EchoStar’s Hughes Communications’ broadband satellites, including those for its HughesNet service, potentially could be “quite full” in some U.S. markets in 2014, as it edges closer to the arrival of EchoStar-19, Hughes Senior Vice President Mike Cook told us Thursday at the Content and Communications conference in New York.
Privacy and digital rights will dominate the discussion at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s States and Nation Policy Summit in December. Talk will focus on the need for privacy regulations in the states after the National Security Agency surveillance leaks, said North Dakota Rep. Blair Thoreson (R), public chair of the Communications and Technology Task Force. State legislators will learn more about best practices for cybersecurity and interconnection in the Internet protocol transition, said Thoreson.
"There can be no question” about the importance of the Universal Service Fund and promoting broadband deployment in rural America, but doing so won’t be easy, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday. FCC commissioners got a brief status update on its moves to reform the USF during the meeting. The presentation went over in some detail recent history of USF reform, including progress on Phase II of the Connect America Fund. Other commission members indicated they had concerns that parts of the program limit full use of the program by carriers. Staff last gave an update at the FCC’s June meeting.
The FCC’s new smartphone app got its moment in the spotlight Thursday, as members of the agency’s Office of Engineering and Technology demoed for new Chairman Tom Wheeler and the rest of the commissioners the app, which will use crowdsourcing to determine mobile broadband speeds, latency and jitter. After several months of internal testing, the app is available for Android in the Google Play store. Commissioners were enthusiastic about it, even though some lamented they won’t be able to use the app on their iPhones.
Efficient use of spectrum will be an important factor in the FCC’s consideration of applications for foreign ownership of broadcasters above the 25 percent cap, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler shortly before casting his first-ever vote at Thursday’s FCC meeting. The declaratory ruling, which explicitly says the FCC will consider applications for foreign investments in broadcasters over the cap on a case-by-case basis, was unanimously approved. Though Wheeler later said foreign investment applicants should consider their applications in the context of all of the commission’s larger policy goals, he gave special emphasis to spectrum use, saying it would be the “sine qua non” in considering them.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology on Thursday continued its push for public input on the Cybersecurity Framework, convening a workshop at North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Centennial campus in Raleigh. The workshop -- set to run through Friday -- and a comment period running through Dec. 13 will help the agency revise the framework in advance of the expected release of a final version in February. Although NIST is examining all aspects of the framework, one of the main areas of interest since a preliminary version dropped in late October has been Appendix B, the framework’s privacy and civil liberties section.
Intelligence community officials argued that enhanced disclosure requirements in the Surveillance Transparency Act would be an extraordinary and a privacy-damaging burden, testifying at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Wednesday, while privacy advocates and tech industry representatives countered that more transparency was a necessary first step to ensure economic competitiveness and protect civil liberties. Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Al Franken, D-Minn., called the hearing to discuss the bill (http://1.usa.gov/1aEn0bH), which he introduced with Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., two weeks ago (CD Oct 31 p9).
NEW YORK -- Better communications between satellite companies and emergency response management teams is needed to improve how satellite communications are used to aid in emergency recovery, said Dwight Hunsicker, Globecomm vice president-government business development. Globecomm was involved in recovery operations after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina and the flooding this year in Colorado, he said Wednesday at SATCON in New York. Globecomm deployed equipment to provide communications because the primary infrastructure was flooded out, he said.
New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who took office Nov. 4, has yet to have to make a hard or controversial decision, and plenty will follow, but instead has been busy setting a tone for his chairmanship. That started his second day when Wheeler met with staff, promising he would be open to ideas and plans to be the kind of chairman who walks the halls at the commission. The same day he released a lengthy blog post (http://fcc.us/1cCIDhM) offering his broad view on the role the FCC must play in a changing world.
A House Communications Subcommittee hearing highlighted tensions in how to best deal with spectrum policy amid rapidly advancing technologies. The Wednesday session was on the 5 GHz spectrum band, which could see conflict between intelligent transportation industry occupants and other unlicensed spectrum users, such as for better new generations of Wi-Fi.