Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in an email statement a presidential cybersecurity order would be “less effective than the reasonable solutions that could be implemented by passing the SECURE IT Act.” Grassley who is a sponsor of S-2151 said the Senate “wasn’t serious about legislating” a cybersecurity bill before the August recess and said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., “didn’t allow an open process.”
Global optical networking equipment spending declined 8 percent year-over-year in Q2, staking any hope of year-over-year growth for 2012 on “a very big bang” in Q4, Ovum said Thursday. The global figures remain disappointing, in Ovum’s view, despite 6 percent growth in Asia-Pacific and 19 percent growth in South and Central America. “Despite good prospects in Asia-Pacific and SCA, this was not sufficient throughout the first half of the year to push the global market to growth,” said Dana Cooperson, Ovum vice president-practice leader for network infrastructure, in a news release. “Prospects in the eurozone have not yet improved and are unlikely to turn around quickly. Prospects for North American tier-2 carriers are improving, but any growth in spending may not make up the gap for vendors that depend on spending by the largest carriers” (http://xrl.us/bnnrxj).
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling held their formal, biannual meeting Wednesday to discuss spectrum issues, said a release posted by the NTIA Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnnrxs). Among the topics discussed was putting parts of the February spectrum law into effect and the administration’s initiative to make available 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband, as well as the recent spectrum report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. “They agreed that efforts to identify spectrum must include all available options, including both clearing spectrum and sharing spectrum where appropriate,” the notice said. The two also “specifically discussed” other bands, including sharing between federal and government users of the 1695-1710 MHz and 1755-1850 MHz bands, a planned incentive auction of broadcast spectrum, the “use of 100 megahertz of spectrum for small cells that NTIA identified at 3.5 GHz as part of its Fast Track evaluation,” and an FCC proposal to repurpose Mobile Satellite Service S-band spectrum for an AWS-4 auction.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should not stay the FCC’s recent order allowing its so-called viewability rules to expire this year, the commission said in a reply brief filed with the court. NAB, Agape Church and other broadcasters appealed the order and asked the court to stay it pending judicial review (CD Aug 3 p5). “The FCC’s decision to permit the viewability rule to sunset is based on a reasonable interpretation of the statute and the ordinary meaning of the term ‘viewable,'” the commission said in its brief. “That term is reasonably understood to be satisfied if a provider makes programming watchable by an effective means,” including with equipment like a set-top box, the commission said. Furthermore, the broadcasters’ claims that they will suffer irreparable harm are based “on speculative assertions regarding loss of subscribership and advertising that are unsupported by the record and in conflict with FCC findings,” the commission said. But viewers of must-carry stations, particularly low-income viewers, will suffer without a stay of the order, the National Hispanic Media Coalition said in a response in support of the broadcasters’ stay motion filed with the court. The court “should view with great skepticism cable operators’ First Amendment arguments, since the since the viewability rules, and the must-carry rules which they implement, are content neutral,” the coalition said.
The Federal Trade Commission is expected to finish its antitrust investigation of Google in the next month, said Bloomberg Government, citing four individuals familiar with the issue (http://xrl.us/bnnryn). According to the report, agency staff is expected to present the findings of their investigation to commissioners by mid-September and recommend a lawsuit or settlement.
An order allowing cable operators to encrypt their basic service tiers circulated this week, industry and agency officials said following press reports about the item. An FCC Media Bureau spokeswoman declined to comment. The order’s arrival on the FCC’s 8th floor means parties will begin seeking meeting with commissioners and their staff to discuss it. “Next week, we'll be going to the 8th floor to see if we can get an indication of how our proposal fared and if they have any question for us,” said Neal Goldberg, NCTA vice president and general counsel. “We're hoping it’s voted pretty quickly, assuming that they've reached some kind of acceptable compromise,” he said. An order allowing cable operators to encrypt those signals had been expected early in the year, but was delayed after Boxee raised concerns (CD Feb 9 p4). A Boxee spokesman declined to comment.
Wireless carriers are set to spend 8.3 percent more on infrastructure equipment this year, for a global total of $45.5 billion, IHS iSuppli said in a report Thursday. The rise in infrastructure spending is driven primarily by investment in 4G LTE technology for developing nations, IHS said. “Carriers are making the investments on infrastructure in order to keep pace with growing data traffic, especially on the mobile side,” IHS analyst Jagdish Rebello said. This year’s expected increase in infrastructure spending follows a 7.7 percent increase in 2011. Spending should continue to grow by about 3 percent a year through 2016, IHS said (http://xrl.us/bnnrvq).
More than 15 percent of AT&T’s wireless cell sites in Louisiana were affected by Hurricane Isaac’s landfall Wednesday, the company said in an advisory Thursday. The carrier has deployed about 2,000 technicians from Louisiana and surrounding states to resolve the service problems, it said. It has deployed about 1,700 generators to cell sites and wireline switching nodes. “The company is also bringing in two mobile retail vehicles that will be positioned in storm-impacted areas to provide customers with the ability to recharge their devices, make free calls to loved ones, as well as purchase essential accessories including additional batteries for their wireless devices,” AT&T said. Crews were out all morning Thursday, a spokeswoman told us.
E-Trade and TradeKing reached agreements with Connecticut and other states investigating potential antitrust violations within the retail securities brokerage industry, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said Thursday. In exchange for being removed as targets of the investigation, both companies agreed to cooperate and will create antitrust compliance policy and training programs. The companies also agreed to reimburse Connecticut and the other states $200,000 in costs related to the investigation, Jepsen said in a news release. The investigation began after NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions and Loyal3 Holdings discontinued their partnership, though neither was a target of the investigation (http://xrl.us/bnnrsx).
The Application Developers Alliance gained four corporate partners and one associate member, the industry association -- which counts Google, BlackBerry and AT&T as members -- said Thursday. The corporate partners are Spinnakr, CMP.LY, ConferenceEdge and X.commerece, Inc., an eBay, Inc. company. The associate member is Evidon.