Hundreds of consumers turned out for Nintendo of America’s Wii U launch event at the Nintendo World store in New York Saturday night, despite cold weather. NOA estimated that about 800 people were in line shortly before the console went on sale there at midnight. Scott Moffitt, executive vice president of sales and marketing, told us he expected there'd be enough supplies of the new console for everybody in line. The system was sold out at many retail stores by Sunday night and many units were being sold or auctioned off via eBay at inflated prices.
The FCC Wireless Bureau is seeking comment on an LL License Holdings request for a one-year extension to meet its tribal lands construction requirements on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska. The FCC gave LL $890,500 in May 2009 through its Tribal Land Bidding Credit (TLBC) program toward LL’s purchase of lower 700 MHz A-block licenses for BEA 115 and BEA 116. That TLBC funding equaled 50 percent of LL’s gross bid for the two licenses, the FCC said. In order to receive that funding, LL agreed to build and operate “a system capable of serving [75] percent of the population of the qualifying tribal land ... for which the credit was awarded.” LL filed its extension request May 11, about a month prior to its June 13 tribal lands construction deadline, citing “current unavailability of LTE equipment and devices for use in connection with licenses in the Lower 700 MHz Band A Block stemming from a lack of interoperability with operations in the Lower 700 MHz B and C Blocks.” The FCC said Friday it set a Dec. 16 deadline for comments on the request, with a Dec. 31 deadline for submission of replies to those comments (http://xrl.us/bnzz9o).
The Copyright Alert System (CAS) is not a termination program, ISPs reiterated during a late Thursday discussion of the system hosted by the Internet Society. The CAS, whose rollout was announced last month, will alert users if copyright infringing content is being shared through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks at their IP address and provide educational material about what infringement is and how to avoid it (WID Oct 19 p1). Jill Lesser, executive director of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) -- a group created to implement the system -- stressed on the webcast that individuals who receive CAS notifications will face mitigating measures that do not include service termination.
The Copyright Alert System (CAS) is not a termination program, ISPs reiterated during a Thursday discussion of the system hosted by the Internet Society. The CAS, whose rollout was announced last month, will alert users if copyright infringing content is being shared through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks at their IP address and provide educational material about what infringement is and how to avoid it (CD Oct 19 p10). At the event, Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) -- a group created to implement the system -- stressed that individuals who receive CAS notifications will face mitigating measures that do not include service termination.
The Obama administration lifted the ban on imports from Burma (Myanmar) on Nov. 16, ending a prohibition that had been in place since 2003. The Treasury Department issued General License No. 18, authorizing importation of any products of Burma, subject to certain limitations. Imports of jadeite and rubies mined or extracted in Burma are still prohibited pursuant to the JADE Act of 2008. The general license also does not authorize transactions with persons blocked under the Burma sanctions program.
The FCC’s approach to cybersecurity is to “break down the challenges into categories that allow for meaningful discussion and problem solving,” Chairman Julius Genachowski told a U.S. Central Command conference in Herndon, Va., Wednesday, according to his prepared remarks provided by the FCC Thursday. Commercial networks, the FCC’s primary focus, are “increasingly integrated” with networks that sustain vertical industries like financial services and the energy grid, he said. The commission tackled small-business security problems -- 83 percent in the U.S. don’t have cybersecurity protection plans -- by bringing together the Small Business Administration and business groups to develop “basic materials with easy-to-understand steps small businesses could take to improve their security,” Genachowski said. He made a “deliberate choice” in a multistakeholder initiative with ISPs, to focus on specific areas -- botnets, “Internet route hijacking” and domain name fraud -- rather than a “general charge” on cybersecurity, he said. That led the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, including Verizon, Amazon and PayPal, to develop an “anti-bot code of conduct,” recommend ISPs implement “expert-designed security improvements” for the domain name system, and come up with technical standards for ISPs to secure Internet routing through an “authoritative registry,” he said. As a result ISPs serving about 90 percent of the country have committed to implement the council’s recommendations, Genachowski said. The FCC’s work has been guided by the broader values of Internet freedom and privacy, which is “complementary” to security because “both are essential to consumer confidence