Inmarsat is starting sales of global pre-paid satellite services for voice and data platforms. Existing customers will automatically be able to access the service beginning Sept. 1, the company said. The offering is available through an agreement with Freedom Wireless Holdings, making the service “available on the Inmarsat platform in the U.S. for the first time,” Inmarsat added.
The California Assembly passed the state’s VoIP deregulation bill 63-12 Monday. The bill would prohibit the California Public Utilities Commission from regulating the VoIP industry through 2020. Several assembly members spoke in favor of the bill and associated it with, as Assemblymember Joan Buchanan (D) said, “Internet technology” and as Assemblymember Sandré Swanson (D) said, the question of who regulates the Internet. At prior hearings (CD Aug 10 p9), some opponents disputed the idea that the Internet played any real role in what the VoIP industry will become and insisted VoIP technology would look and functionally be indistinguishable from a phone. Only one assembly member spoke in opposition Monday. “Not even I have enough lipstick to make [this bill] pretty,” said Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D), who expressed concerns about what the bill would do to people with disabilities, the poor and the elderly as well as its implications for free expression. “The Legislature needs to vote down SB1161, and it needs to do so quickly,” an Aug. 18 San Francisco Chronicle editorial said (http://xrl.us/bnmoky). PUC commissioner remarks on SB-1161 “suggest their views are rooted in a 1960s understanding of technology -- not a 21st century global Internet,” wrote SF New Tech Founder Myles Weissleder in a Monday San Francisco Chronicle op-ed in defense of the bill (http://xrl.us/bnmn2j). He described the tech community’s embrace of SB-1161. Opposition emanates from focusing on “the red herring of what the bill doesn’t do [rather] than what it will do,” he said. He insisted the bill would preserve all PUC authority over traditional telecom. Weissleder, in phrasing akin to that used by the bill’s advocates, praised SB-1161’s regulatory “certainty to the evolving, highly competitive Internet economy.” Now the bill will advance to the Senate, which has already approved the bill but needs to vote on the amended version. If passed there, it will move to Gov. Jerry Brown’s office and if signed there, become California law. Regina Costa, telecom director of The Utility Reform Network (TURN), told us the bill is “not a done deal” and proposed “the governor may be hesitant given the opposition of his own CPUC appointees.”
The federal government won’t allow states to apply for FirstNet implementation grants until 2013, the NTIA said Tuesday. The agency released a notice on the requirements for the State and Local Implementation Grant Program. The grants, amounting to as much as $135 million set for disbursal in two phases, are intended to kickstart states’ involvement with FirstNet, which named its board on Monday (CD Aug 21 p1). The grant program will be “a formula-based, matching grant program to assist states, in collaboration with regional, tribal, and local jurisdictions, with activities related to planning for the establishment of a nationwide public safety broadband network,” NTIA said (http://xrl.us/bnmof7). “NTIA expects to issue a FFO [Federal Funding Opportunity] and open the application window during the first quarter of calendar year 2013.” It noted it’s not yet accepting applications. The agency will calculate a formula weighing numerous factors and won’t release the “exact contents of the application package that applicants must submit” until the FFO is issued, it said. States can begin preparing based on “likely” requirements, such as establishing the state coordinator of grant funds, establishing methods of local jurisdictional input and determining how existing governance bodies may be leveraged into FirstNet activities, NTIA said.
A 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against so-called pirate radio operators’ challenge to a $10,000 FCC fine (CD Aug 21 p14) doesn’t clear up potential jurisdictional issues between federal appeals and district courts, a communications lawyer uninvolved in the case wrote. The New Orleans-based court ruled last week that Jerry and Deborah Stevens lacked legal standing to raise issues involving the agency’s jurisdiction in a U.S. District Court and instead should have raised the issue in the 5th Circuit, noted Fletcher Heald’s Mitchell Lazarus. At play is Section 504 of the Communications Act requiring the FCC to collect fines by bringing a case against an entity that won’t pay by suing in a district court, and that challenges to any agency’s order must be filed in a U.S. Court of Appeals, he wrote on the law firm’s blog Monday (http://xrl.us/bnmofa). “The Fifth Circuit’s try for a clean split between questions of fact and questions of law may look like a convenient way of dividing the baby” by considering the Stevens’ challenge an appeals court issue of legal arguments going beyond only the fine that would be for a district court, the attorney said. “But reality is not always that tidy. Often the recipient of a Forfeiture Order will want to raise defenses that intermix factual and legal arguments. Can he do this in district court, after waiting for the FCC to bring suit? The Fifth Circuit does not say."
