Collaboration on cybersecurity inside and outside the U.S. is key to securing cyberspace globally, administration and international officials said Tuesday at a Georgetown University conference. White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt urged all agencies of the U.S. government to work together to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity posture. Defense and State department officials told a later panel that all nations must work together to stabilize cyberspace.
Large incumbent LECs cheered a petition by USTelecom for forbearance from enforcement of several “outdated” legacy telecommunications regulations, in comments filed Monday, but others wanted to ensure that ILECs still comply with some reporting rules that they say help competitors and the commission make informed decisions. Several state commissions opposed the petition. While New York regulators don’t oppose the bulk of the petition, they said they're concerned about the potential impact on Lifeline services.
Two public safety officials central to the push by 21 different government groups to build early first-responded networks in the 700 MHz band told us they welcome Friday’s public notice by the FCC Public Safety Bureau asking a battery of questions about 700 MHz transition issues in light of the recently enacted Spectrum Act (CD April 9 p9). With the original licenses due to expire in late summer, Public Safety Spectrum Trust Operator Advisory Committee Chairman Bill Schrier and PSST Chairman Harlin McEwen said Monday the public notice was a necessary next step by the commission.
Anonymous lobbed at least three distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against supporters of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) Monday. The “hacktivist” group allegedly crashed the websites of USTelecom, TechAmerica, and the NCTA in separate, coordinated attacks.
Comcast said it plans to petition the FCC to reconsider a Media Bureau decision that would give Boston authority to again regulate the rates of its basic service tier. The bureau on Monday granted the city’s request to reinstate its basic-rate regulation authority (http://xrl.us/bm27k8). The bureau and full commission both found in 2001 that Comcast was subject to effective competition in Boston from RCN, which the bureau considered to be a LEC. Boston disagreed with that classification and the conclusion that RCN’s service area substantially overlapped with Comcast’s, and last year it asked the FCC to let it once again regulate Comcast’s basic service rates.
The FCC pointed to a recent Media Bureau public notice asking questions about the definition of the terms “multichannel video programming distributor” (MVPD) and “channel” as it presented its defense of its pace of adjudicating a program access complaint brought by Sky Angel against Discovery Communications. In a response to Sky Angel’s petition for a writ of mandamus at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the commission argued that the notice represents a concrete step toward resolving the dispute.
Cable operators face little threat from Verizon Wireless’s new LTE service in rural areas, cable officials said, downplaying the recent start of HomeFusion Broadband. They mainly view the new product as either a replacement for DSL or a rival to satellite broadband in areas that are unserved or underserved by other ISPs. The executives said cable’s broadband market share won’t likely be hurt much by HomeFusion Broadband.
The Verizon Wireless/cable deals, unveiled in December, have raised opposition that looks similar on some levels to that for AT&T’s proposed buy of T-Mobile last year. Most of the foes of AT&T/T-Mobile reorganized against the latter deal, with the addition of T-Mobile, which may have the most at stake. Opponents of Verizon’s buy of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox say marketing agreements unveiled concurrent with the spectrum buys are partly to blame. Then too, the spectrum landscape has changed in recent months, with the FCC facing huge obstacles bringing any new spectrum online for commercial use anytime soon (CD March 30 p1).
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski decided to limit what information the commission will make TV stations disclose online when they put files now kept on paper in studios on fcc.gov, agency officials said Friday. They said a Media Bureau draft order to require public-inspection files go online doesn’t mandate inclusion of sponsorship identification information nor deals between multiple TV stations with separate owners in the same market, as the commission proposed in October. The political ad part of the public file, a posting regime subject of criticism from congressional Republicans and GOP Commissioner Robert McDowell, will need to go online, under the order tentatively set for a vote at the April 27 meeting, agency officials said. But there’s a phase-in period.
There are still many issues yet to be resolved as of Friday as labor negotiations between the wireline AT&T and the unions continued, said the Communications Workers of America. Four contracts covering 40,000 union workers were set to expire Saturday. AT&T claimed it’s well prepared for a potential strike.