A bill to create a market-oriented, competition-based communications regulatory system was introduced Thurs. at our deadline by Sen. DeMint (R-S.C.). Under it, communications firms would be regulated like other businesses, to protect consumers and ensure there’s no unfair competition, he said. Services alike from a consumer’s perspective would be treated alike. As such, phone service offered by a cable, land line or wireless firm would come under standard rules. The USF program would be reformed so all service providers contribute equally and funds go out more efficiently, transparently and in a technologically neutral way. Cable TV franchises would be phased out over 4 years. States’ enforcement roles would be preserved, preserving their authority to protect consumers and manage public rights-of-way. “We can no longer force a modern, dynamic industry to operate on archaic rules that destroy job creation, limit consumer choice and needlessly raise prices,” DeMint said. He urged Congress to “wake up” to the fact that today’s rules date to the days of rotary phones.

On May 4, 2006, the Senate passed H.R. 4939, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill by a vote of 77 to 21. (The House passed its own version of H.R. 4939 on March 16, 2006.) As the House and Senate have passed different versions of H.R. 4939, a House-Senate conference will be convened to resolve those differences. (BP will be checking for international trade provisions in both House and Senate versions.) (Congressional Record, dated 05/04/06, available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r109:@FIELD(FLD003d)@FIELD(DDATE20060504).)

A bill to create a market-oriented, competition-based communications regulatory system was introduced Thurs. at our deadline by Sen. DeMint (R-S.C.). Under it, communications firms would be regulated like other businesses, to protect consumers and ensure there’s no unfair competition, he said. Services alike from a consumer’s perspective would be treated alike. As such, phone service offered by a cable, land line or wireless firm would come under standard rules. The USF program would be reformed so all service providers contribute equally and funds go out more efficiently, transparently and in a technologically neutral way. Cable TV franchises would be phased out over 4 years. States’ enforcement roles would be preserved, preserving their authority to protect consumers and manage public rights-of-way. “We can no longer force a modern, dynamic industry to operate on archaic rules that destroy job creation, limit consumer choice and needlessly raise prices,” DeMint said. He urged Congress to “wake up” to the fact that today’s rules date to the days of rotary phones.

Japan could be re-tagged the Land of the Rising Blog, if Technorati data on languages and blogging hold. Japanese is the most blogged language (37%), beating English (31%), said the blog search service’s new State of the Blogosphere report. Technorati began tracking blogs by language in April 2005; since Sept. Japanese has had the lead, hovering in the high 30% range with English in the low 30% range, CEO Dave Sifry said. Chinese, for 2 years a rising blog language due in part to launch of MSN Spaces, “seems to be slowing down somewhat this year,” he said. Blog platforms sometimes seem tied to certain tongues, such as Russian with LiveJournal and Chinese with MSN Spaces, “often for viral or historical reasons,” said Sifry. Most-blogged languages: Japanese, English, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch and German. Several factors could pollute rankings, Sifry said, admitting his firm’s automated language analysis software “may have bugs” and, that, mostly because the largest Korean blog services aren’t indexed, “we believe that we are grossly undercounting the Korean blogosphere.” Japanese bloggers seem to write briefer, more frequent posts, perhaps “a result of blogging from mobile phones” -- a factor that may skew data ranking languages based on number of posts. The report also said posts with tags are growing at about 560,000 per day, and have passed 100 million posts since Jan. 2005, when Technorati began tracking tagging. Almost half (47%) of posts now have author-generated tags, which don’t include generic tags like “Diary,” Sifry said.

The FCC isn’t giving a date for launching its Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau, approved at its March 17 agenda meeting, an FCC official told the Land Mobile Communications Council (LMCC) Thurs. Industry and public safety officials at the meeting told us group members have many questions about the bureau -- especially a plan to split spectrum licensing, with part staying in the Wireless Bureau and public safety licensing moving to the new bureau.

