The FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee on the digital transition wants the agency to set up a special fund to finance community groups’ DTV educational efforts, former FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani said. The committee, to which Tristani belongs, wants money for DTV outreach by local groups, she told local telecom franchising authorities in Washington.
LAS VEGAS -- The pending FCC order approving a Universal Service Fund cap does not have a sunset date, as was recommended by the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, sources said Thursday. The order grants more than 40 pending applications for eligible telecom carrier (ETC) status. It also caps the fund at March 31 levels. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has yet to circulate text of the order, complete with proposed edits, but is expected to do so in days. Sources said the order will likely have at least three votes if it contains expected language, with Martin and Commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate in support.
GENEVA -- New procedures are needed so innovation and new technologies move more easily into ITU-R International Mobile Telecommunications standards, some industry officials said. The body’s IMT working party is “far from a level playing field,” an industry source said. The technology is the ITU global standard for third-generation wireless communications, which is evolving to higher data rates.
The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department have issued a final rule, effective June 1, 20091,for the land and sea portion of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI).
GENEVA -- The ITU-R working party on International Mobile Telecommunications is out of control and needs reining in, said participants in the ITU-R study group on terrestrial services. A U.S. proposal to an April 22 CITEL meeting aims to win support from administrations to clip the group’s wings and get the work back into the land mobile service.
Visitors to CE stores, clutching coupons and expecting to see a variety of DTV converter boxes, likely will frown to see so thin a product selection the coupon program’s early going. Or so we found in March, when coupons reached our mailboxes and we mystery-shopped dozens of stores in several cities to gauge retail preparedness for the subsidy program.
LOS ANGELES -- There will be “a price to pay” within five years for companies that hurt the environment, Dan Esty, director of the Yale University Center of Environmental Law and Policy, said Wednesday at the Digital Entertainment Group’s Green Media Summit. He deems $30 for each ton of carbon released a plausible starting point for assessments on environmentally unfriendly behavior by a company, he said.
LAS VEGAS -- FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told CTIA attendees he expects to move quickly to adopt a cap on payments to competitive eligible telecom carriers (CETCs), now that Commissioner Robert McDowell is a likely third vote in favor (CD April 1 p1). Martin said he still plans an en banc hearing of the commission to look more closely at early termination fees (ETFs) often imposed by wireless carriers and other regulated companies. Martin also said he was starting to circulate an order dismissing a Skype petition seeking Carterfone rules for wireless.
LAS VEGAS -- FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell sent FCC Chairman Kevin Martin a list of edits on an order that would cap Universal Service Fund payments to competitive eligible telecom carriers (CETCs) at end-of-year-2007 levels, agency sources said. McDowell backs a carve-out for tribal lands in all 50 states, including Alaska, but without language specific to Alaska carrier GCI. McDowell proposed language saying that the FCC would make an earnest effort to undertake comprehensive USF reform.
LONDON -- Last year’s cyberattack on Estonia sparked much governmental soul-searching about the need for cyberdefense, but key questions remain unresolved, speakers said Monday at the Cyber Warfare 2008 conference. Opinion is split on whether such denials-of-service (DOSs) and other disruptions are attacks, and, if so, whether to deem them warfare, speakers said. When definitions are so hazy, words begin to matter a great deal, said Col. Glenn Zimmerman of the U.S. Air Force Cyber Task Force.