FCC officials played a hand behind the scenes in promoting an agreement between AT&T and Sirius XM on the future of the Wireless Communications Services band (CD June 19 p1), agency officials confirmed Tuesday. The deal could be a game changer for AT&T on several levels, industry observers said. The carrier’s proposal to buy T-Mobile and its AWS and other spectrum fell flat last year. With few options on the immediate horizon, WCS could help AT&T meet its short-term needs. AT&T filed an ex parte on a meeting with FCC officials March 29, where they discussed the WCS band with Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan, Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp and others (http://xrl.us/bnb9qo). Sirius also reported on discussions with the agency in the same time frame (http://xrl.us/bnb9q4).
Iridium plans to launch a service that would allow air traffic agencies and air navigation service providers to track aircraft anywhere in the world, including over oceans and remote regions. Through Aireon, a joint venture between Iridium and NAV Canada, an air traffic management company, the service will deliver revolutionary surveillance capability to air navigation service providers and their commercial airline customers, said Iridium CEO Matthew Desch Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington. Iridium and its partners are developing a capability that will “finally give airline and air traffic control agencies a revolutionary tool that can help eliminate the things that become the biggest headaches when we fly,” he said.
Members of the House Judiciary Internet Subcommittee reaffirmed their support for baseline privacy guidelines for mobile and Web services that collect, use and sell personal information. The call at a hearing Tuesday comes as NTIA prepares for its first meeting with multi-stakeholder representatives to develop legally enforceable privacy codes of conduct. (See separate report in this issue.) Industry representatives from eBay, TRUSTe and mobile application developers said they too supported basic federal privacy guidelines to bolster the industry’s self-regulatory privacy regime.
Digital and mobile technology will play an increasingly significant role in campaign ads for the 2012 presidential campaign and future races, said panelists at the Broadband Breakfast Club Tuesday. TV ads remain the primary choice of campaigns, according to Rob Saliterman, senior account executive of elections and issues advocacy for Google. But more ads in both the Romney and Obama campaigns are shifting to other media like email, mobile devices, Facebook, Twitter, Google advertising and even Pinterest, the panelists said.
GENEVA -- Revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) later this year should maintain a high-level focus on boosting investment and innovation, a group of 45 operators in Africa, the Middle East and Asia told an ITU Council working group in a submission to a meeting this week on conference preparations. Submissions variously called for boosting confidence and security in using networks, provisions to address cybersecurity, calling line identification, the availability of routing information, international Internet connectivity, naming and numbering, taxation of gear and services, and proposals to address fraud and cybercrime, which have raised past opposition. The submissions were made to a June 20-22 ITU Council meeting preparing for a December world conference, but they aren’t official conference proposals.
BRUSSELS -- Europe must immediately start working on a policy for use of the 700 MHz band or risk isolation, said Radio Spectrum Policy Group Chairman Roberto Viola at a Forum Europe spectrum management conference Tuesday. The band was tentatively allocated at WRC-12 for global use for mobile broadband, and the question now is whether Europe can afford to lag behind in the debate, he said. Although the band in Europe is occupied by terrestrial broadcasters, it can’t be ignored, nor can the future of broadcasting, he said.
The “glaring defect” in the FCC’s pricing flexibility rules is that they measure competition for end office services in order de-regulate transmission services, the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, a group of enterprise purchasers of telecom services, told aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Robert McDowell and Jessica Rosenworcel last week. In other words, Ad Hoc said, “they take the cow’s temperature to see whether the pig is sick” (http://xrl.us/bnb5tp). Ad Hoc was just one of several groups showering commission staff with metaphors and academic papers to try to persuade them on the state of competition in the special access marketplace.
AT&T and Sirius XM filed a joint proposal at the FCC on an agreement the two companies reached on shared use of the 2.3 GHz band for the Wireless Communications Service and the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service. The band received a prominent mention in the National Broadband Plan for reallocation for wireless broadband.
The U.S. government must accelerate the release of spectrum through federal sharing scenarios and faster FCC approval of commercial spectrum deals, panelists said Monday at an event hosted by the American Consumer Institute. The FCC’s slow consideration of commercial deals like the proposed Verizon Wireless purchase AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox, harms consumers and retards innovation, they said.
A deal between the Mobile Content Venture (MCV) and Elgato could be the basis on which future mobile-DTV deals with distributors are modeled, MCV executives said. The MCV’s Dyle Mobile DTV brand will support Elgato’s EyeTV iOS device and app, they said Monday. The MCV, a joint venture among Fox, NBC and a group of top station groups, said it hopes to let its distributor partners differentiate themselves through applications that use MCV content. The Elgato deal “could point the way for potential distribution partners down the road,” said Erik Moreno, senior vice president-corporate development at Fox Network Group and a co-general manager at the MCV.