the number of IPv6-enabled hosts in Iran is 0.5 percent, compared to more than 20 percent in the U.S.
The Federal Election Commission further clarified its rules for making campaign contributions via text message, approving a rate structure sought by AT&T that’s lower than what AT&T charges for commercial content but high enough to guarantee a profit. AT&T proposed a model under which carriers would impose a flat per message charge, for text donations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $15 and $20. “Customers who contribute via text message to political committees ‘reasonably will expect that most of their contribution is going to the political candidate or committee of their choice’ and ‘do not want a significant portion of their [contributions] siphoned off to the aggregators and wireless providers,'” said the FEC advisory opinion (http://xrl.us/bnqruq). “AT&T asserts that, if its wireless customers learn that AT&T and the connection aggregators are retaining a significant portion of their contributions, the customers will be dissatisfied with the transaction and will view AT&T unfavorably as a result.” The rates charged “will be ’substantially less’ than what AT&T charges for commercial content providers, but more than it charges for donations to charities,” the opinion said. “AT&T represents that it will calculate the proposed rates based on commercial factors, including the nature of the transactions, the volume of the transactions, the dollar amounts of the transactions, and the volume of work the transactions generate for AT&T’s call centers. AT&T represents that the same rates and rate structure would be charged to all aggregators representing political committees seeking to gain access to AT&T’s text messaging platform. AT&T also represents that these rates will be set to ensure that AT&T recovers all of the costs that it will incur in providing the service, plus a return.”
The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and 17 representatives of rural telcos met with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Monday to discuss the “serious problems created by the lack of transparency and predictability in the regression analysis-based caps” on USF support, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnqogj). The potential for future caps is “exacerbating uncertainty in the marketplace,” they said. They also asked Pai to reconsider eliminating the Safety Net Additive, which amounts to a “flash cut” despite commission promises that there won’t be any, they said. “The Commission should permit those carriers who would have qualified for SNA specifically based upon investments in 2010 and 2011 to obtain such support as part of the phase-out of that program,” they said.
Smart meters and smart grids should be excluded from assessable services that are subject to USF contributions, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Edison Electric Institute, and Utilities Telecom Council told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Tuesday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnqofz). “Smart meters and smart grids are not interstate telecommunications or interstate telecommunications services, nor would the public interest be served by subjecting smart meters and smart grids to USF contributions,” the groups said. “Moreover, it would conflict with the regulatory authority of other agencies and would be administratively infeasible to collect USF from utility customers.” Excluding smart meters and smart grids would promote marketplace innovation, energy efficiency, reliability and security, they said.
Small and medium multichannel video programming distributors requested streamlined financial hardship waivers of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act rules for one year. The requests were filed in docket 11-93. Sweetwater Cable Television in Wyoming said it needs the waiver “to avoid the financial hardship that would otherwise be imposed if it were required to obtain sooner the necessary upgraded ad insertion equipment and purchase audio monitoring equipment” (http://xrl.us/bnqoes). Wire Tele-View Corp. in Pottsville, Pa., also requested a waiver (http://xrl.us/bnqodz), attributing its financial hardship to the “700 percent increase in non-regulated retransmission fees from local off-air networks” and the state of the economy in Schuylkill County, Pa. Agape Church in Little Rock, Ark., requested waivers for its three small broadcast stations. Due to legacy analog equipment, the stations “do not have current capabilities to send audio metadata to the ATSC encoders,” it said (http://xrl.us/bnqofg). The American Cable Association supports NCTA’s petition for reconsideration on implementation of the CALM Act, it said in comments in the same docket (http://xrl.us/bnqodi). In the petition filed this year, NCTA urged the FCC to limit the rules to commercial ads, clarify that a cable operator won’t be held liable when it has notified a network of its non-compliance and not to “prohibit cable operators from contacting program networks when performing spot checks” (http://xrl.us/bnoike). The commission finds no policy or legal reason to exempt commercial advertisements promoting TV programming, or promos, from the scope of its rules, ACA said. The commission should reverse its position “and grant NCTA’s request to exclude promos from being covered by the statute’s requirements,” it said. The recommended practice should only require MVPDs that implemented AC-3 technology “to pass through without alteration the dialnorm metadata in commercial advertisements inserted upstream by programmers.” MVPDs should be able to contact programmers while conducting spot checks, ACA said.
