House lawmakers slammed the Chinese government for facilitating infringement and theft of U.S. intellectual property online, during a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Thursday. The Chinese government has “approved and coordinated” theft of U.S. IP and the American government has been “cowardly” in confronting the threat, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. “We've been played for suckers over the years, we've been played as fools” as the Chinese government has only become more “brazen in their theft of wealth that should be going to our people.” Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., urged the executive branch to negotiate enforceable agreements with foreign governments that will curb IP theft such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The trade agreement would require parties -- which include the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam -- to ensure they have effective enforcement procedures against online trademark, copyright and other rights infringements. Ranking Member Howard Berman, D-Calif., said the U.S. has an opportunity to successfully negotiate the TPP, which he called an “ambitious agreement” with Asian countries to protect U.S. IP. “It is critical that this agreement reflect and prioritize the contribution of the U.S. IP industries to the U.S. economy by including strong protections for IP and robust enforcement provisions,” he said. Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Derek Scissors agreed that the TPP offers a “great possibility” for curbing Chinese IP theft and urged lawmakers to pursue other lines of attack as well. “There are ways for the U.S. to change its laws to make it more difficult and uncomfortable” for Chinese infringers, he said. David Hirschmann, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center, said it’s crucial to focus on the Web where stolen U.S. IP is primarily being distributed. “One thing we can do is to begin to work with the world to find pro-Internet freedom rule of law approaches to address distribution on the Internet,” he said. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have previously denounced the TPP as a threat to Internet freedom, and Wyden introduced a bill in May to clarify the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s duty to share trade agreement information with all members of Congress (CD June 12 p6).
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials released Recommended Best Practices for PSAPs When Processing Vehicle Telematics Calls from Telematics Service Providers (TSPs). The public safety answering point document revises best practices released by the APCO Telematics Taskforce in 2009. “It offers clear guidelines for PSAP personnel in the handling of vehicle telematics and Advanced Automatic Crash Notification (AACN) calls from TSPs and updates the information the telematics operator is expected to provide,” APCO said. “It also contains updated TSP contact information, escalation procedures and a glossary of terms that clarifies new in-vehicle technologies. It does not define local response procedures or protocols, allowing each agency to establish appropriate call handling and dispatch policies.” APCO also announced approval of the Vehicular Emergency Data Set (VEDS) for transmission of critical vehicle crash data to PSAPs. APCO developed VEDS in combination with the National Emergency Number Association.
With less than a week before price-cap carriers must indicate whether they will accept millions of dollars in subsidies for broadband buildout, the FCC clarified rules on how to calculate the amount of support a carrier must return for failing to meet deployment obligations (http://xrl.us/bnhfsr). Carriers that can’t meet their obligation must return “$775 multiplied by the number of locations to which the carrier was required to deploy to but did not,” a Wireline Bureau order said Thursday. It said accepting funding doesn’t mean a carrier is “binding itself to deploy only in those areas, nor is it committing to deploy to every unserved location in those areas.” Carriers must accept the funding by July 24.
The FCC approved a fourth order on reconsideration on rules for the USF Mobility Fund, which said “if a petition for reconsideration simply repeats arguments that were previously considered and rejected in the proceeding, it will not likely warrant reconsideration.” The order (http://xrl.us/bnhfr8) affirmed the FCC’s earlier adoption of a reverse auction mechanism. But the commission turned down several requests for changes, including requests that the FCC: restrict or prohibit Tier I carriers from receiving Mobility Fund Phase I support; hold applications for eligible telecom carrier status in abeyance pending completion of the auction and then automatically qualify any winning bidder as an ETC; and deem a carrier to be a Lifeline-only ETC to be eligible to participate in the Mobility Fund without first obtaining general ETC status. The FCC also rejected “for purposes of the auction of Mobility Fund Phase I support, arguments that the Commission provide for bidding preferences to small or rural entities and extend eligibility for the Tribal lands bidding credit to entities that are not Tribally-owned or controlled.”
