Dish Network met its initial sales targets on the Hopper receiver/DVR, prompting manufacturer EchoStar to court other potential customers, EchoStar Chief Financial Officer Kenneth Carroll said on an earnings call Monday.

The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials has three primary concerns when local officials shut down wireless service, as Bay Area Rapid Transit officials did Aug. 11 at a downtown San Francisco subway station. Comments were due Monday to the FCC on a March 1 public notice from the Public Safety Bureau on wireless service interruptions imposed by officials with an eye on protecting public safety. “APCO’s principal concern is that any such disruption that may be appropriate under relevant law and policy be as narrowly focused as possible to avoid disruption of (i) the public’s ability to call 9-1-1 for emergency assistance; (ii) the ability of government officials themselves to utilize CMRS; or (iii) mission-critical public safety radio communications that may be operating on radio frequencies in spectrum adjacent to CMRS frequencies,” APCO said in a filing (http://xrl.us/bm5tdw).

The FCC wants to extend the Disaster Information Reporting System to include interconnected VoIP and broadband ISPs, said a notice published Monday in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bm4vg6). The agency is seeking approval from the Office of Management and Budget for the additional voluntary information collection, which it expects will take around 40 minutes per response. “Increasing numbers of consumers, businesses, and government agencies rely on broadband and interconnected VoIP services for everyday and emergency communications needs, including vital 9-1-1 services,” the FCC wrote, arguing it’s “imperative” DIRS be expanded to include these new technologies. DIRS lets telecom providers electronically inform the commission of damage to communications infrastructure, and request resources for restoration. Comments are due May 23 in OMB control number 3060-1003.

NTIA would receive $47 million in FY 2013 under a Senate appropriations bill approved Tuesday afternoon. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science adopted the appropriations bill by a 17-1 vote. The amount for NTIA is the same as what President Barack Obama requested and about $1.5 million more than what the agency is estimated to receive in the current fiscal year. The total bill for Commerce, Justice and Science was $51.86 billion, down $1 billion from the FY 2012 enacted level. It provides $6.3 billion total for the Commerce Department, $1.5 billion below the FY 2012 level. The National Institute of Standards and Technology got $826 million, up $75 million from the FY 2012 level. Subcommittee Chair Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., urged the Commerce Department to be “cyber obsessed,” in an appropriations hearing last month (CD March 23 p16). The subcommittee’s House counterpart plans to mark up its own Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bills Thursday at 9:30 a.m. in Room H-140, Capitol Building.

NexGen Global Technologies has a solution for texting to 911, but was unable to exhibit it an Emergency Access Advisory Committee exhibition this week “under advice from legal counsel (due to our technology waiting to be protected under U.S. Patent laws),” the company said in a filing at the FCC. The solution “is web based and easily accessible via a basic web browser,” the filing said (http://xrl.us/bmzttx). “NexGen technology does not require any hardware or software to be installed onsite and no changes need to be made to the existing infrastructure in order for 9-1-1 Communications Centers to use our technology. It is also estimated that a national roll out of the NexGen solution can be handled remotely and within a compressed time frame."

FCC VoIP outage reporting rules will apply to both facilities-based and non-facilities based interconnected VoIP providers, according to the text of the order extending outage reporting requirements to VoIP service providers released Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmsyer). Because non-facilities-based VoIP providers may have difficulty complying with mandatory outage reporting for underlying broadband networks not in their control, the rules require non-facilities based providers to report service outages only “that involve facilities that they own, operate, lease, or otherwise utilize.”

Spectrum legislation approved by Congress last week as part of the payroll tax cut extension bill offers $115 million to help defray the costs of a next generation 911 (NG911) network. That’s the good news for public safety. The bad news is that amount is less than one twentieth of the expected cost. But public safety officials said other provisions should be helpful in making NG911 a reality.

The House and Senate passed long-awaited spectrum legislation on Friday as a “pay-for” in the payroll tax cut extension bill. President Barack Obama praised the bill and was expected to sign it into law. The spectrum law (CD Feb 17 p1) authorizes the FCC to conduct voluntary incentive auctions, a recommendation from 2010’s National Broadband Plan. It also sets up national public safety wireless broadband network ten years after one was recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

The FCC’s VoIP outage reporting order will impose rules fairly analogous to the obligations facing traditional TDM voice services, industry and agency officials said Tuesday. The order, scheduled for a vote at Wednesday’s FCC meeting, will limit VoIP outage reporting requirements to hard outages of a company’s own interconnected VoIP services, the officials said. A “hard outage” refers to calls that, once originated, cannot be terminated.

The FCC is seeking comment on the costs of its proposal to extend the Disaster Information Reporting System to include interconnected VoIP providers and broadband ISPs, said a notice set to appear in Tuesday’s Federal Register. DIRS is a voluntary, Web-based system that carriers can use to report infrastructure status during a crisis. “In recent years, communications have evolved from a circuit-switched network infrastructure to broadband networks,” the notice said. “Increasing numbers of consumers, businesses, and government agencies rely on broadband and interconnected VoIP services for everyday and emergency communications needs, including vital 9-1-1 services. It is therefore imperative that the Disaster Information Reporting System be expanded to include these new technologies in order for the Commission to gain an accurate picture of communications landscape during disasters.” The FCC is slated to vote on an order extending outage reporting to interconnected VoIP service providers at its meeting Wednesday.