in the Internet and to adoption of broadband.” A newer FCC focus is mobile device security, because the commission is “concerned that consumers are generally not taking adequate precautions against the threats that can harm their devices and exploit the information on their devices,” he said: The FCC will announce “concrete steps” to protect such devices “in the coming weeks.” The commission’s approach is to recruit “top talent” in each of these areas, coordinate with stakeholders including businesses and other federal agencies, and give them “concrete problems” to solve, he said. It used the same approach in the government response to Superstorm Sandy, supporting the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other agencies by reporting “daily” on communications networks’ status in New York and New Jersey, and regarding the 2010 Haiti earthquake where the FCC collaborated with FEMA and the U.S. military to restore communications there, he said. Genachowski said that approach should also be used regarding “cable landing stations,” often controlled by private licensees and “under protected” as pieces of critical infrastructure. The chairman discussed cybersecurity’s role in the World Conference of International Telecommunications (WCIT) taking place in Dubai next month, “which poses real challenges to these values” of Internet freedom and market-based approaches: “Calls to add cybersecurity provisions in the International Telecommunication Regulations are misplaced and ultimately counterproductive. International regulations are simply too broad, too inflexible, and too slow to change to effectively address cybersecurity issues.” WCIT will succeed by taking a “pragmatic, flexible, and real-world approach” and avoiding “extreme positions,” he said. Genachowski said the FCC is committed to “greater transparency … and making information about our policies and practices available online.” It’s “actively engaged” in the region the U.S. Central Command directs for the military, and the FCC has hosted 28 delegations from countries including Egypt, Iraq, Qatar and Yemen in the past two years, he said.
Gerardo Chavez, the president of the San Diego Customs Broker Association, pleaded guilty to organizing a conspiracy to import foreign-made goods in to the U.S. without paying customs duties, said the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. Another person charged in the case, Carlos Medina, also pleaded guilty, the Justice Department said. As a part of the plea deal, Chavez will cancel his customs broker license, forfeit property, and pay restitution of as much as $18 million.
The FCC should deny attempts to rescind the Tribal Government Engagement Obligation Provisions developed during the agency’s work on USF reform, the National Broadband Plan and the Connect America Fund, the National Congress of American Indians of the U.S. (NCAI) said Tuesday in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnznyn). The filing occurred after the NCAI adopted a resolution Oct. 26 encouraging the FCC to uphold the Tribal Engagement Provisions, which the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs developed in connection with the Wireline and Wireless bureaus (http://xrl.us/bnznyt). The FCC developed the provisions “with the intent of improving the deployment of telecommunications services on tribal lands,” NCAI President Jefferson Keel said in the filing. The NCAI grew concerned after USTelecom filed a petition that requested reconsideration and clarification of the provisions. NCAI, Native Public Media, the Gila River Indian Community and Gila River Telecommunications filed replies in opposition to the USTelecom petition (CD Sept 28 p6). “Any rescission of the Tribal Engagement Provisions would be an unfortunate set-back in the progress needed to bring digital communications to this country’s least connected peoples and lands,” Keel said Tuesday in the NCAI filing.
The National Weather Service issued 17 wireless emergency alerts (WEA) during superstorm Sandy, and one NWS/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration official said Wednesday that feedback from East Coast residents who received the text alert messages on their mobile phones was mostly positive. “We've had numerous reports of messages being sent within seconds, and only one or two reports of delays,” said Michael Gerber, NWS/NOAA Emerging Dissemination Technology Program Lead. The WEA broadcast system will need improvement in other areas of the country, particularly the West, but results on the East Coast are positive, he said during a FEMA webinar on its Internet-based integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS).
A 911 task force identified the “vulnerability of newer technologies” in a preliminary report about Verizon 911 failures during the June 29 mid-Atlantic derecho wind storm. Traditional hard-wired connections meant power loss didn’t result in loss of a dial tone or service, it said. The report named VoIP and standard Internet Protocol as two very different technologies that, when the power’s out, lose “access to 9-1-1 once the back-up battery contained within the equipment, drains,” the 911 directors said. Cellphones also encounter problems due to network congestion and the possibility of physical damage to cell sites, the report said.