BRUSSELS -- Revision of International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) should be a “catalyst for future development,” Malcolm Johnson, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), told a workshop on talks to revise the treaty later this year. Most of the proposals on compensation for terminating traffic have encountered “significant skepticism” or “outright opposition,” another ITU official said. The meeting’s aim was to raise the importance of the conference in the minds of industry, Johnson said.

Verizon Communications’ Q1 profit was up 19.7 percent year-over-year to $3.9 billion. The growth was helped by gains in wireless and broadband services, Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said during a conference call Thursday. Though FiOS is a bright spot, the wireline unit continued to decline. The company will stop selling DSL services in areas where its FiOS service is available, Shammo said.

BRUSSELS -- Talks on revising the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) should focus on the high-level principles needed to spur investment and boost network capacity to meet demands in the coming decades, executives told a workshop on talks to revise the ITU treaty later this year. Internet governance issues are on the front line, said an executive representing 45 operators in 25 countries.

The FTC will bear down during the next six months on privacy disclosures for mobile applications, particularly for child users, an official said Thursday. Commission aides will study how companies have responded to a critical survey called “Mobile Apps for Kids,” released in February, and decide whether violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act have been committed, said Patricia Poss, the chief of the Consumer Protection Bureau’s Mobile Technology Unit.

LONDON -- It’s too soon to regulate the Internet, particularly in the area of net neutrality, speakers from telcos, Facebook and Skype said Thursday at the IIR telecom regulation forum. The Internet is only 20 years old, an adolescent “full of potential but also full of doubts,” said Jean-Jacques Sahel, Skype government and regulatory affairs director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The net neutrality debate, which shows no signs of abating, is part of a much larger discussion about commercial models in the Internet and telecom sectors, said Telefonica Group Regulatory Policy Director Robert Murik. It’s too early to regulate because no one knows where this is going, he said.

Outgoing voice traffic jumped 60-fold in the hours after the worst earthquake in Japan’s history, and NTT East officials had to scramble to implement traffic restrictions and ensure priority communication could go through, an NTT delegation told attendees at an NTCA event Wednesday in Washington. The real damage came not from the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake, but from the tsunami it caused. The tsunami reached as high as 50 feet, spread up to four miles inland, and covered 400 miles of coast -- the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston. NTT East lost 65,000 poles, 1,900 miles of conduits, 5,000 miles of cables and 12 of its central offices were completely destroyed when the waves became higher than the offices’ flood barriers. That’s according to Takashi Ebihara, director of network service management in the core network center, who was working in the network operations center when the quake hit. “The situation was very chaotic,” he said. “Even our seasoned operators couldn’t find out what was going on in the network."

Verizon Wireless said it will sell part of the 700 MHz spectrum it owns if the FCC approves the carrier’s buy of advanced wireless service (AWS) licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox. Verizon said Wednesday that if the deals are approved it will offer for sale all of the 700 MHz A and B block licenses it bought in the 2008 auction of former TV spectrum. FCC officials have raised concerns about whether Verizon’s purchase of the AWS licenses would give the company too dominant of spectrum position versus its competitors (CD March 30 p1).

The departments of Defense and State released a final report to Congress Wednesday reassessing export controls on satellites and related technologies. It recommends freeing some types of satellites and their components from application of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) rules. The report (http://xrl.us/bm4esv) would allow “industry to compete in the global market,” including satellite exports, said Greg Schulte, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy. Shifting some items from the U.S. munitions list (USML) to the Commerce Control List (CCL) would allow government “to focus our controls and enforcement on technologies and the capabilities that are truly sensitive to our national security,” he said at the National Space Symposium in Colorado.

Chairman Charles Ergen said Dish Network took the right steps to move toward building out terrestrial service. “We create competition” and “we have credibility,” he said Tuesday at a Silicon Flatirons event at the University of Colorado. “There’s precedent for companies to be able to use their satellite spectrum terrestrially.” Dish did its homework and learned that there was interference and “we went after frequencies that are pretty clean,” he said.

A House panel urged more efficient use of spectrum to prevent a “crunch” caused by accelerating consumer demand. In a hearing Wednesday afternoon by the House Science Subcommittee on Technology Chairman Ben Quayle, R-Ariz., urged continued research and development, as well as a critical review of regulations. But witnesses for CTIA and Cisco said improving efficiency is no substitute for reallocating government spectrum.