Six New York State Senate committees plan a joint hearing in Rome Monday on the state’s preparedness against cyberattacks, a spokesman for Sen. Joseph Griffo told us Friday. Griffo, Banking Committee chairman, is hosting the event, and the committees on Veterans, Homeland Security & Military Affairs; Insurance; Commerce, Economic Development & Small Business; and Crime Victims, Crime & Correction, as well as the Select Committee on Science, Technology, Incubation & Entrepreneurship, are participating. Scheduled speakers include Benjamin Lawsky, Department of Financial Services superintendent; Jerome Hauer, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services commissioner; Joseph D'Amico, State Police superintendent; Brian Boetig, FBI special agent in charge of Buffalo Division; Steve Chapin, Syracuse University associate professor of engineering; and Raymond Philo, Utica College director-research operations. Representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cybersecurity & Communications and the Rome offices of the Air Force Research Lab and Cyber NY Alliance are also scheduled to appear.
Alpha House, Amazon’s answer to Netflix’s original political series House of Cards, was set to have debuted Friday night in a limited binge-viewing release of three episodes, Amazon said earlier that day. The remaining eight episodes will release at a one-every-Friday clip exclusively to Amazon Prime Instant Video customers, beginning Nov. 22. Amazon will give all Amazon video customers a taste of the first three shows for free via Amazon Instant Video apps on “hundreds” of connected devices including Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, Roku, Xbox 360, PlayStation and Wii, Amazon said. A yearly subscription to Amazon Prime is $79, which includes unlimited video streaming, free two-day shipping from Amazon and access to the Amazon e-book lending library. Customers can sign up for a free one-month trial to Amazon Prime to view additional episodes. Alpha House, written by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau and produced by Trudeau, Elliot Webb and political writer Jonathan Alter, is a comedy about four senators (John Goodman, Mark Consuelos, Clark Johnson, and Matt Malloy) who rent a house together in Washington.
The low-power FM filing window closed Friday at 3 p.m. after a one-day extension. The FCC Media Bureau extended the filing window to Nov. 15 at 3 p.m. It was set to close Nov. 14 (CD Oct 22 p2). Last week, technical issues with the Consolidated Database System prevented or delayed some potential applicants from filing the Form 318 applications, the bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1gS2ieH). The extension is designed “to ensure that all applicants are able to complete and timely file applications,” it said. The application window was previously extended from the closing date of Oct. 29 due to the 16-day government shutdown.
Oceus Networks supports a bi-directional framework for federal spectrum sharing on the 1755-1780 MHz and 2155-2180 MHz band pairing, the company said in an ex parte filing Thursday. Oceus executives met Tuesday with Louis Peraertz, an aide to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, to discuss comments Oceus filed on the FCC’s proceeding to amend operation rules for the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz and 2155-2180 MHz bands. The executives said Oceus wants federal agencies to have “geographic, limited access” to the 1755 MHz and 2155 MHz bands on remote bases and training ranges to support training activities, and suggested that population thresholds might be a possible approach for implementing sharing, Oceus said in the ex parte. The executives also emphasized the need for a “commercial ecosystem” of devices, chipsets and networking equipment, as well as the need for a commercial technology road map (http://bit.ly/1d2NgC1).
The New York Public Service Commission is putting on hold its proceeding on how to best to create an additional area code in the 315 area code region, based on a revised forecast from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, the PSC said in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/18xaA3h). The revised forecast said the new code won’t be needed until Q3 2016, said the PSC. The commission opened the proceeding in December 2007, but subsequent updates over the years by NANPA indicated the area code “would not exhaust as quickly as initially predicted,” said the PSC.
