Municipal wireless in the U.S. “is not dead,” said Ben Lennett of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative during a panel discussion sponsored by the group Tuesday.
New Jersey’s Legislature is considering a bill to lift several telecom regulations. The proposal would harm consumers and leave the state’s telecom regulators with little authority, consumer advocates told us, saying some provisions conflict with federal law.
Requiring Voice over Internet providers to pay legacy access charges “would be a fundamental mistake,” the Voice on the Net Coalition said in comments on the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation rulemaking notice. “The commission is about to embark on real reform of the intercarrier compensation system precisely because the legacy system does not work with modern communications technologies,” VON Executive Director Glenn Richards said in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski posted to dockets 01-92, 07-135, 04-36 and 09-51. “Access charges are part of a regime that regulators designed 30 years ago before the advent of IP-based services.”
Cable and telecom ISPs are continuing efforts toward IPv6 deployment, as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority issues the last five IPv4 address blocks, executives told us Tuesday. Cable operators and consumer electronics manufacturers are working together and with other companies affected by the looming transition to IPv6 from IPv4, said CableLabs and CEA officials.
Monday’s announcement that NTIA is looking at the 1755-1850 MHz band for possible reallocation for wireless broadband could lay the groundwork for the biggest single spectrum auction since the 700 MHz sale in 2007, industry officials said. The wireless industry has been pushing hard for an auction pairing the cleared 1755-1780 MHz band with the AWS-3 band. Recent signs have been that the 1755-1850 band was getting NTIA and FCC attention (CD Jan 14 p1).
Dish Network agreed to buy DBSD for about $1 billion Tuesday, potentially giving Dish access to 20 MHz of valuable mobile satellite spectrum. The purchase of bankrupt MSS/ancillary terrestrial component licensee, which is subject to approval from the bankruptcy court and the FCC, offers Dish several options, said industry executives. The agreement follows the FCC’s waiver approval last week that allowed LightSquared to offer terrestrial-only services in spectrum allocated for MSS (CD Jan 27 p1). Dish may have similar hopes for the DBSD spectrum, said observers.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Egypt’s Internet cutoff vindicates support for strong net neutrality and opposition to online censorship, said Free Press President Josh Silver. A lesson is that neither governments nor corporations should be allowed to shut down or censor the Internet, he said at the Commonwealth Club civic forum Monday evening.
The Obama administration, working with companies like Facebook, Intel, IBM, Google and Hewlett-Packard, has created a Startup America campaign to help technology entrepreneurs, officials said Monday at a White House briefing. The effort proposes to speed up patent reviews and provide tax relief and credits as well as funding. Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and Chairman of the Case Foundation, will chair the partnership.
The work of career FCC staffers on an order about an independent programmer’s complaint against the three largest U.S. cable operators and another sizable one is continuing and may be getting closer to completion, said commission and industry officials watching the progress. No order was circulating midday Monday on WealthTV’s program carriage complaint against Bright House Networks, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, commission officials said. The Media Bureau may finish its work soon, though it’s unclear exactly when, said commission and industry officials.
Analysts expect cable operators to tell of further video subscriber losses when they report Q4 financial results in coming weeks. The lagging economy, a nearly saturated pay-TV market and the lack of new housing construction have limited the overall size of the pay-TV market, and cable operators are continuing to lose share to DBS and telecom competitors, they said. “What we're seeing are pretty much flat results for the industry as a whole,” said Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group. “We're talking about essentially 90 percent of people having some form of multichannel video service."