State chief information officers want to make sure there are no “unfunded mandates” for states in the cybersecurity measures being considered in Congress, said Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). His group hasn’t taken an “official stand” on the measures being considered in the Senate, he said.

Two years into its digital agenda program the EU has reached about a third of its goals, but progress remains mixed and regulatory divergences wide, the European Commission said Monday. There’s too much complacency, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Europeans are hungry for digital technologies, but they're being held back by EU governments and industry, she said. There have been positive developments, such as nearly ubiquitous broadband across Europe, and booming mobile broadband take-up, the EC said. But the results so far spark worries that Europe won’t meet its 2015 goals and will fall behind competitors, Constantijn van Oranje, a member of Kroes’ cabinet, said at a press briefing.

As the telecom industry transitions to Internet Protocol, traditional regulatory approaches will have to be totally rexamined, and government should enact policies that encourage investment in new broadband infrastructure, speakers said Friday at a Wiley Rein workshop on the “IP Transition as Grand Challenge.” Industry stakeholders discussed strategies for the transition away from the TDM, as some wondered what to do about what they called “corrupt” state public utility commissions that want to apply legacy regulations to a world of new technologies.

SEATTLE -- As federal and state regulators harp on privacy red flags at tech companies big and small, Seattle mobile location startup Glympse is confident in its strategy, founder and CEO Bryan Trussel told a TechCafe gathering Friday. “Initially we were very concerned” that a service that lets users share their real-time location with anybody would draw intense regulatory scrutiny, but the company decided that “we're actually the solution to that problem,” said the Microsoft and Xbox Live veteran. Having crossed 3 million users over Memorial Day and recently announced an in-car dash partnership with Mercedes-Benz, Glympse’s next phase is focused on partnerships with carriers and OEMs, he said.

STOCKHOLM -- “The multi-stakeholder self-regulating system of Internet governance … has served the system and the world exceedingly well,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt Friday at the European Dialogue (EuroDIG) conference. Bildt pointed to the success of the Internet and the parts that organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) played.

The FCC shouldn’t grant waivers of its accessibility rules for advanced communications services (ACS) such as VoIP and videoconferencing on videogame consoles and TV sets and digital video players, said the Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, National Association for the Deaf and other accessibility advocates. The groups were expected to oppose separate petitions from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the CEA for a limited waiver of certain accessibility rules (CD March 27 p4). The NCTA and Panasonic wrote the commission in support of CEA’s waiver request and the Voice on the Net Coalition said it supported the ESA’s request.

The FCC needs to become “more nimble” in “keeping pace with the marketplace and technological innovation,” new Commissioner Ajit Pai told the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee Friday. The FCC’s other new Commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, told the CAC consumer issues loom large for her.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless said there is widespread agreement that the FCC should change how the cellular service is licensed -- from a site-based to a geographically based regime. The FCC sought comment in February (CD Feb 16 p12) in a notice of proposed rulemaking, and reply comments were due last week.

The FCC special access order on circulation “lays out a path” for data collection, but the request will appear in a subsequent order, Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett said. The order doesn’t roll back existing grants of pricing flexibility, she told a conference on the transition to an Internet Protocol-based telecom framework. AT&T’s top lobbyist also discussed the transition to an all-IP network at the conference, and blogged (http://xrl.us/bnbvrn) about it. (See story below.) The draft puts new grants on hold while the commission “sets out a path to reform” legacy rules that “increasingly appear ill-suited to the competitive landscape that exists for today,” Gillett said Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The LTE industry’s first large patent pool will be announced in the late summer or early fall, said Roger Ross, the president of the group, Via Licensing. More than 20 patent holders, including big names, have signed on, said Ross and Joe Alfred, the director of patent licensing and sales at AT&T, a member of the pool. Neither man would identify other members or discuss the number of patents involved or the royalty rates that the pool will ask for licenses.