Cyberattacks are continuing to increase significantly and “evolve in complexity,” NATO said after a meeting in Chicago Sunday of heads of state in the North Atlantic Council, the most senior political governing body of the organization. The critical elements of the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability-Full Operational Capability, including protection of most websites and users, will be in place by the end of 2012, it said. “We have committed to provide the resources and complete the necessary reforms to bring all NATO bodies under centralized cyber protection,” a summit declaration said. To address cybersecurity threats, NATO will work with partner nations on a “case-by-case” basis and with international organizations to “increase concrete cooperation."
The Intelsat-19 satellite will be launched May 31 by Sea Launch vessels. The satellite “will provide service to high-growth markets around the Pacific rim,” including Australia and Southeast Asia, from its orbital location of 166 degrees east, Sea Launch said.
USTelecom withdrew Arizona from its petition for waiver of various sections of the FCC’s rules regarding eligible telecom carrier compliance obligations for new Lifeline subscribers, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bm8r92). After a conversation with FCC Wireline Bureau officials, USTelecom determined that because the Arizona Department of Economic Security handles determinations of Lifeline eligibility under contract with one ETC, “the ETC has constructive receipt of such certifications” sufficient to satisfy the rules, USTelecom said. Last week the association withdrew New York, Kansas, Tennessee and New Jersey (CD May 18 p11).
Working with ISPs and the Obama administration, Massachusetts is “expanding Internet service to every corner of our commonwealth,” Gov. Deval Patrick said at the opening of the Cable Show Monday in Boston. The Internet Essentials program from cable operators, which sells inexpensive broadband to the poor, is helping Massachusetts’ youth get online, he said. The industry has “an important role” in the state’s growth, the Democrat said.
NTIA told the FCC in a filing last week it believes spectrum legislation that became law in February requires the FCC to terminate the licenses of the government groups that want to build out early networks in the 700 MHz band and dismiss pending waiver applications. More than three dozen are pending. “Congress, well aware of the barriers to interoperability that resulted from the ‘network of networks’ concept embodied in legacy land mobile radio systems, chose to invest $7 billion and create FirstNet to design, build, and operate ‘a nationwide, interoperable public safety broadband network’ that is ‘based on a single, national network architecture,'” NTIA said (http://xrl.us/bm8r6n). “Guaranteeing interoperability for public safety broadband requires a nationwide network based on a single national design.” The legislation “made no provision” for the various systems being built under a waiver, the filing noted. NTIA was given a lead role in overseeing the new FirstNet in the spectrum legislation.
New FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and staff were briefed on spectrum sharing arrangements between aeronautical telemetry and secondary medical body area networks (MBANs), by GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare and others. Also attending the meeting were representatives of the Aerospace & Flight Test Coordinating Council and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering of the American Hospital Association. “The first part of the discussion focused on how the spectrum currently is used on a primary basis for aeronautical telemetry to test aircraft,” said a filing at the commission by the groups’ lawyers (http://xrl.us/bm8rz6). “The details of the spectrum sharing arrangement negotiated by the parties were discussed in general terms. It was noted that we have been advised that the joint proposal negotiated by the parties and submitted to the Commission has been revised in a number of respects, but that the revisions were undertaken with an eye toward preserving the parties’ intent as reflected in the joint proposal.” The second part of the presentation focused on “the functions and advantages of the envisioned MBAN systems,” the filing said. “Implementation of MBANs is expected to help speed diagnosis, allow earlier intervention, solicit faster response, and ultimately improve patient care and reduce healthcare costs."
