Getting more spectrum online for broadband must be a key focus of the FCC, said Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter in a letter Friday to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “Above all, given the unique role that mobile broadband plays for increased productivity, empowerment, opportunity, and prosperity for all Americans, the FCC must maintain -- and reinforce -- its efforts to make essential spectrum resources available,” Spalter wrote (http://bit.ly/1eVTOlU). He stressed the importance of auctions, including the incentive TV auction and an AWS-3 auction. “Spectrum exhaust already threatens cities around the country,” Spalter said. “Perhaps the highest single priority of the FCC must be, therefore, to move ahead with speed, intense focus and tenacity to free up underused broadcast spectrum and bring long-allocated AWS spectrum to market for wireless use.” Spalter said the FCC “must maintain its momentum and progress” on the incentive auction, slated for next year.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was the fourth no vote opposing S-1631, the FISA Improvements Act, which cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee Oct. 31 (CD Nov 1 p4), according to report from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., submitted last week (http://bit.ly/1eVx5Xg). The report disclosed votes and the amendment process in a much fuller detail than was previously known. The legislation, which privacy advocates criticize for preserving the government’s phone records bulk collection practices (CD Nov 4 p10), cleared the committee in an 11-4 vote, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Mark Udall, D-Colo., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., all announced their no votes then. Coburn’s office did not then respond to requests for comment, and the fourth vote of opposition was unknown until now. Feinstein expanded on her views at length in the report and said Senate Intelligence had considered whether telcos rather than the government should retain the phone data, but that idea “would not meet the Intelligence Community’s operational needs,” she said. She defended the bulk collection program’s legality. Several committee members previously touted amendments they had successfully integrated into the bill, but Feinstein’s report detailed certain amendments that failed to become part of the act. The committee voted 7-8 to reject an amendment from Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., that would have limited the retention of bulk metadata to three years. The current standard is five years, and the National Security Agency has said data should be retained for at least three years to ensure its usefulness. Feinstein, Wyden, Udall and Heinrich all backed Rockefeller’s failed amendment. Coburn had proposed his own amendment to kill any restrictions at all on the retention of bulk metadata, which failed in a 6-9 vote. The committee also voted 4-11 to reject an amendment by Wyden to hold more open hearings on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the 2013 calendar year. Udall and Wyden previously described trying to end bulk collection of business records under Patriot Act Section 215, which Udall had introduced as an amendment rejected in a 3-12 vote, with only Wyden, Udall and Heinrich backing it. Another Wyden amendment requiring “the public disclosure of any decision of the FISC that concerns a violation of the Constitution” narrowly failed in a 7-8 vote, and he attempted and failed to replace the Feinstein bill text with his own Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act in a 3-12 vote. The committee also rejected a Heinrich amendment by a 7-8 vote to forbid cell site location information bulk collection. Wyden, Udall and Heinrich wrote the report’s minority views section. The act would “codify the government’s authority to collect the phone records of huge numbers of law-abiding Americans, and also to conduct warrantless searches for individual Americans’ phone calls and emails,” those three senators said. “We respectfully but firmly disagree with this approach.”
The FCC’s sports blackout rule is an “outdated vestige,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y., told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. They sent a letter (http://1.usa.gov/18Az9wf) to Wheeler on Thursday, and Higgins made it public Friday in a news release. “The current blackout policy does not serve taxpayers, sports fans, or networks,” the letter said, urging “the FCC to act immediately to ensure that sporting events remain accessible to millions of supportive fans.” Higgins recently introduced The Furthering Access and Networks for Sports Act of 2013,HR-3452, which would end the FCC’s blackout rule (CD Nov 14 p10).
European Commission plans to safeguard net neutrality in its “Connected Continent” measure are “devoid of substance” because they give ISPs almost unlimited rights to manage traffic, said the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) in an opinion Friday (http://bit.ly/HQijm7). The proposed regulation for a single European e-communications market includes the principle of free access to and distribution of content, applications and services by end-users, but paves the way for providers to use traffic management measures that scan and discriminate among different types of content, it said. Those provisions significantly limit net neutrality and interfere with privacy and data protection rights, it said. End-users need to be sure that their rights are respected when they use e-communications services, and that any interference with privacy and data protection guarantees are proportionate and necessary for a clearly specific, legitimate purpose, the EDPS said. The EC proposal allows traffic management for, among other reasons, “implementing a legislative provision” and “preventing and impeding serious crimes,” grounds that “appear overly broad and have a considerable potential to trigger a wide-scale, preventive monitoring of communications content,” it said. The EDPS recommended that: (1) Those two grounds for using network traffic management be stricken from the measure. (2) The regulation provide clear information on communications inspection techniques that are allowed in the context of traffic management, and state that when such management is permitted, it be based on the sole analysis of Internet Protocol headers, not on deep packet inspection. (3) Providers be required to tell users they might use traffic management, the techniques used, and the effect of such techniques on privacy and data protection rights. (4) National telecom regulators supervising the application of traffic management measures be able to cooperate with national data protection agencies.