The first meeting of the Advisory Committee for the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference will be at 9 a.m. Aug. 9 at FCC headquarters. “The WRC-15 Advisory Committee’s objective is to provide the FCC with advice, technical support and recommended proposals for the WRC-15,” the FCC said in a notice (http://xrl.us/bnhfqk). “At its initial meeting, the WRC-15 Advisory Committee will consider formation of its Informal Working Groups (IWGs), assignment of WRC-15 agenda items to the IWGs, scheduling and other organizational matters.” The FCC has also established a WRC-15 website at www.fcc.gov/wrc-15.
Several carriers received approval for interconnection agreement amendments in Idaho Thursday. A total of seven applications were approved, and the companies included CenturyLink QC, Metropolitan Telecommunications of Idaho, Frontier Communications Northwest, Entelegent Solutions, Bullseye Telecom, Ernest Communications, Trans National Communications International, OneEighty Networks and Clarks Electronics. “The amendments to the Interconnection Agreement are consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity and do not discriminate” and are “consistent with the pro-competitive policies of this Commission, the Idaho Legislature, and the federal Telecommunications Act,” the commission said in its final order approving the interconnection agreement amendments (http://xrl.us/bnhfqe).
A group of pay-TV providers pointed the finger at broadcasters for retransmission consent blackouts, hours after NAB criticized three of the coalition’s members for being involved in most retrans disputes this year (CD July 19 p21). “NAB’s offering ’sympathy’ for viewers currently subject to blacked-out programming on Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish is dishonest at best,” the American Television Alliance said in a news release late Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnhfqc). “It is the broadcasters, the so-called ’stewards of the public airwaves,’ that use outdated government rules to yank their signals from consumers.” The coalition didn’t dispute that the three multichannel video programming distributors were involved in three-quarters of TV service disruptions in 2012, an NAB spokesman said. “Only 0.3 percent of America’s 5,851 pay TV companies have ever been involved in a loss of broadcast TV service,” he said. “This suggests a concerted effort by three of the largest pay TV companies to manufacture a crisis that does not really exist, rather than compete in the marketplace."
Ohio will be revisiting the details of its Lifeline service thanks to two recent applications, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission unanimously confirmed in its meeting Wednesday. TracFone Wireless and Virgin Mobile USA had both applied on June 22 for a rehearing of the commission’s May 23 finding and order, which “established certain requirements for the provision of Lifeline service, including those necessitated by the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Report and Order in In the Matter of Lifeline and Link Up Reform and Modernization, Lifeline and Link Up, Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, Advancing Broadband Availability Through Digital Literacy Training,” the commission said (http://xrl.us/bnhfj9). It judges that TracFone and Virgin Mobile have “sufficient reason” to question its ruling and now promises “further consideration,” the commission said. In its June 22 objection, Virgin Mobile called the Ohio commission’s Lifeline order “unreasonable and unlawful,” “contrary to the public interest in that it is discriminatory and anti-competitive with respect to prepaid Lifeline service providers,” and in requesting a rehearing, added it hopes the commission “reverse its finding that reimbursement from USAC to prepaid wireless Lifeline providers is includable for purposes of calculating the 9-1-1 assessment” and “reverse its order directing the remittance of 9-1-1 fees that would have been collected retroactively to the date of ETC designation” (http://xrl.us/bnhfma). In its application for a rehearing, TracFone asserts “non-billed, free Lifeline services are not prepaid services and Ohio law imposes no such 911 fee remittance obligations on non-billed free Lifeline services where there is no available mechanism for collecting such fees from qualified low-income consumers of such non-billed free services,” and said one subset of ETCs, wireless resellers, shouldn’t be singled out for a retroactive obligation for fees that couldn’t have been collected.
Correction: A comment made by Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Administrator Jonathan Adelstein about needing “visibility” for projects funded by RUS loans was incorrectly attributed to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (CD July 19 p2).
The FCC Public Safety Bureau late Wednesday released a public notice asking a broad array of questions in the aftermath of the June 29 “derecho.” The unusual storm carrying powerful winds struck the Mid-Atlantic region, cutting communications services to many subscribers (CD July 3 p1). The questions in part focus on what happened in Fairfax and Prince William counties in Virginia, where problems experienced by Verizon meant some callers were unable to reach 911(http://xrl.us/bnhcmq). The public notice expands the inquiry the Public Safety Bureau opened immediately after the storm (CD July 3 p1). Comments are due Aug. 17, replies Sept. 4.