The FCC should streamline rules for review of the construction of positive train control wayside facilities being built by railroads under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority said in comments filed at the FCC. PTC, mandated by Congress, is designed to protect trains from collisions with other trains, overspeed derailments and other threats to rail safety. Comments on NHPA requirements were due Friday. “The Section 106 review process, as it stands currently, is too cumbersome and time-consuming to handle the flood of applications that would be required to complete work on the PTC system in time for the 2015 [congressional] deadline,” MTA said (http://bit.ly/1dzGakK). “The exceptions and accommodations to the current review process discussed herein would seek to develop an efficient, practical, and timely review process that ensures full consideration of the effects of PTC facilities on historic properties, including Tribal religious and cultural sites.” Construction within rail rights-of-way should be given special consideration, MTA said. “When it comes to the preservation of the character of above-ground historic sites, the placement of poles along rail ROWs are far less obtrusive, and less likely to cause any ‘adverse effects’ than the preexisting presence of railroad tracks, and the regular traversing of rail cars along such tracks,” the filing said. “Given the nature of rail traffic along active rail lines, the purpose of the NHPA would not be well served by requiring rail carriers and the various other stakeholders to engage in an expensive and time-consuming process to review undertakings that are in almost every case certain to be less obtrusive than the infrastructure and traffic already in place.” The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority offered similar comments. “The MBTA urges the Commission to develop rules that while meeting the requirements of Section 106 of the NHPA, would also ensure that this critical public safety project is not unnecessarily delayed nor is it burdened by a review process that adds significant time and expense without adding significant value,” the commuter railroad said (http://bit.ly/HV2RWa). “The MBTA is concerned that a historic review and consultation process that is focused on minutia [sic] such as the location, height and installation process for utility poles will unnecessarily delay implementation of this project without resulting in added benefits or protections for historic resources."
The FTC’s report on data brokers won’t be issued until after the new year, an agency spokesman told us Friday. In December, the FTC sent letters to nine data brokers, requesting information about “the nature and sources of the consumer information the data brokers collect; how they use, maintain, and disseminate the information; and the extent to which the data brokers allow consumers to access and correct their information or to opt out of having their personal information sold,” said a release at the time (CD Dec 19/12 p11). The government shutdown pushed back the report’s timeline by a few weeks, the spokesman said Friday, declining to give any indication of what to expect in the report until it’s made public. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has also been doing a similar investigation since October 2012 (CD Oct 11/12 p12), which he expanded in September (CD Sept 26 p12).
The Florida Public Service Commission decided 11 telecom carriers meet the eligibility requirements to receive federal high-cost funds, said the PSC in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/17t51CE). All federal high-cost support to eligible Florida carriers will be used “only for the provision, maintenance, and upgrading of facilities and services for which the support is intended,” said the PSC. It said state certifications are required by Dec. 16 to receive 2014 funding.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission plans a workshop Dec. 4 to identify and discuss the impact of recent flood and fire disasters for 911 systems and processes (http://bit.ly/Xot3eI). Stakeholders from public safety organizations, basic emergency service providers and telecom providers will discuss what did and didn’t work with the 911 communications during the events. The sufficiency and effectiveness of current 911 outage reporting and contingency plans and ways to improve the overall 911 network and operations will also be topics. Larimer Emergency Telephone Authority and El Paso-Teller County E911 Authority will discuss their October site visits by the PUC, and other participants are encouraged to ask to present. CenturyLink will also respond to a letter form the PUC with questions on the emergency service provider’s role in 911 operations in the state.
Representatives of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile discussed spectrum sharing with FCC Deputy Wireless Bureau Chief John Leibovitz, Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp and other FCC officials, according to an ex parte filing posted by the agency Friday. “We discussed the progress that has been made with the Department of Defense ... on clearing and relocating out of the 1755-1780 MHz band, including the execution of a Memorandum of Understanding, spectrum monitoring tests, and the recent proposal to truncate and relocate DoD systems in order to make the band available for auction and commercial wireless use,” the filing said (http://bit.ly/1cwNP1V). “We also discussed the additional bands included in the above-referenced AWS-3 proceeding and their potential pairings."