Bipartisan national security experts favor regulation of critical infrastructure in cybersecurity legislation, they said in a letter made public by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a sponsor of the Cybersecurity Act (S-2105), which has such a regulatory bent. The letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Congress should take swift action on such legislation. “Infrastructure that controls our electricity, water and sewer, nuclear plants, communications backbone, energy pipelines and financial networks must be required to meet appropriate cyber security standards,” said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, former Deputy U.S. Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and others (http://xrl.us/bna72t): “Where market forces and existing regulations have failed to drive appropriate security, we believe that our government must do what it can to ensure the protection of our critical infrastructure.”
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., questioned in a letter to NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling how the agency can justify suspending Broadband Technology Opportunities Program payments to the seven government groups that plan to use the money to build out early first responder networks in the 700 MHz band. Myrick noted that Charlotte, N.C., one of the grant recipients, planned to go live with the first phase of its network in June. “I urge you to lift the suspension of Charlotte’s BTOP grant so that the build-out can continue,” Myrick wrote (http://xrl.us/bna7z6). North Carolina Gov. Beverly Purdue, a Democrat, also protested the suspension in a separate letter to Strickling (http://xrl.us/bna72a).
The FCC Media Bureau adopted a consent decree with the University of San Francisco and Classical Public Radio Network in San Francisco concerning the proposed assignment of the license for KUSF(FM) San Francisco from USF to CPRN. The decree stipulates that the organizations violated rules that prohibit noncommercial educational stations from selling program time for a profit, the bureau said in an order (http://xrl.us/bna7yt). Both organizations will collectively make a $50,000 voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury, it said. The bureau’s investigation into the violations is terminated, it said. The entities violated the rules in connection with a public service operating agreement, bureau Chief Bill Lake said in a statement (http://xrl.us/bna7z2). USF agreed to allow the programmer “to provide substantially all of the programming for the station in return for a monthly payment that exceeded the station’s expenses,” he said. “I hope our action in this case will serve as a reminder of the need for complete accuracy in all application filings."
NAB attorneys met with lawyers in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel and Media Bureau staff to discuss the commission’s DTV viewability rules, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bna7zd). “During the meeting, we discussed various provisions of Section 614 of the Communications Act, and their implications for the outcome of the proceeding,” the notice said. “We explained that an equipment-based approach to viewability would fail to satisfy multiple provisions of the statute, as well as its central purpose,” the notice said. And a coalition of must-carry broadcasters formed to elicit some help from Congress before the viewability rules expire next week. The Independent Voices for Local TV distributed a letter to Congress making the “urgent request that you contact the commission prior to June 11 and express your opposition to sunsetting the viewability rule.” The group counts 34 broadcast groups representing more than 210 TV stations among its members, which include Ion, Trinity Broadcast Network, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Daystar TV Network, Liberman Broadcasting and Northwest Broadcasting.
SeaChange International’s quarterly sales for the three months ended April 30 fell 8.8 percent from a year earlier, the company said. Its net loss widened to $19.6 million from $384,000 a year earlier on lower sales, and a $19 million loss on discontinued operations. “We took significant steps to transform SeaChange to become a pure-play software company through the sale of our broadcast servers and storage business and our media services business units,” CEO Raghu Rau said. “We continue to invest significant resources in developing and launching our next generation software products toward the latter half of this fiscal year.” Its shares fell 5 percent Thursday.
Media trade associations urged the FCC to grant a temporary exemption or waiver to its IP-video closed captioning rules sought by the Digital Media Association (DiMA). The MPAA, NCTA and NAB jointly filed comments supporting DiMA’s request (http://xrl.us/bna6ki). “The current unrealistic deadline for implementing the complete set of Enhance Features ... does not serve the best interests of consumers,” they said. Such “enhanced features” include technical controls that let consumers manipulate the appearance of captions, they said. “While hardware manufacturers have until January 1, 2014 to implement the Enhanced Features, video programming distributors only have until the first software update after September 30, 2012 to begin making those features available in applications or plug-ins they provide to consumers,” they said. “This much more aggressive timeframe for VPDs is unrealistic, and there is no reason to expect the task assigned to VPDs is any easier to achieve than that required of device makers."
Representatives of Verizon Wireless and the SpectrumCo partners explained their arguments in favor of marketing agreements reached last year, as part of a broader deal that also includes Verizon’s buy of the cable companies’ AWS licenses, in a meeting with Dave Grimaldi and Louis Peraertz, aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Participants discussed “the spectrum transfer agreement, the agency agreements under which the cable companies and Verizon Wireless will sell each other’s service, the reseller agreement under which the cable companies may transition into reselling Verizon Wireless’ services in the future, and the agreement to establish a joint venture to develop innovative ways to integrate wireline and wireless technologies,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://xrl.us/bna6o4). Also discussed were “the public interest benefits that will result from the commercial agreements” and that “the commercial agreements will result in more consumer choice and ... facilitate, rather than harm, competition,” the filing said. SpectrumCo is a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.
CableLabs said it held a tru2way home networking interoperability event last month in which companies demonstrated sharing premium IP-based video around a home network using HTML5-based clients and cable operator-supplied user interfaces. Cox, Comcast and Time Warner Cable participated, as well as manufacturers Humax, Samsung and Sony, and DLNA component suppliers ACCESS Systems, Groupo Communications, Myriad Group and PacketVideo, CableLabs said.
Raycom will carry ABC programming on its digital multicast signal at WDAM-TV Hattiesburg, Miss., the companies said. The station is an NBC affiliate on its main signal.
"We need to free up government spectrum that can be better used for commercial mobile services,” Verizon Chief Technology Officer Tony Melone told a Telecommunications Industry Association conference during his keynote Thursday. Government and industry must find ways to work together to use the spectrum more efficiently, he said, pointing to a recent NTIA report that encourages industry and government to share spectrum. A “well functioning secondary market” for spectrum sales and transfers will allow spectrum that’s unused or underutilized to be put in the hands of people who could better serve customers, he said.