Five of the six top U.S. cable operators recently signed Wi-Fi roaming pacts to let their broadband subscribers tap into more than 50,000 wireless hotspots across the nation, particularly in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Six weeks later, they're trying to figure out how best to operate the new wireless broadband networks and make some money from them. Executives from the five large cable providers -- Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision and Bright House Networks -- said they're grappling with such key issues as locating the Wi-Fi access points, creating minimum service standards and determining the business model for the roaming service.
Rep. Howard Berman’s role as Hollywood’s champion on copyright enforcement online and elsewhere is serving him well in an uphill fight to keep his seat in a high-profile runoff against a fellow incumbent California Democrat, interviews with a wide range of players show. Opponent Brad Sherman has a similar record on intellectual property. But Berman has a huge advantage in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry and also leads with high tech.
CAMBRIDGE, U.K. -- Traditional regulation “will struggle to cope” with the privacy issues raised by mobile phone applications, a Vodafone official said Tuesday at a Privacy Laws & Business conference. Applications are the consequences of an ecosystem that includes dependent and independent players, and whose barriers to entry are incredibly low, said Stephen Deadman, group privacy officer and head of legal for Vodafone Group UK. Many application developers and platforms are based far away from Europe, so any data protection solution requires an understanding of the structures and dynamics of the system, he said. He urged collaboration among storefronts, platforms, designers, and carriers.
The FCC’s December 2010 net neutrality order suffers from the same defects as the Comcast order rejected by the same court and should also be vacated, Verizon and MetroPCS said in a joint filing at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which is hearing the appeal. The FCC approved the order by a 3-2 vote, with the two FCC Republicans, Robert McDowell and then-Commissioner Meredith Baker, warning it would not hold up on appeal (CD Dec 22/10 p1).
Communications carriers serving the broad area struck by a “derecho” Friday experienced widespread problems in its aftermath. The storm struck a large area, and millions of people lost power during the derecho that had damage-causing winds exceeding 60 miles per hour. In one of the more potentially troubling developments for the FCC, officials in Fairfax and Prince Williams counties in Virginia reported some in the area experienced problems calling 911. The commission is probing the 911 outages.
Bring on the relay provider complaints. Monday marked the deadline for states and providers of interstate telecom relay services (TRS) to file a year’s worth of consumer gripes with the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau from June 1, 2011, to May 31, 2012. TRS allows people with hearing or speech disabilities to make calls via a text telephone or other device. The FCC describes a two-fold reason for the demand. The complaint logs “are intended to provide an early warning to the Commission of possible service quality issues,” and the process “also allows the Commission to determine whether a state or interstate TRS provider has appropriately addressed consumer complaints, and to spot national trends that may lend themselves to coordinated solutions,” the commission said in a recent reminder about the deadline. The complaints, which address a variety of technical and customer service problems, come in just as the FCC has shifted the rules for IP relay due to allegations of fraud from earlier this year.
A coalition of groups and companies led by Free Press said a set of principles that they put out Monday for an “free and open Internet” is nonpartisan and isn’t aimed specifically at the public or private sector. The coalition was responding to criticism from free-market groups including TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the International Center for Law & Economics that the principles blur “the distinction between political and civil society while endorsing certain business models over others.” Both the Free Press and TechFreedom groups came out with their own “Declarations of Internet Freedom” principles.
When the Copyright Royalty Board gets comments from broadcasters on royalty rates for performance and musical compositions and graphic and other works used by PBS and NPR affiliates, some smaller nonprofit stations may seek a cheaper tier, industry officials predicted. The board also received comments on a similar proposal for the period of January 2013 through December 2017 for other noncommercial educational stations (NCEs). Some small NCEs said adopting reasonable rates is critical to their operations. Comments on the NPR and PBS proceeding are due July 26, said a notice in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bnc4zt).
An interconnection problem in Mountain View, Calif., caused six days’ worth of broadband data to be compromised, leading the FCC to throw out data for the second month in a row, the commission reported Thursday. In April the commission restarted a month of data collection because of “anomalies” in the network affecting some of the measurement locations in March (CD May 7 p8). Stakeholders we contacted aren’t worried about the accuracy of the data for the remainder of April, but some are concerned about the reliability of the collection platform, given the repeated performance issues.
While there is growing concern in Washington and elsewhere over the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), scheduled to meet in Dubai in December, and a move to regulate the Internet, State Department Official Richard Beaird said it’s too early to push the panic button. Beaird, senior deputy U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy, said compromise is likely. But other speakers laid out their concerns during a FCBA seminar