Policy and proposed legislation to boost European network and information security were unveiled Thursday by EU officials. At the heart of the policy is the protection of fundamental rights on the Internet, said EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton at a press briefing. The EU is determined to promote and defend its values online but also believes there should be norms of behavior among countries to protect against cyberattacks, she said. Hewlett-Packard and European telecom network operators cheered the initiative, but some of the proposals drew criticism from privacy advocates, an IT security firm and high-tech industries.

The NTCA and OPASTCO, the two major associations representing rural wireline carriers, are combining effective March 1, both groups said Wednesday. Merger talks were under way for some time, said executives of other associations. The new group will be called “NTCA, The Rural Broadband Association.” John Rose, longtime OPATSCO president, is retiring at the end of February, an OPASTCO spokeswoman said.

Measurement Lab is pulling out of the FCC’s mobile broadband measurement program, citing irreconcilable differences on how best to collect data in the mobile space. “We don’t feel that this technology, and that the measurement, is ready at this point to produce the kind of research-quality data that we need to support our program,” Meredith Whittaker of Google Research told a group of industry, governmental and academic participants at a meeting Wednesday. M-Lab will have to “back out of the mobile measurement process at this stage, in this form,” she said. M-Lab will still be involved in the FCC’s wireline testing program. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

Cisco forecast major increases in mobile data traffic through 2017. Faster than previously projected increases in 4G adoption and Wi-Fi offloading bear watching, experts told us. Mobile data traffic will reach 134 exabytes per year -- 11.2 exabytes per month -- by the end of 2017, Cisco said Tuesday in a report. That would be 134 times the total Internet Protocol traffic generated in 2000. It would also be a gain from 2012, when consumers’ global mobile data traffic rose by 70 percent, Cisco said. Traffic reached 885 petabytes per month by the end of 2012 -- up from 520 petabytes per month at the end of 2011, said the maker of equipment for telecom firms to handle data. The monthly mobile data traffic in 2012 was nearly 12 times the total monthly Internet traffic generated in 2000 -- 75 petabytes per month, Cisco said. Global traffic will continue to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66 percent through 2017, Cisco said. North America will see growth slightly below the global average -- at a 56 percent CAGR -- to 2 exabytes per month in 2017, Cisco said (http://xrl.us/bigzmr).

For the commercial space and aviation sectors to move forward in next-generation technology and missions, it’s critical for government and commercial entities to work together, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., vice chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. It’s critical that “we do not create regulations in the absence of the data that we need to know if those regulations are going to be effective,” he said Wednesday at the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington. “It’s critical that we don’t limit the activities of these private sector companies without clear and compelling reasons to do so,” he said. But “it’s just as critical that the FAA and these companies communicate in very clear ways about safety, design, about the development within the industry and about the future,” he said.

National Emergency Number Association CEO Brian Fontes encouraged the FCC to keep pressing public safety, carriers and others to move to next-generation 911. Fontes was speaking on the fourth Superstorm Sandy panel Tuesday. The panel on “new ideas” in communications closed out a day of hearings on Sandy (CD Feb 6 p1).

The U.S. is engaged in a cyberwar “and we are losing,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., during a speech at the NARUC conference in Washington Wednesday. He said it was “shameful” that Congress failed to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and said it’s “absolutely critical” that Congress act this year: “We are absolutely under siege and we are fooling ourselves if we think we don’t have a problem.” White House Senior Director for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment threw cold water on Roger’s cybersecurity approach during a subsequent speech at the event and said baseline industry cybersecurity standards are required to stop most of the cyberattacks.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Maryland lawmakers questioned potential inconsistencies between the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule and HB-316, a state bill that would extend the rule’s protections to Maryland children. The bill was introduced by Chairman Dereck Davis, a Democrat, of the House of Delegates Committee on Economic Matters, which held a Wednesday hearing on the legislation. It and its companion bill in the state Senate, SB-374, are supported by Doug Gansler, the state’s Attorney General, who testified that he suggested changes to the bill based on feedback from opponents. The bill would make COPPA violations illegal under state law and would require that “advertising on the Internet targeted to children under the age of 13 be clearly labeled as advertising,” Davis said.

Preparation for Superstorm Sandy’s landfall was key to New York-area broadcasters’ efforts to disseminate news and information to the public, said executives from Clear Channel Media and WABC during the FCC’s second hearing Tuesday on the storm’s communications impact. Others testified how Google and Twitter helped to fill the void left by outages in the area’s wireless and wireline communications networks.

A order on circulation at the FCC grants several unopposed items in USTelecom’s request for forbearance of several “outdated” legacy telecommunications regulations, FCC officials told us Tuesday. The Wireline Bureau will put out an order in the next day or two granting an additional 90 days to decide on the other items in USTelecom’s petition, the officials said. In its 73-page petition, USTelecom sought relief on an industry-wide basis from more than 150 rules, some of which the commission had already identified as unnecessary in its Biennial Review report (CD Feb 17p14).