The GAO urged the FCC to formally reassess its requirements concerning cellphone radio frequency (RF) safety, in a report (http://xrl.us/bnjqzm) released Tuesday. Three minority members of the House Commerce Committee separately urged the commission to revise its cellphone RF standards and testing requirements. Though the FCC has not reviewed RF standards for handheld devices since 1996, the agency’s Office of Engineering and Technology circulated a notice of inquiry last month on the rules (CD July 15 P1).
Cablevision plans to introduce a new on-screen guide later this year that executives said surpasses the user interfaces of online competitors such as Netflix. Along the same timeline, it will begin a marketing push to highlight a number of investments it has made in its products and customer service this year, executives said during the company’s Q2 earnings teleconference Tuesday. The guide, which Cablevision calls Onyx, will be rolled out in batches to its subscribers when the company completes its migration to digital, executives said.
VANCOUVER -- The Internet Engineering Task Force has been cautious about issues related to political discussions, and has several times rejected the development of standards for lawful interception, but Dutch academic Johan Pouwelse wants it to deal with anti-censorship technology. At a gathering alongside the IETF meeting in Vancouver, there was support for considering what some attendees called “censor-free media” protocols. And a call to the wider Internet community was made during the IETF meeting by Google Chief Technology Officer Michael Jones.
The 700 MHz waiver order released by the FCC last Monday approved the interoperability showings of Charlotte, N.C., and Harris County, Texas. The order otherwise did little to smooth their way to starting early first responder networks, officials said. Meanwhile, government and public safety officials told us, there appears to be no real accounting of how much the 21 700 MHz waiver recipients have spent so far on the groundwork to build out networks that may well never start.
Radio broadcasters, having stepped up online streaming, now look to promote mobile devices capable of receiving over-the-air FM signals, both for stations to save money on royalty costs and for wireless subscribers to save money on data plans. Most of the commercial stations owned by major U.S. radio broadcasters that responded to our survey stream transmissions in real-time online, and many but not all of the properties have apps for multiple mobile platforms. Those companies’ executives said they hope consumers will learn they could listen to nearby FM stations on smartphones, and that carriers react by adding devices with the chips.
The Federal Communications Bar Association will become more technology-focused as more technology companies join and it begins to utilize social media, members and officials told us. The Young Lawyers Committee is expanding recruitment and increasing opportunities, they said. The annual charity auction will emphasize partnership, and its organizing committee is using more social media, which may also prove useful for the FCBA Foundation, members of the association said. Though the FCBA is developing, “I think in a lot of ways a lot about the bar will stay the same,” former president Yaron Dori said.
The FCC “is doing its part” to help cable operators deliver faster broadband speeds and higher broadband capacity through a notice of proposed rulemaking and other recent actions that will lead to more efficient cable system operations, Chairman Julius Genachowski said at the commission meeting Friday. The NPRM will modernize cable signal quality and leakage rules that were designed for analog systems, the commission said. With the agency doing its part, “it is imperative that the operators do theirs and we see ongoing expansion of broadband speed, capacity and availability,” Genachowski said. He pointed to the commission’s recent DTV viewability order, the subject of a recent lawsuit by broadcasters opposed to it (CD Aug 3 p5), as another example of the commission helping cable system efficiency.
The U.S. formally opposed attempts to wrest control of the Internet away from its current governing organizations in favor of the United Nations’ ITU, the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) said in documents filed Friday. The Dec. 3-4 meeting in Dubai will focus on revising the ITU’s treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), last revised in 1988. The U.S. State Department released the documents to the public after the filing (http://xrl.us/bnjbef).
The FCC review of Verizon Wireless’s buy of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox appears to be reaching its final stages, as FCC officials work through issues raised by the commercial agreements tied to the AWS license sales. Meanwhile, the Rural Telecommunications Group raised concerns about a “flurry of activity” in the secondary spectrum market, with AT&T proposing several spectrum buys, and asked the FCC to halt consideration of the Verizon/cable transactions, the Verizon/T-Mobile spectrum swap and other pending deals “until parties have the opportunity to weigh the numerous transactions contemplated by AT&T."
ISPs working with the FCC on its ongoing broadband speed measurement program are concerned about the introduction of formalized “Principles for Open Measurements,” presented at the agency’s July 25 meeting of stakeholders. ISP representatives we spoke to questioned the value of implementing such formal principles this far into the program, which has already produced two successful Measuring Broadband America reports (CD July 20 p1). ISPs also worried the new principles could turn the group from a flexible and collegial gathering of stakeholders to a more formal and rigid body.