A United Arab Emirates-led proposal for a “new” version of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) threw a further wrench into talks Friday at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, even as debate over existing proposals had led to little progress. The UAE said during a plenary meeting that its proposal was borne out of its own frustrations over the lack of progress at the conference toward revising the existing ITRs, which have not been revised since 1988. WCIT began Dec. 3 and runs through this Friday. Discussions during the conference have thus far remained stuck on whether to change the scope of the treaty-level document from applying only to “recognized” operating agencies to applying to all operating agencies. The U.S. opposes any change in scope because it would make the ITRs apply to Internet providers, which would in turn allow the ITRs to stray into Internet governance issues (CD Dec 7 p18).
A United Arab Emirates-led proposal for a “new” version of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) threw an additional wrench into talks Friday at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, even as debate over existing proposals had led to little progress. The UAE said during a plenary meeting that its proposal was borne out of its own frustrations over the lack of progress at the conference toward revising the existing ITRs, which have not been revised since 1988. WCIT began Dec. 3 and runs through this Friday. Discussions during the conference have thus far remained stuck on whether to change the scope of the treaty-level document from applying only to “recognized” operating agencies to applying to all operating agencies. The U.S. opposes any change in scope because it would make the ITRs apply to Internet providers, which would in turn allow the ITRs to stray into Internet governance issues (WID Dec 7 p12).
T-Mobile USA will begin offering Apple products on its network in 2013, Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann said Thursday at a webcast conference in Germany. T-Mobile CEO John Legere implied in a separate presentation during the conference that the products T-Mobile offers will include the iPhone, but did not say what other devices it might make available. “When we do announce what we're going to deploy, it will clearly be better and more effective” than recent media reports have suggested, he said. A T-Mobile spokesman said additional information on T-Mobile’s Apple offerings would be available later. An Apple spokesman confirmed that T-Mobile would begin carrying the company’s products next year, but declined to discuss specific models.
AT&T is raising its expectations for full-year smartphone sales after what AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said has been a record-setting first two months of Q4. The carrier sold 6.4 million smartphones during October and November, already making Q4 AT&T’s second best quarter for smartphone sales; quarterly figures typically improve even more during December, de la Vega said Wednesday during an investor conference. The carrier now forecasts it will sell 26 million smartphones for the year, 1 million more than previously expected, de la Vega said. “Excitement is at an all-time high,” he said. “I feel very good about momentum going into December.” The growth in smartphone sales came as a result of an improved supply of Apple’s iPhones, as well as Android-powered models like the LG Optimus G and HTC One X, de la Vega said. The carrier is also “really excited” about the prospects for Windows Phone models like the HTC 8X and the Nokia Lumia 920, he said.
AT&T is raising its expectations for full-year smartphone sales after what AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said has been a record-setting first two months of Q4. The carrier sold 6.4 million smartphones during October and November, already making Q4 AT&T’s second best quarter for smartphone sales; quarterly figures typically improve even more during December, de la Vega said Wednesday at the UBS investor conference.
AT&T is raising its expectations for full-year smartphone sales after what AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said has been a record-setting first two months of Q4. The carrier sold 6.4 million smartphones during October and November, already making Q4 AT&T’s second best quarter for smartphone sales; quarterly figures typically improve even more during December, de la Vega said Wednesday during an investor conference. The carrier now forecasts it will sell 26 million smartphones for the year, 1 million more than previously expected, de la Vega said. AT&T has also continued to see better-than-expected adoption of its “Mobile Share” data plans, de La Vega said. The carrier has signed up 5 million customers to the plans during the less than four months they have been available. AT&T began offering its plans in late August; No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier Verizon Wireless began offering its “Share Everything” shared data plans in June (WID Aug 23 p2). Average revenue per user from the AT&T plans is also higher than expected, de la Vega said. That comes in part because a higher-than-anticipated 25 percent of customers on the plans have opted to buy the highest tiers of data service -- 10 GB or more per month, he said. When Verizon Wireless began offering its shared data plans, it made them the only option available for new customers; AT&T offered its plans along with other plans, including an unlimited data option. Still, 15 percent of AT&T customers subscribing to the shared data plans were previously on the unlimited data plan, de la Vega said. The better-than-expected adoption of shared data plans has also driven up sales of tablets, as has a recent AT&T $100 subsidy, de la Vega said. The rising interest also comes because of increased availability of tablets that operate on the two leading non-Apple iOS operating systems, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows, he said. “I just can’t even fathom how many tablets will be under the Christmas tree,” de la Vega said.
The U.S. should formally seek to “dismantle” the ITU, said former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin Thursday. “Sometimes you need some destruction; you need to burn the forest in order to grow the new pine trees,” he said during a Future Tense forum on Internet governance. Future Tense is a program of the New America Foundation. “In the case of the ITU, I think it’s very much the case that its day is gone. The U.S. should formally commit itself to hastening” its demise. The ITU was set up to coordinate regulation of international telecommunications, but it has become outdated in the Internet age, McLaughlin said. “For an Internet way of doing policy coordination, you have to accept that there will be lots of conversations happening in lots of different places, and no one body is the place where this is all going to happen efficiently."
Voluntary incentive auctions for spectrum held by federal agencies will likely be discussed during the 113th Congress, said David Redl, majority counsel for the House Commerce Committee. But he and others at an FCBA continuing education panel said the incentives involved on the federal side would be very different than the ones involved in the voluntary incentive auction of TV stations’ frequencies. “At the end of the day, when we look at ways to incentivize folks in the government to relinquish spectrum authorizations, simply paying them from the federal coffers isn’t going to cut it,” Radl said. “It’s the left hand paying the right hand.”
The U.S. should formally seek to “dismantle” the ITU, said former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin Thursday. “Sometimes you need some destruction; you need to burn the forest in order to grow the new pine trees,” he said during a Future Tense forum on Internet governance. Future Tense is a program of the New America Foundation. “In the case of the ITU, I think it’s very much the case that its day is gone. The U.S. should formally commit itself to hastening” its demise. The ITU was set up to coordinate regulation of international telecommunications, but it has become outdated in the Internet age, McLaughlin said. “For an Internet way of doing policy coordination, you have to accept that there will be lots of conversations happening in lots of different places, and no one body is the place where this is all going to happen efficiently."
The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) should consider a set of “threshold” issues at the start of its upcoming conference -- any changes to the preamble and Article 1 of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), including the definitions used in the ITRs and the agencies the treaty-level document will apply to -- before delegates tackle any other proposed revisions, the U.S. and Canada said in a proposal filed Tuesday with the ITU. “Streamlined and rapid” consideration of changes to the Preamble and Article 1 “will ensure there is consensus from the beginning of the conference on how to proceed with revisions to the ITRs,” the two nations said in the proposal. Addressing those issues at the beginning of the conference would also allow delegates to consider the impact of other ITU meetings, including the outcomes of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, the proposal said.