California’s Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program will continue to be funded for more than a decade if a new bill passes, a California Public Utilities Commission analysis said. The CPUC supports the legislation, said the staff report posted Thursday (http://xrl.us/bog7z4), suggesting some minor amendments. Senate Bill 129 was introduced Jan. 23 and referred to the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee Jan. 31. “This bill would extend imposition of the [Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program Administrative Committee Fund intrastate] surcharge until January 1, 2024,” the bill text said (http://xrl.us/bog7zj). “The bill would extend the [CPUC] reporting requirements until January 1, 2025.” The surcharge isn’t to exceed one-half of 1 percent of the bill total. CPUC staff support extending the sunset date for several reasons, noting that the legislation would ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and “ensure that people who are challenged using a standard telephone because of difficulty seeing, hearing, speaking, moving or remembering continue to receive health and safety impacting services connecting them by telephone to emergency, medical, business and other entities,” the analysis said. If the bill doesn’t pass, the CPUC might overfund or underfund the program, the report added.
"The highly automated nature of” the emergency alert system “was demonstrated yet again” last week when EAS warnings at several TV stations were triggered without authorization and hoax alerts about zombies were broadcast through the common alerting protocol (CAP) format, an industry lawyer said. The “downside” of EAS’s automation has been shown before by unintended alerts such as by ads that included tones that triggered the system’s activation, Scott Flick wrote Thursday on the Pillsbury law firm’s blog (http://bit.ly/VVSNCa). “While the automatic nature of EAS creates the risk of false alerts propagating rapidly, at least the false alerts up until now were somewhat self-inflicted wounds, caused by either the system being erroneously activated by a governmental mistake, or by an EAS Participant accidentally airing an activation code contained in third-party content. Because of the closed nature of the system, false activations necessarily required a mistake from a participant.” That changed as “the backbone of the EAS system was moved not long ago from the closed network model to an Internet-based system,” which triggered the fake alerts this time (CD Feb 14 p8), Flick wrote. “The benefit is that mobile and other devices connected to the Internet will be able to relay alerts to the public automatically. ... The bad news, however, is that by shifting to an Internet backbone, we have opened the public alert system to the same outside forces that plague every other aspect of the Internet.” The “good news” of the “unsettling” hoax is that it uncovered security issues “in the system that can be fixed” by resetting factory-set passwords on CAP equipment, the New Jersey Broadcasters Association wrote members Friday in its weekly newsletter (http://bit.ly/Yw1mi6).
Western Pacific Broadcast and RCN got more time from the FCC to make filings related to the broadcaster’s must-carry complaints for WACP Atlantic City, N.J., against that cable operator and others, a commission official said. The extensions include two requests by the broadcaster for three more weeks, to March 6, to reply to oppositions to the complaints from Armstrong Utilities and Blue Ridge Cable (CD Feb 15 p13), the official said. RCN, which sought until April 4 to oppose Western Pacific’s must-carry complaints against that operator, got that time, the official said. “The parties have had discussions regarding carriage by the Company of the Station’s signal in the communities at issue and are optimistic that the dispute ultimately can be resolved without further burdening the Commission,” said RCN’s motion for extension, which Western Pacific consented to, and was posted in docket 12-361 last week (http://bit.ly/Vmwdm5). WACP is demanding pay-TV carriage in the Philadelphia market.
Pennsylvania is continuing to get new area codes as existing ones near exhaustion. The move to an area code of 878 as part of an overlay plan will now be in an “activation phase,” said the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission of the add on for the 412 and 724 area codes. “The Commission has learned that the 724 [numbering plan area] is nearing exhaust and that the need to activate the 878 area code is imminent,” it said Friday (http://xrl.us/bog7pm). The state had had mandatory 10-digit dialing since July 2011 for the 412 and 724 regions and now residents will need to dial 10 numbers throughout the entirety of the 828, 412 and 724 areas, according to the PUC.
Northern Michigan is now receiving mobile Internet coverage from AT&T, the company said Friday. It’s serving Houghton, Iron and Montcalm Counties, it said (http://yhoo.it/11KLQ9E).
EchoStar seeks modification of its transmit/receive earth station license, E070266. The company plans to add its satellites at 61.5 degrees west, 110 degrees west and 119 degrees west as a point of communication, it said in its application with the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/12RjSbI).
Clarification: AT&T is supportive of a more effective signal booster registration process than the registration regime proposed (CD Feb 14 p14).
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will join the FCC and Connect2Compete to make digital literacy training available in public housing locations throughout the country, Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday. HUD will work with public housing agencies, industry and tribal groups to raise awareness about the Connect2Compete digital literacy program, Genachowski said. Assisted by Best Buy’s “Geek Squads,” the groups will initially roll out their training programs in Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, and St. Paul, Minn., an FCC spokesman said. Best Buy is among the companies that’s been working with the C2C program of cable ISPs and other companies to provide inexpensive broadband service to poor households (CD Aug 8 p13). The Internet is the platform for education, healthcare and public safety, and “it’s just not acceptable to think of this platform as anything other than a universal service” that’s available to everyone in the country, Genachowski said. “If you have connectivity but you don’t know how to use the programs and the software, it doesn’t really help,” he said. “I am in love with Connect2Compete,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “The most important predictor” of a child’s success in life is their ZIP code, he said. “That is simply wrong in the United States today,” he said. “That’s what this partnership is about."
The White House Cybersecurity Coordinator should develop an “overarching federal cybersecurity strategy” to address shortcomings in the current strategy, such as a lack of clearly defined guidelines on performance and agency accountability, the GAO said Thursday in a report: “Such a strategy would provide a more effective framework for implementing cybersecurity activities and better ensure that such activities will lead to progress in cybersecurity.” The strategy should clarify how the Office of Management and Budget will oversee agencies’ implementation of requirements for effective risk management, as well as establish a “roadmap” to make improvements to cybersecurity challenge areas “where previous recommendations have not been fully addressed,” GAO said. Congress should also consider legislation that would more clearly define agency roles and responsibilities for implementing federal cybersecurity programs and protecting critical cyber assets, GAO said. The White House has said it doesn’t believe “another strategy document” would be beneficial, but GAO said such a document “that includes milestones and performance measures, cost and resources, roles and responsibilities, and linkage with other key strategy documents would provide a more effective framework for implementing cybersecurity activities” (http://xrl.us/bogzew). President Barack Obama this week signed a cybersecurity executive order (CD Feb 14 p1).
Liberty Global Q4 sales increased 7 percent to $2.7 billion from the year-ago quarter, the company said. Subscriber growth for its TV products helped results, it said. The company reported a net loss of $322.6 million, down 23 percent from its loss a year earlier.