The growing popularity of smartphones and devices like the iPad are creating a new challenge for the nation’s cybersecurity, General Keith Alexander, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, said Sunday on a National Governors Association panel. Alexander and other federal speakers emphasized the big role the states have to play in making the Internet safer.
Wireless groups are urging the FCC to reduce the time it takes to get attachments on utility poles, but utility interests say their opponents are threatening public safety. In the most recent round of lobbying, 33 executives and lawyers representing 16 power companies met with the FCC staff, according to an ex parte notice published on the commission’s website Friday in docket 09-51.
Serious issues continue to surround European satellite navigation system Galileo, EU lawmakers said Monday at a European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy Committee meeting. On the agenda was discussion of a draft report by Vladimir Remek, of the Czech Republic and the European United Left-Nordic Green Left, responding to the European Commission’s mid-term review of Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (CD Jan 19 p10). Among so-far-unanswered questions are how Galileo will be funded, exploited and governed, panel members said.
The FCC might not put off a vote on making it harder for radio stations to move from rural to urban areas, even after a group of more than 500 broadcasters last week formally sought a delay, agency officials said. They said that, as of Monday afternoon, the move-in part of a tribal radio order remained set for a vote at Thursday’s FCC meeting. It’s the only controversial part of a Media Bureau order that otherwise seeks to make it easier for tribes to get AM and FM licenses (CD Feb 22 p6). Broadcasters have no objections to the rest of the order, said a filing posted Friday to docket 09-52.
The FCC International Bureau overstepped its authority in granting the LightSquared a waiver of mobile satellite service rules that will allow it to offer terrestrial-only service through resellers, companies and groups said in filings at the FCC. Applications for review and a petition for reconsideration were filed. Requests for review are largely focused on alleged procedural problems. Meanwhile, LightSquared submitted its first working group structure report to the FCC. LightSquared was required to create working group to address GPS interference concerns and submit reports to the agency as a condition of the waiver (CD Jan 27 p1).
A European Parliament member’s plans for releasing TV spectrum for mobile broadband services exceed the European Commission’s, said Public Affairs Head Nicola Frank of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), in an interview Monday. With the 800 MHz band expected to be freed for wireless uses by digital switchover by 2013 across Europe, Gunnar Hokmark of Sweden and the European People’s Party and others are already looking for a “second digital dividend” from the 700 MHz band, Frank said. That could spell “the end of terrestrial television” in some countries, she said. She was responding to a draft report by Hokmark on the EC proposal for a five-year spectrum policy roadmap, discussed Monday in the Industry, Research and Energy Committee.
Cable, DBS and telcos’ desire for changes to a draft retransmission consent rulemaking may not be fulfilled entirely when the notice is voted on at Thursday’s FCC meeting. Agency officials said wholesale or substantive changes to the notice are unlikely. Commissioners hadn’t formally proposed any changes by midday Monday, FCC officials said. Some pay-TV executives had said they would like the forthcoming notice not to tentatively conclude that the agency can’t force carriage or require arbitration when a TV station is blacked out on a subscription-video system. The draft before commissioners reaches the tentative conclusion that the commission can’t (CD Feb 22 p5).
The FCC is waiting to hear from CenturyLink and Qwest about the kinds of conditions they would accept for approval of their deal, commission officials told us. Approval is not “imminent,” but the fact-finding has wrapped up, the officials said. The deal is reaching “the home stretch,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast wrote Friday, but a government shutdown remains “a threat.” She added, “We expect the FCC will impose duties” on the combined company “in certain areas -- including wholesale performance and broadband deployment/adoption, some of which could resemble previous conditions on CenturyLink-Embarq and Frontier-Verizon -- with additional obligations possible, but not as onerous as critics want."
The FCC appears to be leaning toward Title II-style regulation of broadband through its Universal Service Fund revamp, industry officials told us after examining the commission’s rulemaking notice on USF. “It’s clear to me that when you look at the questions they're asking around support, that seems where they're heading,” Voice of the Net Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards said. “It’s a way to get broadband providers to agree to Title II-like obligations.” FCC officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
T-Mobile USA’s Q4 profit fell 12.4 percent year-over-year to $268 million. The carrier lost 318,000 contract customers in the quarter, though it more than doubled its smartphone users.