The FCC ordered a long-awaited overhaul of regulatory fees for submarine cables. The 3-0 decision, released Tuesday, creates a new fee for operators of the cables to pay instead of the international bearer circuit fee that they have owed. The order doesn’t affect fees paid by terrestrial and satellite operators. Industry applauded the decision, which fell off the sonar late last year when Kevin Martin was the commission’s chairman.
Public-interest advocates urged the NTIA and the RUS to write rules ensuring that only projects that offer open access to the Internet will get money from the agencies’ broadband stimulus programs. The calls came in Washington Monday at the next to last public meeting that the agencies are holding. The activists squared off against NCTA, CTIA and USTelecom officials, who warned that a big fight now over network neutrality could derail the programs before money starts to flow.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Lieberman announced his homeland security budget priorities in his annual letter to the Senate Budget Committee.
The International Trade Commission is announcing that it has terminated its investigation of three competitive need limitation (CNL) waiver petitions that were undergoing review as part of the 2008 Generalized System of Preferences Annual Review.
Once the most-wired society on its continent, South Africa has slipped dramatically down ITU and other international rankings for Internet penetration since 2002, observers said. With a presidential election coming April 22, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations is meeting this week to craft a national broadband strategy that it hopes the new administration will adopt. At stake isn’t just broadband but the country’s economic health, they said.
Once the most-wired society on its continent, South Africa has slipped dramatically down ITU and other international rankings for Internet penetration since 2002, observers said. With a presidential election coming April 22, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations is meeting this week to craft a national broadband strategy that it hopes the new administration will adopt. At stake isn’t just broadband but the country’s economic health, they said.
NTIA and RUS, holding the fourth of six public meetings on their respective broadband stimulus programs, sought comment on three of the most critical questions officials will have to decide in awarding funds - what constitutes broadband and what is an underserved versus an unserved area. After two days on the road, NTIA and RUS officials were back in Washington for a session at Commerce Department headquarters.
On March 5, 2009, the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight held a hearing on "Putting People First: A Way Forward for the Homeland Security Workforce."
The NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service sought comment on the crucial definitions of broadband, unserved and underserved at the second of their public meetings, in Las Vegas. Throughout the session Tuesday night, the agencies heard arguments about the critical importance of broadband to every community.
Consensus on cell broadcast service requirements for alerts over the public land mobile telecommunications system is needed before examining numbering and other issues, the U.S. State Department said in a document submitted for an ITU-T study group meeting next week. Another open question is whether the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau should apply for “a block(s) of numbers from GSMA/3GPP and, if approved, how those numbers should be assigned and administered,” the document stated. The U.S. included a proposed recommendation for “a set of capabilities to be provided when broadcasting alerts to subscribers of commercial mobile services.” Initial capabilities in the proposal include alert and advisory messages, treatment of mandatory national civic messages, international closed user groups and languages, the proposal said.