The European Commission should cut wholesale access charges and stop dominant players from discriminating against rivals, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association said Monday at its conference on ultra-fast broadband policy and practice. Despite efforts to install fiber infrastructure for high-speed broadband, most competitors “have struggled to make a return and have put future investment plans on hold” as high fees levied to rent incumbents’ legacy copper infrastructure drain their reserves, ECTA said in a statement it stressed reflected only the views of its alternative-operator members, not those with incumbent interests. Dominant companies want regulated charges for access to their copper networks to stay the same or increase to fund investments in high-speed fiber lines, ECTA said. But challengers believe most incumbents aren’t building out fiber networks all the way to the household, and are instead making partial vDSL network upgrades which don’t cost as much and could undermine competition by limiting new entrants’ ability to unbundle the access network, it said. “It is time the copper gravy train ended,” said ECTA Chairman Tom Ruhan. Incumbents that don’t invest in fiber should be held to account, he said. Europe’s telecom liberalization experiment is close to failing because regulations don’t support the business case for even leading operators, he said. If current trends continue, “we may be back to monopolies and duopolies for broadband services” in five years, he said. Cable operators, meanwhile, urged the EC not to base policy on a single network. There are no limits to the positive outcomes delivered by infrastructure-based competition, said Cable Europe. A policy that advances only one single network misses the opportunity to deliver the best results for end-users, and fails to consider “the questionable strategy of relying on one single network in today’s infrastructure-centric society,” it said. Such a policy also raises security and resilience concerns and is an economic risk because it relies on a single investment and choice of technology, it said. Also at the ECTA conference, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said year-old EC powers to perform in-depth investigations of competition decisions of national telecom regulators have created more consistency for operators and have often resolved problems without the need for heavier-handed enforcement. The “Article 7a” procedure has resulted in more cases and outcomes more connected to goals, she said. With the new powers, the EC is no longer a “mere commentator” but can take a more proactive role in determining how its concerns can be addressed, she said. It can also exercise its powers more flexibly than under the earlier system, she said.
The E-rate program funding cap for funding year 2012 is about $2.34 billion, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Friday (http://xrl.us/bm8i83). This represents a 2.1 percent inflation-adjusted increase from 2011, the bureau said. The commission began indexing the annual funding cap to inflation in 2010 to allow the E-rate program to “keep pace with the changing telecommunications needs of schools and libraries,” the commission said.
The FCC seeks to identify additional regulations ripe for retrospective analysis, the agency said in its final plan for retrospective analysis of existing rules, released Friday. The commission seeks to review Section 11 of the Communications Act, the regulatory flexibility rules, broadcast ownership rules, paperwork reduction and forbearance request rules, it said. Other retrospective reviews are related to issues like USF, broadcast TV spectrum, the emergency alert system, digital encryption, outage reporting requirements, wireless E-911 location accuracy and 700 MHz interoperability. The FCC also seeks to identify rules that may have a disproportionate or undue impact on certain entities, including regulations involving foreign ownership, pole attachment and antenna structures. The agency would also consider whether a regulation has been subject to frequent requests for waivers or been identified as needing revision. Other factors the FCC may consider include the need to eliminate overlapping or duplicative regulations, the need to eliminate conflicts or inconsistencies with other rules and the need to simplify or clarify regulatory language. Commissioner Ajit Pai said that in light of the importance of the analysis, the 2012 biennial review should take the form of commission-level action rather than bureau-level recommendations. Section 11 of the Communications Act requires the commission to review every two years all regulations that apply to the operations or activities of service providers and determine whether those regulations are “no longer necessary in the public interest as the result of meaningful economic competition between providers of such service,” he said. Following the review, the agency is then required “to repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer necessary in the public interest,” he said. “Releasing the Final Plan for Retrospective Reform is a result of the hard work of our staff, and affirms the agency’s extensive efforts to eliminate unnecessary regulations,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said. “The FCC continues to make strong progress toward our goal of being a model of excellence in government."
AT&T supports the North American Numbering Council’s proposed modified technical requirements for solicitation of a new pooling administrator’s contract. But it wants there to be a discussion “on the practicality and wisdom of some day combining the contracts” of that administrator and the North American numbering plan administrator, to allow one administrator to perform both functions, the telco said in comments posted Friday in FCC docket 99-200 (http://xrl.us/bm8i6z). Neustar, the national thousands block pooling administrator, addressed language in the technical requirements it believed are “appropriate for addition, clarification, or deletion” (http://xrl.us/bm8i7d). Neustar asked the commission to eliminate the manual pooling requirements for pool replenishment in Section 2.18 of a technical document on pool replenishment “because that process has been automated since 2008."