Comments on the FCC’s rulemaking on eliminating the UHF discount for broadcast ownership are due in docket 13-236 by Dec. 16, announced the Media Bureau in a public notice Thursday (http://bit.ly/1bHW8Ib). Reply comments are due Jan. 13. The NPRM also seeks comment on how existing and pending ownership groups should be grandfathered in if the UHF discount is eliminated, and if a VHF discount should be adopted.
Carriers need to work out a voluntary agreement on cellphone unlocking or the FCC will step in and regulate, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a letter Thursday to Steve Largent, president of CTIA. Wheeler preceded Largent as CTIA’s president. The policy must have five separate components, the letter said. Among them, it must “provide a clear, concise, and readily accessible policy on unlocking” and it must unlock phones when the service contract is up. Wheeler said there is only one area of disagreement between the regulator and the wireless association -- a requirement that carriers notify subscribers “when their devices are eligible for unlocking and/or automatically unlock devices when eligible, without an additional fee.” “We are anxious to work with you and your members to resolve this matter expeditiously. Enough time has passed, and it is now time for the industry to act voluntarily or for the FCC to regulate,” Wheeler told Largent. “Let’s set a goal of including the full unlocking rights policy in the CTIA Consumer Code before the December holiday season."
One-quarter of businesses in the U.S. haven’t adopted broadband, while the revenue generated by online sales continues to grow, said a Connected Nation survey released Thursday (http://bit.ly/UfmQTr). Seven out of 10 businesses in the U.S. thought it was important for new employees to have some type of computer- or Internet-related skills, but about 2.9 million businesses have difficulty finding employees who have the skills to meet their needs, the survey found. Forty-eight percent of small businesses rely on broadband to advertise or provide customer service to consumers around the world, and more than 2.5 million U.S. businesses advertise job openings and accept applications online, the survey found. Mobile technology is also becoming more available in the workplace, with 21 percent of U.S. businesses using tablet computers and about 2.8 million using mobile broadband, the survey found. Connected Nation conducted a phone survey of 4,800 businesses in six states between April and May.
The current state of radio spectrum noise is “difficult to get your arms around,” said Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, at a Silicon Flatirons event Thursday. There are many informal and anecdotal reports that indicate that man-made radio noise is rising, but there’s “not a wealth of information” available based on scientifically derived tests, he said. Radio noise isn’t a new phenomenon, and it’s something that has been rising “since the first radio was turned on,” Knapp said. “Ideally, we'd all agree we'd like to see radio noise be at zero … but it’s really not practical to do that.” The more practical solution is to find technological ways to mitigate the impact of noise, Knapp said. The FCC Technological Advisory Council is looking at ways to reduce noise that affects services, but the group hasn’t “seen any magic bullets yet,” he said. There isn’t a standard for measuring noise that is recognized by both federal agencies and the private sector, said Frank Sanders, Telecommunications Theory Division chief at NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS). Individual researchers do have methodologies for measuring noise, but they are highly dependent on the parameters a researcher sets, he said. Jeff Wepman, an engineer in ITS’s Spectrum and Propagation Measurement division, said distinguishing between noise and interference is “subject to a lot of interpretation.” He said when he does measurements, he attempts to ensure there aren’t any intentionally generated, clearly identifiable signals in the spectrum he’s monitoring.
Deregulating phone services in Pennsylvania would hurt access to broadband services and sharply increase phone rates, said a Keystone Research Center report released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/175DjPo). The Pennsylvania Legislature’s Consumer Affairs Committee scheduled a public hearing for Nov. 21 to discuss House Bill 1608, which would allow phone companies in the state to raise rates with a one-day advance notice, said the report by the Pennsylvania public interest group. The bill would “abandon rural communities” by permitting telephone carriers to eliminate service to consumers that they do not want to serve starting in 2018, said the report. Public oversight of telco mergers would be eliminated, in addition to reporting requirements for phone rates, auditing requirements and quality-of-service requirements, said the report. “This bill is a pure giveaway to the companies involved because it has no public interest benefits,” said report author Nathan Newman. “This bill is a solution in search of a problem, and it does not help consumers in any way."
Don’t let taxpayers subsidize companies that send U.S. call center jobs abroad, said House and Senate lawmakers and the Communications Workers of America this week, touting a bill introduced earlier this fall (http://bit.ly/1asx5cU). Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., introduced the Senate version, S-1565, co-sponsored by Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and referred to the Commerce Committee. Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., introduced HR-2909, which has 42 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. Casey, Bishop, and Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., joined with CWA members Wednesday at a Capitol Hill event to formally introduce the legislation, dubbed the Press One for America provision of the U.S. Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act of 2013. The section in question would compel call center workers to say where their calls are originating and permit call recipients to transfer to a U.S. facility if the worker is outside the U.S. Companies sending such jobs abroad would not be allowed to receive federal loans, grants and subsidies for three years, the bill proposes. It would also make sure there’s a public list of companies that send such jobs abroad.