A new website by CTIA and The Wireless Foundation provides information to help parents teach their children to use their cellphones and other devices responsibly (www.GrowingWireless.com). “The wireless world increases opportunities for our children to connect and learn, but also increases their exposure to bullies, identity thieves, predators and other threats,” said Douglas Gansler, Maryland attorney general and president of the National Association of Attorneys General.
The FCC should grant Dell Telephone Cooperative’s petition for waiver of some of the high-cost universal service rules, small telcos told the Wireline Bureau. The Baca Valley telco in Des Moines, and Leaco Rural telco and Peñasco Valley telco in southeast New Mexico, said application of the new rules to Dell would have severe impacts and likely lead to the loss of voice service in the Dell service area. Dell seeks a waiver of the $250 per line per month cap, the rule limiting reimbursable capital and operating expenses applied to high-cost loop support, and rules limiting recovery of corporate operations expenses applied to HCLS and interstate common line support. “Given the dire financial situation facing Dell as a result of the FCC’s USF reform policies and the very real possibility that its customers will lose essential voice service, Leaco supports Dell’s request for waiver,” the telco said (http://xrl.us/bnj78m). “This is no trifling matter,” said Peñasco Valley. “There are scant alternatives for Dell’s customers if it is forced into liquidation,” the telco wrote, noting “several similarities between itself and Dell, both in the challenges of serving a sparsely populated service area in harsh (both geographic and climatic) outside plant conditions, and in the financial harm threatened by the Commission’s new high cost rules” (http://xrl.us/bnj78y).
Liberman Broadcasting’s EstrellaTV took Jose Luis Sin Censura off that broadcast network a “couple of months ago,” a spokesman for the network said. The Spanish-language talk show garnered an FCC indecency complaint by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and National Hispanic Media Coalition, both of which cheered the show ending (CD Aug 10 p17). The program was discontinued last week on “the remaining 3 local stations in the network’s affiliate group” that were continuing to carry it, the spokesman said.
Comments on eight petitions to escape TV closed captioning rules are due in 30 days, the FCC said in a public notice dated Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnj74y). The petitions all cite “undue economic burden,” and are at http://xrl.us/bnj742. The requests were made by Christian Video Ministries, Pan American Broadcasting, Trailblazers International Christian Center and others.
The FCC International Bureau dismissed Hispamar Satellite’s request to add the Amazonas-3 satellite to the FCC’s Permitted Space Station List in the C/Ku/Ka-bands. The petition doesn’t provide certain information required by the commission’s rules, “or request waivers of the rules, which renders the application unacceptable for filing and subject to dismissal,” the Satellite Division said in an order (http://xrl.us/bnj7yo). FCC rules require fixed satellite service satellites in the Ka-band to be capable of switching polarization upon ground command, it said. “Hispamar acknowledges that the Ka-band payload transmission polarization on Amazonas-3 cannot be reversed from the ground.” The satellite company’s exhibits to the application “do not provide the type of showing required and are insufficient to demonstrate that its proposed FSS satellite system will be compatible with the commission’s two-degree orbital spacing requirement,” the order said.
The FCC should apply special access service quality reporting requirements established in the Section 272 Sunset Order to all price cap incumbent LECs, not just to the Bell operating companies, tw telecom told a Wireline Bureau official Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnj7uw). The commission should also require all price cap LECs, including the BOCs, to include the repeat trouble report rate metric in their special access service quality reporting; and require them to provide monthly carrier-specific service quality reports upon request, tw telecom said. The telco plans to file a letter to that effect, it said.
Verizon Wireless is touting several 4G LTE advances throughout the states. Friday, the carrier announced its “most advanced services now cover all of Florida’s major markets and 90 percent of state residents” and it will expand into “new coverage in Orange, Seminole, Lake and Collier counties” (http://xrl.us/bnj7tv). Another Friday announcement said Verizon will bring 4G to Aberdeen, S.D., where its “new coverage will also extend east along U.S. Highway 12 to Groton, including the town of Bath,” on Aug. 16 (http://xrl.us/bnj7tz). Verizon Wireless also issued three announcements about new service in Iowa (http://xrl.us/bnj7t9), Minnesota (http://xrl.us/bnj7ub) and North Dakota (http://xrl.us/bnj7uj).
Representatives of Vulcan Wireless met with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and other FCC officials to press for a 700 MHz interoperability mandate. “The Commission need not prescribe the means or technical specifications for implementing Lower 700 MHz interoperability in this proceeding,” they said in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnj7tn). “Rather, the Commission need only adopt an order requiring interoperability across all paired spectrum blocks in the Lower 700 MHz band, and allow interested parties to cooperatively use the industry-driven standards body process to determine the best technical manner to implement an interoperability requirement. Under this approach, the Commission would ensure that a unified band plan is adopted and ratified within a reasonable time period, not to exceed six months (in which case Band Class 12 would become the de facto standard if a new, unified standard is not adopted and ratified).” The Vulcan representatives also weighed in on the very test results that have been submitted to the FCC on whether a single band would pose an interference risk to some licensees. “The only reliable technical evidence submitted to the record in this proceeding demonstrates that Lower 700 MHz interoperability will not adversely impact Lower B and C Block device reception,” the filing said. “By contrast, opponents of Lower 700 MHz interoperability have not provided any reliable measurements or empirical data to support their unsubstantiated claims of interference. Rather, they have only submitted data derived from very limited, fundamentally flawed, and corrupted test designs that fail to reflect real world device and network performance."
The FCC should move forward “with all due haste” to approve an interoperability mandate for the 700 MHz band, representatives of Cavalier Wireless and Continuum Wireless said in a meeting with Renee Wentzel, aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski, and other FCC officials. “Lack of interoperability severely limits small operators in many different ways: no roaming is available to their subscribers; no cutting-edge equipment is available; there is limited opportunity to provide true 4-G service; considerably higher equipment costs; no incoming roaming revenues, thereby hampering business plans,” they said in an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://xrl.us/bnj7rn).
Level 3 President Jeff Storey, Bandwidth.com President John Murdock and other industry officials met with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and staff to discuss their “urgent concerns” about petitions by VoIP providers seeking direct access to number resources. “If the Commission is inclined to allow non-carriers direct access to phone numbers, the right way to accomplish that is by denying the petitions and issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://xrl.us/bnj7p5). “Conducting a rulemaking proceeding would not only provide equal treatment to all providers (both as to the process for changing the rules and under the rules resulting from that process), but it would also give the industry adequate notice and lead-time to make operational and business plan adjustments.” Granting the waivers “will not advance the industry-wide transition to IP interconnection, as certain Petitioners have claimed,” the filing said. “Granting one non-carrier direct access to phone numbers will have no impact on the intransigence of the largest ILECs, which have to date been resistant to IP interconnection with their CLEC competitors."