The FCC dismissed the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ March 2011 request that the commission review a prior 800 MHz rebanding decision involving the state and Sprint Nextel. “The obligation that is at issue here is Sprint’s obligation to provide rebanding licensees with comparable facilities at minimum necessary cost,” said an order released Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnqogf). “The Commonwealth conflates that obligation with the obligation of Sprint and other carriers to abate unacceptable interference to 800 MHz public safety systems if that interference actually occurs in order to argue that Sprint is obligated to narrowband the Commonwealth’s BDAs [bi-directional amplifiers].” The state took issue with how the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau reviewed the proceeding and had contended “the Bureau failed to follow the legal and policy directives of the Commission’s rebanding orders concerning interference,” according to the order. The FCC disagreed, saying no actual interference had occurred, and it was “correct in finding that narrowbanding of the Commonwealth’s BDAs was not compelled by the comparable facilities standard and that Section 90.674 of the rules did not obligate Sprint to narrowband the Commonwealth’s BDAs,” the order said.
It will take MetroPCS an additional four to six months to fully launch Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in its 14 LTE markets, CEO Roger Linquist said Thursday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. MetroPCS needs that time to grapple with technical issues related to VoLTE deployment, he said. “This is not your grandfather’s Buick,” Linquist said. “This is a different animal.” The carrier first deployed VoLTE technology in the Dallas-Ft. Worth market, where the company first noticed it needed to make changes in base station optimization. Despite the needed changes, customers using VoLTE in Dallas-Ft. Worth have experienced call quality that is better than on the existing CDMA service, Linquist said. MetroPCS now has about 1 million LTE subscribers, which is up from the 700,000 the carrier released in July. MetroPCS’s transition into LTE has prompted increased urgency in the company’s need for spectrum, and it will continue to look at new spectrum acquisitions, Linquist said. The company expects to expand its catalog of LTE-capable phones to six models before the end of the year, including the Samsung Galaxy III, he said.
The FCC dismissed the state of Indiana’s May 2011 request that the commission review its Memorandum Opinion and Order on Reconsideration in an order Thursday. The issue goes back several years to concerns between Indiana and Sprint Nextel on the rebanding of the state’s 800 MHz equipment. “Indiana claims that its obligation to deploy new radios with replacement channels programmed into them arose after it had already deployed the radios, i.e., it claims the obligation arose on a date approximately 30 days after the parties executed the FRA [frequency reconfiguration agreement],” the FCC said (http://xrl.us/bnqod5). “Therefore, Indiana argues, the cost of reprogramming the radios that Indiana deployed before that date should be Sprint’s responsibility.” The FCC didn’t see the merits in Indiana’s recent arguments and dissected them throughout the new order. “The operative question before the [Public Safety and Homeland Security] Bureau in this case was not one of contract,” the FCC said. “It was whether or not it was reasonably foreseeable to Indiana that, if it deployed the new radios without the replacement channels programmed into them, it would have to recall the radios from the field for reprogramming. Relying on record evidence, the Bureau correctly resolved the question: the cost of reprogramming the radios, sought in Indiana’s change notice request, was reasonably foreseeable.” The commission also slammed Indiana for submitting “pleadings so patently in violation of the Commission’s procedural rules,” which may affect efficient 800 MHz band reconfiguration, it said. It called the state’s appeals “procedurally defective” and “fundamentally at odds with the Commission’s dual goals of timely eliminating objectionable interference to public safety communications and timely making more spectrum available for public safety use."