Kymeta, an Intellectual Ventures (IV) company, completed a $12 million funding round to develop and market IV’s metamaterials-based satellite antenna technology. With the product line, mTenna, Kymeta “will simplify the satellite connection needed for broadband Internet on the go,” IV said. Metamaterials can manipulate electromagnetic radiation, it said: MTenna “uses this unique capability to electronically point and steer a radio signal toward a satellite.” The project is supported by investments from Liberty Global, Lux Capital and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.
Cell signal boosters are widely used by a variety of businesses, large and small, “along with numerous government agencies and institutions, such as universities, hospitals, office buildings, warehouses, power plants, dams and parking facilities,” top executives from Cellphone-Mate and Powerful Signal said in a meeting with FCC Wireless Bureau staffers. The FCC is currently examining booster rules. “Enterprise signal boosters provide a critical resource to enable wireless broadband connectivity for employees and customers inside structures that often lack reliable access to cellular networks,” the booster makers said (http://xrl.us/bnmobg). “Many businesses and agencies upon discovering that they lack reliable wireless service inside their facilities seek the installation of a signal booster system in order to remedy the problem as quickly as possible. Further, such businesses and agencies invariably seek the installation of a wideband signal booster system to enable access to all wireless networks that may be used by employees and customers in the building.”
Representatives of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association discussed “ongoing concerns” on the “transparency, accuracy, and predictability of regression analysis-based caps on universal service fund support,” in a meeting with aides to Commissioners Robert McDowell, Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel. “NTCA raised the need to address these issues consistent with the Applications for Review filed by NTCA and many others,” the group said in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnmn8d). “NTCA further asserted that the Commission’s broadband policy objectives can only be achieved through clear and well-tested ‘business rules’ that provide sufficient support and enable company managers to predict with a reasonable degree of certainty what investments and operations will be recoverable (or unrecoverable) through USF support prospectively. NTCA explained that many of the necessary and appropriate changes can be achieved in short order without affecting USF ‘budgetary’ objectives or creating any technical or administrative concerns, and expressed commitment to working with the Commission to address these issues."
Qualcomm responded in an FCC filing to criticisms of tests the company conducted of interference risks in the lower 700 MHz band. The equipment maker explained the methodology of its tests in detail (http://xrl.us/bnmn7t). “In sum, because the signals Qualcomm used for its reverse intermodulation test were valid, and its analysis used a power amplifier that correctly tests 700 MHz performance, Qualcomm’s tests and analysis were valid,” Qualcomm said.
In drawing up rules for an incentive auction of broadcast spectrum, “continued nationwide availability of a substantial amount of unlicensed access in the current TV bands” should remain a top FCC priority, representatives of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) said in a meeting with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “The spectrum legislation enacted last February reflected a conscious compromise that included an expectation that the Commission would mitigate the loss of unlicensed spectrum access due to a reallocation for auction by designating any duplex gap and/or guard bands for unlicensed access under rules that would be complementary to the current TV White Space rules,” the coalition said (http://xrl.us/bnmn6b). “The PISC representatives emphasized the importance of maintaining national markets for TV band unlicensed chips, equipment and applications -- and their concomitant concern that TV band repacking could preclude the availability of unlicensed in a few of the very largest metro markets unless the Commission adopts affirmative measures as part of the incentive auction rulemaking.” The New America Foundation, Consumers Union, Public Knowledge and Free Press took part in the meeting. The FCC should hold the auction “no later than June 2014,” representatives of the Telecommunications Industry Association said in a meeting with Commissioner Ajit Pai. TIA representatives “discussed how the Commission could structure its rules to maximize the amount of spectrum made available to licensed services,” said an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnmn22). “TIA also recommended that when the Commission issues a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the 3550-3650 MHz band later this year, it solicit comment on all possible options for the band and remain open to alternatives other than small cells. We also reported on TIA’s assessment of the effort by the [NTIA] to make the 1755-1780 MHz band available for commercial broadband operations."
Despite “extensive ... member efforts” to build out systems in lower 700 A-block spectrum, “the lack of interoperability in the Lower 700 MHz band remains an intractable problem,” Rural Cellular Association President Steve Berry said in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. “The record in this proceeding proves that a single band class, Band Class 12, would not cause harmful interference to Lower 700 MHz B and C block licensees and that an interoperability requirement is necessary to obtain affordable advanced mobile devices to deploy service to consumers in smaller, regional, and rural service areas,” Berry said (http://xrl.us/bnmn4m). “As a result of continued non-interoperability in the Lower 700 MHz band, Lower 700 MHz licensees are left without access to interoperable devices and network equipment, which has significantly hindered RCA members in planning for, securing financing for, and purchasing the necessary equipment and infrastructure for building out the Lower A Block spectrum in their geographic areas."