EU Vice President Neelie Kroes announced a comprehensive European strategy on cybersecurity. The strategy will introduced in the coming month, Kroes said Monday, together with European Commissioner of Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström and Cathy Ashton, high EU representative for foreign affairs and security policy. The strategy will include policy and regulatory measures with the aim to reach a high level of information and network security. Despite existing efforts from the European Commission, which in March 2011 issued a communication on “critical information infrastructure protection: achievements and next steps: towards a global cyber security,” there is much more to do, Kroes told members of Parliament in a debate about a related parliamentary report. Rapporteur Ivaylo Kalfin, former Bulgaria minister of foreign affairs and now a member of the European Parliament for the Socialist Party Group, said Europe must speak with one voice on cybersecurity and include the issues of critical infrastructure protection also in bilateral trade agreements to expand cooperation. Cooperation with the U.S. is already very good, he said. One issue Kalfin mentioned was standardization of data and security breach information which had to be available for victims and the public. The plenary is expected to vote on the report Tuesday.
The Open Mobile Video Coalition is in Manhattan this week touting Mobile DTV at the Mobile Marketing Association’s annual forum, the OMVC said. “Since the MMA Forum is the primary venue for marketing innovation in the mobile industry, we want to ensure attendees have Mobile DTV on their radar,” OMVC CEO Anne Schelle said.
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council and the TETRA & Critical Communications Association (TCCA) signed a memorandum of agreement underscoring a “joint commitment of the need to develop mission critical public safety communications standards” for LTE, the groups said Monday. It said TCCA “will focus its work on driving the development and adoption of common global mobile broadband standards and solutions for users who operate in a mission critical or business critical environment."
People are watching TV programs on more devices, Arbitron said after conducting a survey with the Coalition for Innovating Media Measurement. It found that 35.5 percent of those in its panel used a TV, PC and mobile device to watch programs. And in general it was more common for people to simultaneously use social media sites and email while watching TV than for viewers to be watching video on TV and on a second screen at the same time, it said. Arbitron recruited about 500 people to participate in the panel, which used Internet and mobile measurement along with Arbitron’s Portable People Meter to track their media habits, it said.
CBS said it will raise $900 million by issuing new debt. The broadcaster said it will sell $400 million of 1.95 percent senior notes due 2017 and $500 million of 4.85 percent senior notes due 2042. CBS plans to use the cash to repay some other debt that comes due in August, as well as other notes that mature in 2014.
Former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley and fellow Wiley Rein partner Henry Rivera, also a former commissioner, urged an aide to Commission Mignon Clyburn not to let the commission’s DTV viewability rules expire prematurely, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnbhwe). The rule was set to expire Tuesday. Meanwhile, the NCTA both expanded the commitments it made to minimize the disruption caused by the rule’s expiration to its members’ analog subscribers and attacked claims made by NAB in the docket about its ability to do so. It said the eight largest cable operators will notify must-carry stations at least 90 days ahead of ending their analog distribution, except when the cable operator is moving to an all-digital system (http://xrl.us/bnbhwn). Separately, the cable association wrote the agency claiming that NAB in its arguments to the commission distorted facts about the availability of converter boxes (http://xrl.us/bnbhwp). The three-year viewability period marked an agreement from the cable industry to help with the broadcast DTV transition, the NCTA said. “Now that three-year transition period is expiring and the cable industry needs to focus on its own DTV transition,” it said. “NAB’s arguments should be rejected.” Lawyers for smaller cable operators continued to meet with commission officials to push for an extension of a rule that exempts smaller and low-capacity systems from carrying must-carry stations’ HD signals (http://xrl.us/bnbhw5). A group of must-carry broadcasters held a teleconference Friday with an aide to Clyburn to push for the rules to be extended, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnbhxf).
The proposed 3Q 2012 USF contribution factor is 15.7 percent, said an FCC public notice released Monday (http://xrl.us/bnbhvy). That’s a decrease from the 2Q contribution factor of 17.4 percent, and the 1Q factor of 17.9 percent (CD March 14 p11).
Globalstar didn’t pay a $67 million award it was ordered to pay in an arbitration dispute with Thales Alenia, and said it may file for bankruptcy. The American Arbitration Association ruled in favor of Thales and ordered Globalstar to pay the amount by June 9 (CD May 22 p13). Globalstar said it continues to engage in discussions with Thales “in an effort to reach a consensual resolution.” Globalstar asked the arbitration panel to step in when Thales was delayed in manufacturing satellites for the company under contract. If no resolution is reached, and if the award is “confirmed, final and non-appealable and thereafter remains unpaid without resolution, or if Thales terminates the construction agreement, there are likely to be materially negative consequences to Globalstar,” Globalstar said. The company said it may seek protection under Chapter 11.
Comcast wants out of video rate regulation in Hazlet, N.J. The cable operator faces sufficient competition from Verizon, DirecTV and Dish Network there, where the FCC’s competitive provider threshold for deregulation is “easily satisfied,” Comcast said in a Media Bureau petition Friday in docket 12-1 (http://xrl.us/bnbhu7).
The U.S. is in a “race against time” to get more spectrum online for commercial use, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a Monday opinion column in The Wall Street Journal. The FCC estimates “the demand for spectrum will exceed supply by 2013,” he said. “If that happens, the speed of the mobile revolution will slow down. Prices, download times and consumer frustration will all increase. And at a societal level we risk jeopardizing the future of our nation’s vital mobile Internet infrastructure, which is generating jobs and investment on a scale well beyond the first Internet boom of the 1990s.” Stephenson raised similar concerns in a speech at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference last week (CD June 7 p6) and is slated to talk about spectrum at a Brookings Institution event Tuesday in Washington, starting at 10 a.m. at the group’s Falk Auditorium at 1775 Massachusetts Ave. N.W.