The European Commission wants feedback on draft guidelines for public funding of broadband networks. The key question is how to adapt 2009 guidelines to meet the digital agenda, it said Friday. The EC’s proposed changes (http://xrl.us/bm92zf) seek to ensure that state aid policy in the broadband sector focuses on providing well-designed aid targeted at market failures and objectives of common European interests, and at making faster decisions, it said. The proposal makes several substantive changes to the 2009 document, the EC said. It: (1) Aligns the guidelines to digital agenda objectives by proposing more flexibility for granting public support to ultra-fast networks in areas where slower, interim technological solutions are already available, while requiring genuine added value in terms of additional services. (2) Fine-tunes the effective wholesale access obligations with regard to next-generation access networks and extends it to passive infrastructure such as ducts and street cabinets. The draft also proposes to clarify and strengthen the position of national telecom regulators, particularly in the areas of next-generation access and ultra-fast networks. It also calls for EU governments to create a central webpage where all information on planned, ongoing or implemented publicly-funded broadband projects is posted, the EC said. Comments are due Sept. 3. Cable Europe urged caution on the use of European public funds, saying they should be spent “where citizens are not being served by connectivity at all.” Any prospective allocation of public money should be subject to a rigorous assessment of the particular circumstances, to avoid hampering private investment and causing market distortions, it said. The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association agreed, saying public financing for buildout of high-speed broadband networks should be limited to those areas “where no private investment is foreseen."
The “ITU” mentioned in a Thursday news release on the Flame virus (CD June 1 p18) consists of advisers to the secretary-general who did not contribute to any of the ITU-T cybersecurity work, said Tony Rutkowski, a U.S. executive who has headed the ITU-T’s cybersecurity standards group for more than three years. Cybersecurity operations inherently involve diverse trust communities constantly collaborating, he said. “An intergovernmental organization such as the ITU has no real role to play, notwithstanding the secretary-general’s occasional press releases.” The ITU-T has for the past three years been “highly successful” in pulling together the world’s principal cybersecurity experts and bodies to assemble the specifications for techniques and activities to enhance trust and mitigate vulnerabilities inherent in the complex networked devices and services, he said. These specifications are advancing in the Internet Engineering Task Force, in collaboration with ITU-T, and specifically include the most advanced current techniques for exchanging malware information and remediations, he said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on a proposal by Missouri for a waiver to provide public safety communications at higher power levels than previously approved using VHF public coast (VPC) frequencies. Motorola Solutions filed the request on the state’s part, the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bm9ytq). The state wants to operate at 50 watts transmitter power output (TPO) and 45 watts effective radiated power (ERP). FCC rules generally restrict mobile units in the spectrum to power levels of 25 watts TPO and 18 watts ERP. “Motorola believes that the proposed operations at a higher TPO will not cause interference to maritime operations or adversely affect priority to maritime communications provided by licensees on the channels and in the geographic areas not being acquired by the State,” the bureau said. Comments are due July 2, replies July 17.
The top 17 cable operators and telcos added 1.3 million new broadband subscribers in Q1, Leichtman Research Group said. Among them, the top providers have almost 80 million subscribers, with cable operators claiming 45.3 million and phone companies 34.6 million, it said. About 75 percent of the new broadband subscribers signed up with cable companies, leaving cable with a 57 percent share of the overall market and 10.7 million more broadband subscribers than the top phone companies, it said. But the maturity of the broadband market and seasonal subscriber trends will probably lead to fewer net broadband additions in Q2 2012 compared to 2011, said Bruce Leichtman.
Arris said Germany’s Kabel Deutschland conducted successful field tests of “4.7 Gbits/s” broadband speeds using Arris equipment. “Using this technology, a feature-length movie could theoretically be downloaded in 8 seconds -- at speeds faster than a standard laptop or modem can even process,” said KD Chief Technology Officer Lorenz Glatz. “This demonstrates that today’s hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) plant has the capacity to deliver a full IP video load, and that the entire HFC plant can be converted into one or more enormous pipes to meet future consumer bandwidth demands using current technology and networks,” said Tom Cloonan, chief technology officer of Arris Network Solutions.
Verizon devotes “more than half of its network capital budget to ... multiple techniques to increase spectrum capacity,” a representative of the company said in a meeting at the FCC to discuss the carrier’s deals to buy AWS spectrum from four cable operators. The meeting was attended by Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan and FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, both of whom are leaving. Agency officials say their review of the AWS deals is reaching its end stages, though some work remains. Verizon “accounts for these techniques” aimed at increasing spectrum efficiency “in its spectrum need projections,” the carrier said in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm9yq9) on the meeting. “These techniques are not sufficient to address growing capacity constraints given the extraordinary increase in customers’ demand for LTE,” it said. “For example, ... Verizon plans to redeploy PCS spectrum for LTE as soon as it is possible to do, but the PCS spectrum cannot accommodate the dramatic growth in customer LTE demand and is instead needed to further supplement the AWS spectrum being acquired."
The recent discovery of the highly complex flame malware by Kaspersky Lab reinforces the need for a coordinated response and cooperation between governments and industry to tackle the global nature of cybersecurity threats, the ITU said in a news release. The flame virus was discovered by Kaspersky Lab experts “following a technical analysis requested by the ITU into an unknown piece of malware which was deleting sensitive information,” it said. “Flame is a prime example of why governments and industry must work together to tackle cybersecurity at the global level,” said Hamadoun Toure, the ITU secretary-general. ITU Telecom World in October is a “crucial” platform for the “full and proper discussions” needed to best tackle this issue,” said Kaspersky Lab chief Eugene Kaspersky.
The Critical Messaging Association, representing the paging industry, called on the FCC in a filing to keep the regulatory fee for Commercial Mobile Radio Service messaging services at the existing 8 cents per unit level. “As wireless services have evolved over approximately the last decade, the critical messaging industry has increasingly concentrated on serving the specialized, emergency alerting needs of health care providers, first and second responders, and other customers employing critical, time-sensitive messages using a point-to-point protocol that cannot be duplicated by broadband networks,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bm9yn2).
The first Connect2Compete pilot program is being launched in San Diego County, Calif., offering 39,000 families there “high-speed Internet service and high-powered computers at dramatically discounted prices,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday at the county’s Horace Mann Middle School. C2C is backed by 14 cable operators, including Comcast, whose Internet Essentials service for the poor was introduced by the company after it was made an FCC condition of buying control of NBCUniversal last year (CD Feb 14 p10). Genachowski’s remarks touched on two of his favorite themes, broadband and public-private partnerships. “Broadband can be the great equalizer -- giving every American with an Internet connection access to a world of new opportunities that might previously have been beyond their reach,” he said. “But roughly 100 million Americans are being bypassed by the broadband revolution. About 68 percent of Americans are connected at home. Compare that to South Korea and Singapore where adoption rates top 90 percent.” Those eligible for the pilot program can get broadband at $9.95 per month, plus tax and receive a laptop or desktop computer with LCD monitor for $150 plus tax.
CenturyLink filed its Special Access Metrics Report for 2012 Q1 on Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm9ygf). The report provides the “New Installation Trouble Report Rate” metric, broken down by non-affiliates and RBOC affiliates.