The FCC should follow the direction of Congress and not keep Verizon Wireless and AT&T from bidding in the upcoming incentive auction of broadcast spectrum, ex-Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., former chairman of the Communications Subcommittee, said in an interview. “The FCC should not be in the position of picking winners or losers,” he said. “The marketplace can establish who the winners and losers are.”
Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake predicted a “healthy” broadcast industry after the voluntary incentive auction the FCC plans to hold of TV frequencies and repacking of their channels. “We expect a healthy broadcast industry to emerge from the auction and the subsequent repack -- I expect healthier than it is today,” he said Wednesday in a speech that summarized his and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s remarks on spectrum to the NAB Show last week (CD April 18 p4). “The incentive auction is not for everyone,” Lake told a Media Institute luncheon, since many stations will want to keep serving viewers and see an exciting future for the industry.
Incumbent LECs roundly condemned several legacy telecom regulations in reply comments posted Wednesday in docket 12-61 in support of USTelecom’s petition for forbearance, breaking out the thesaurus to describe the rules they say unfairly shackle ILECs while allowing other carriers to thrive. State commissions opposed the petition, arguing the elimination of several reporting requirements would harm consumers and make it harder for commissions to do their jobs.
SILICON VALLEY -- Regulators will hold mobile app developers to the promises they make to consumers, including in their privacy policies, government officials said at the App Developer Privacy Summit here Wednesday. Federal and state governments rely on such privacy policies for enforcement actions, they said. Even though consumers don’t often read them, law enforcement agencies look to them to make sure companies aren’t being deceptive.
Every political group in the European Parliament looks set to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, members of the House’s International Trade (INTA) Committee said during a debate Wednesday in Brussels. “It’s clear to me ACTA will be rejected by Parliament,” said INTA Chairman Vital Moreira, of Portugal and the Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Lawmakers should make it a “dead letter,” said David Martin, of the U.K. and S&D, who’s writing the response for the lead committee vetting the pact. The European Commission continued to defend the treaty and to try to counter ongoing criticisms, but it will now probably have to decide what its next steps are if Parliament nixes ACTA.
Sprint Nextel reported a Q1 net loss of $863 million, up from a loss of $439 million in the year-ago period. Despite subscriber growth on the Sprint network, which includes CDMA, WiMAX and LTE, the carrier lost 455,000 postpaid customers on a net basis on its Nextel network iDEN from Q4, leading to a total postpaid subscriber loss of 192,000. The carrier’s prepaid brands, Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, will gain access to WiMAX in Q2, executives said during an earnings call Wednesday.
"Americans overwhelmingly oppose the revelation of contact information (phone number, email address, and home address) to merchants” when purchases are made with mobile payments, a survey for University of California-Berkeley researchers found. Even more oppose tracking of shoppers’ movements by mobile phones, according to a paper posted late Tuesday to the Social Science Research Network (http://xrl.us/bm446u).
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is “doubtful” he will remove his holds on FCC nominees this week but suggested to us that he may reconsider after the Senate returns from its upcoming recess May 7. He had complained that the commission didn’t provide all the documents about LightSquared he requested in the agency’s initial delivery to the House Commerce Committee. Grassley is blocking votes on FCC nominees Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel until he gets those documents.
Eighteen out of 24 major federal agencies reported inadequate information security controls for financial reporting for fiscal 2011 and inspectors general at 22 of these agencies cited information security as a major management challenge for their agency, the House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management was told Tuesday. Assessments of information security controls in 2011 showed that most major agencies had weaknesses in most major categories of information system controls, Gregory Wilshusen, director of information security issues at the GAO, told a committee hearing on cybersecurity and the need for urgent action.
Lawmakers should rewrite the 1996 Telecom Act to address the impact that online entities have had on the video marketplace, said Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday. But Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., remained a cautious advocate for a rewrite of the law.