The World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) ended last week with a consensus among participants on a set of non-binding documents on Internet-related issues (CD May 17 p3). The consensus at WTPF was in contrast to the rancorous end to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in December. Industry insiders and experts told us it’s unclear if future binding talks on Internet governance issues will produce a consensus as easily.
NTIA mobile privacy stakeholders considered concerns raised by FTC staff at the most recent stakeholder meeting when crafting the newest draft of the short form privacy policy code of conduct (CD May 1 p8). But the draft can’t be expanded to platforms, Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum and a drafter of the code, told us ahead of Thursday’s stakeholder meeting. “We did as much as we could” to incorporate the FTC’s suggestions, Dixon said. “They are a stakeholder as well, and they came in very late to the process."
Japanese-owned SoftBank should not be permitted to buy Sprint due to national security concerns, said former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell during the first of two House cybersecurity hearings Tuesday. SoftBank’s $20.1 billion bid to buy 70 percent of Sprint Nextel has recently been criticized because of allegations that SoftBank uses equipment from Chinese telecom manufacturers Huawei and ZTE (CD May 21 p12). “If you are in the intelligence business ... the one thing you would love to do is run the telecommunications infrastructure in another country ... so having a foreign country own and control a communications company inside the United States ... I would not be in favor of,” said McConnell, who was in George W. Bush’s administration and is now the vice chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton.
LAS VEGAS -- Acting FCC Chairman Mignon Clyburn told the CTIA conference Tuesday that making more spectrum available for licensed use will be one of her top priorities. Clyburn also promised the commission would wrap up rules for the incentive auction of broadcast-TV spectrum this year and said the auction is still on target to take place in 2014. It was her first major speech in her new job, for which she was sworn in Saturday.
LAS VEGAS -- One of the key tenants behind the FCC’s incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, as rules evolve, appears to be “fungibility,” said FCC and industry officials watching the process closely. Under the theory of the auction, being developed by economists at Stanford University and elsewhere, officials say, carriers won’t bid for a specific block of spectrum but for an amount in a given market. The possibility of fungible blocks got considerable attention at the FCC’s recent 600 MHz band plan workshop (CD May 6 p1). Critics question whether the concept makes sense and will prove workable, in the end, since all spectrum is not created equal and different blocks come with different issues depending on where they are in the 600 MHz band -- how close to broadcast operations and the guard bands.
"Our focus on speed is misplaced” and perhaps even “harmful” to the Internet’s development, said economist Scott Wallsten, vice president-research at the Technology Policy Institute. “We don’t know what direction innovation will go. ... We're focused on speed possibly at the expense of everything else.” He praised the advanced networks for offering competition in the telecom world, but pointed to issues like latency, which seems to have increased over the last year and a half or so. The speed goals are arbitrary, Wallsten wrote in a paper released Monday (http://bit.ly/16LWZsm). He called for more and better metrics measuring these other dimensions of broadband service.
LAS VEGAS -- The second-screen experience is creating a new measurement tool for TV viewing, panelists said Monday at the Parks Associates Connections conference held in conjunction with the CTIA conference. “In the past,” said D.P. Venkatesh, CEO of content discovery company mPortal, audience measuring companies would “tell you what people in America watch.” Now, he said, a new model is emerging based on broadband activity which “lets you know exactly what people are doing.”
Broadband stimulus projects benefit from the right partnerships and framing to sell the programs, local officials said on a Monday NTIA webinar with the National Association of Counties, National League of Cities and NATOA. It focused on the agency’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grantees and the ways they've thrived, which NTIA recently chronicled in a toolkit. NTIA issued the 68-page toolkit of best practices (http://1.usa.gov/YhGzCZ) earlier this month at the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition meeting in Washington (CD May 3 p4).
The FCC Media Bureau contradicted its own rules and exceeded its authority when it granted Charter Communications a two-year waiver from the agency’s CableCARD rules in April (CD April 22 p3), said CEA. The association’s application for review (http://bit.ly/16FKP51) filed Monday asked the bureau to reconsider or rescind the order. “In freeing Charter from its post-waiver obligations by fashioning arbitrary conditions never offered for public comment, while declining to determine whether this outcome complies with Commission regulations ... the Bureau’s Order exceeds both its own delegated authority and the Commission’s legal authority,” said CEA. Spokeswomen for Charter and the bureau declined to comment.
HERSHEY, Pa. -- The “bad guys” are winning the war against U.S. cyber defenses, telecom lawyers were told Friday at the FCBA retreat. If lawmakers don’t step up their game, some experts said they fear the results could be as disastrous as aiming a ballistic missile at America. Some panelists said the February executive order (CD Feb 14 p1) to strengthen defenses was intended to spur cybersecurity legislation.