The latest DVD-upscaling technologies can outperform the new blue laser formats and are “a great reason not to be a beta-tester for Blu-ray and HD-DVD.” So said Charlie Brennan, managing dir. of high-end U.K. supplier Arcam on introducing the company’s DiVA DV137 upscaling DVD player at a London news briefing Thurs.

The House unanimously passed late Tues. the cellphone privacy bill (HR-4709) that was voted out of the Judiciary Committee March 2. The House Commerce and Senate Commerce committees have approved similar bills. Judiciary Committee Chmn. Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said the legislation targets pretexters who are often able to obtain private information by impersonating cellphone account holders. The activity frequently occurs online. “Amazingly, none of this is clearly illegal under federal law,” he said. “These important new consumer protections cover the records and calling logs of cellular, land line, VoIP users, and accomplish this goal on a technology neutral basis.” Rep. Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) said the threat posed by pretexters is real. “By simply contacting one of the many on-line data brokers that currently exist, the private records of anyone sitting in this room could be filtered into the public domain within a matter of minutes,” she said. “And if put into the wrong hands, such information could be used to commit countless crimes of violence, including acts of domestic violence, retaliatory acts against law enforcement officers, or acts aimed at undermining our current criminal justice system.” Under the bill, pretexters would face up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for organizations. CTIA has endorsed the legislation but didn’t release a statement. The bill would “pursue aggressively the bad actors abusing consumer privacy without imposing unnecessary and costly regulatory mandates,” said a written statement by USTelecom senior Vp Ed Merlis. “Few things are more personal and potentially more revealing than our phone records,” said Rep. Smith (R-Tex.), who introduced the bill. The bill heads to the Senate, where similar legislation is pending.

The House unanimously passed late Tues. the cellphone privacy bill (HR-4709) that was voted out of the Judiciary Committee March 2. The House Commerce and Senate Commerce committees have approved similar bills. Judiciary Committee Chmn. Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said the legislation targets pretexters who are often able to obtain private information by impersonating cellphone account holders. “Amazingly, none of this is clearly illegal under federal law,” he said. “These important new consumer protections cover the records and calling logs of cellular, land line, VoIP users, and accomplish this goal on a technology neutral basis.” Rep. Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) said the threat posed by pretexters is real. “By simply contacting one of the many on-line data brokers that currently exist, the private records of anyone sitting in this room could be filtered into the public domain within a matter of minutes,” she said. “And if put into the wrong hands, such information could be used to commit countless crimes of violence, including acts of domestic violence, retaliatory acts against law enforcement officers, or acts aimed at undermining our current criminal justice system.” Under the bill, pretexters would face up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for organizations. CTIA has endorsed the legislation but didn’t release a statement. The bill would “pursue aggressively the bad actors abusing consumer privacy without imposing unnecessary and costly regulatory mandates,” said a written statement by USTelecom senior Vp Ed Merlis. “Few things are more personal and potentially more revealing than our phone records,” said Rep. Smith (R-Tex.), who introduced the bill. The bill heads to the Senate, where similar legislation is pending.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Partnerships are much on online video movers’ minds, judging from a Mon. night panel here organized by the Churchill Club technology business forum. Google Video wants “to link off to other people’s pages that have content,” said Jennifer Feiken, Google dir.- video & multimedia search partnerships. Rob Bennett, MSN’s gen. Mgr.-entertainment & video services, said he wonders if Disney will keep locked up on ABC.com prime time hits it’s making available online or be obliged to distribute them more broadly through partner sites.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Partnerships are much on online video movers’ minds, judging from a Mon. night panel here organized by the Churchill Club technology business forum. Google Video wants “to link off to other people’s pages that have content,” said Jennifer Feiken, Google dir.- video & multimedia search partnerships. Rob Bennett, MSN’s gen. Mgr.-entertainment & video services, said he wonders if Disney will keep locked up on ABC.com prime time hits it’s making available online or be obliged to distribute them more broadly through partner sites.