Sprint is hoping for a better second half of the year, following the June 30 shutdown of its Nextel network, but it still faces issues related to that closure “that will impact the second half of the year,” Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said Tuesday during a conference call. Sprint lost a net 2 million subscribers during Q2, which it said was mainly due to the Nextel shutdown; the carrier lost a net 560,000 subscribers during Q1. More than 1.3 million customers were still on the Nextel network at the beginning of Q2 -- 465,000 joined Sprint’s network before the Nextel shutdown, Sprint said. The carrier had 53.4 million subscribers at the end of the quarter. Sprint expects to see fewer gross subscriber additions during Q3 than during the same period last year due to deployment of its Network Vision network upgrade program, Hesse said.
Jimm Phillips
Jimm Phillips, Associate Editor, covers telecommunications policymaking in Congress for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2012 after stints at the Washington Post and the American Independent News Network. Phillips is a Maryland native who graduated from American University. You can follow him on Twitter: @JLPhillipsDC
Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Tuesday she plans to introduce legislation to address “competition issues in the patent world.” Witnesses at a subcommittee hearing Tuesday had made it evident that some standard-setting organizations (SSOs) are taking antitrust concerns related to standard-essential patents (SEPs) “seriously” by voluntarily adopting best practices and updating their intellectual property rights policies, Klobuchar said. However, it may now be time for Congress to get involved or “we need to up the role of enforcement agencies and have that complementary to the work of the SSOs,” she said. Klobuchar said she’s considering legislation that would “clarify” the standards for issuing injunctions and U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) exclusion orders related to SEPs, along with legislation to address the FTC’s role in the “patent troll” debate and its impact on competition and consumers. Klobuchar told us after the hearing that she plans to introduce that legislation in the fall.
The most important step the Senate Commerce Committee can take in improving cybersecurity in critical U.S. infrastructure is to “make sure the technical experts” at the National Institute of Standards and Technology “stay engaged and working with the private sector to develop effective cybersecurity standards,” said Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. The committee hearing where he spoke Thursday was largely a chance for Rockefeller and Ranking Member John Thune, R-S.D., to showcase the Cybersecurity Act of 2013, which they introduced the day before (http://1.usa.gov/19iJL7R).
AT&T believes its $1.2 billion bid to buy Leap Wireless will “accelerate our entry into the prepaid segment much more so than we would have been able to do by ourselves,” said AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega Tuesday on a quarterly earnings call. For Q2, the carrier added a net 551,000 postpaid subscribers and 11,000 prepaid subscribers (CD July 24 p16). AT&T began offering a new prepaid service, Aio Wireless, in early May (CD May 10 p19). The carrier believes there is “a strong growth opportunity” in prepaid, de la Vega said.
House Commerce Committee leaders will meet with key agencies’ spectrum officials by the end of this month, said David Redl, the committee majority’s chief counsel, during a Law Seminars International conference Monday. Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said last month they planned to begin meeting with officials from the FCC, NTIA and Department of Defense amid concerns that federal agencies were not making sufficient progress in determining what spectrum could be reallocated or shared for commercial uses (CD June 28 p5). The frustration among both Republican and Democratic leaders on the committee is “telling” given the partisan environment in Washington, Redl said. “We think this will be a good chance to get together and see” what the agencies’ timeline looks like, he said. Although the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology recommend to the White House last year that it shift its efforts toward spectrum sharing, House Commerce Republicans continue to prefer “clearing” federal spectrum, Redl said.
A preliminary Department of Homeland Security analysis of cybersecurity incentives found that grants to non-price-regulated industries, as well as including the cost of cybersecurity in the base rate for services in price-regulated industries, were the “most effective and efficient” incentives to encourage industry participation in the Obama administration’s efforts to improve cybersecurity in critical infrastructure -- but they also respectively carry the highest cost for the government and consumers, according to a copy of the study we obtained Friday. The document, circulated May 21 among members of the DHS Integrated Task Force’s incentives working group, was a precursor to formal incentive recommendations DHS submitted to the Office of Management and Budget June 12.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology believes President Barack Obama’s executive order on cybersecurity was “quite explicit” in emphasizing that the Cybersecurity Framework the agency is developing in consultation with critical infrastructure industries needs to be voluntary, Charles Romine, NIST director-Information Technology Laboratory, told a House Homeland Security subcommittee Thursday. Chairman Pat Meehan, R-Pa., had said he was concerned that some language in the executive order could be interpreted to give agencies the authority to impose regulations via the framework. NIST has a long history of developing frameworks that have governed industry practices in a purely voluntary way, and the agency believes that approach will be effective in developing the framework this time, Romine said. “I'm not concerned about this being a hidden way of getting regulatory authority.”
The departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Commerce and Treasury hope their reports on possible incentives to encourage the private sector to adopt voluntary cybersecurity standards will be made public by the end of the month, said Jeanette Manfra, DHS deputy director running the task force implementing President Barack Obama’s Cybersecurity Executive Order, during a Wiley Rein program Wednesday on implementation of that order. Among other things, the order tasks DHS with overseeing the private sector’s implementation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) forthcoming voluntary Cybersecurity Framework, including implementation of incentives (CD Feb 14 p1). DHS, Commerce and Treasury submitted separate reports to the Office of Management and Budget June 12 that examined the feasibility and effectiveness of possible incentives, but they have not yet been made public while they undergo an internal review (CD July 8 p9).
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday she will resign in September. Napolitano, who was one of the first cabinet officials President Obama appointed at the start of his first term in 2009, said she’s stepping down to become president of the University of California system. While Napolitano’s departure is unlikely to fundamentally alter DHS’s role in federal cybersecurity matters, it may slow progress on implementing President Obama’s cybersecurity executive order, industry experts told us.
Senate Commerce Committee leaders circulated draft cybersecurity legislation that’s meant to be a “bipartisan consensus,” a committee official told us Thursday. The bill, backed by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member John Thune, R-S.D., is expected to be marked up by the end of the month, said the official. The draft is the Senate’s first attempt at enacting cybersecurity legislation in the 113th Congress. The House passed a revised version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR-624) in April, but industry officials have said they don’t believe it will pass the Senate, and the White House has threatened a veto.