Cisco forecast major increases in mobile data traffic through 2017. Faster than previously projected increases in 4G adoption and Wi-Fi offloading bear watching, experts told us. Mobile data traffic will reach 134 exabytes per year -- 11.2 exabytes per month -- by the end of 2017, Cisco said Tuesday in a report. That would be 134 times the total Internet Protocol traffic generated in 2000. It would also be a gain from 2012, when consumers’ global mobile data traffic rose by 70 percent, Cisco said. Traffic reached 885 petabytes per month by the end of 2012 -- up from 520 petabytes per month at the end of 2011, said the maker of equipment for telecom firms to handle data. The monthly mobile data traffic in 2012 was nearly 12 times the total monthly Internet traffic generated in 2000 -- 75 petabytes per month, Cisco said. Global traffic will continue to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 66 percent through 2017, Cisco said. North America will see growth slightly below the global average -- at a 56 percent CAGR -- to 2 exabytes per month in 2017, Cisco said (http://xrl.us/bigzmr).

For the commercial space and aviation sectors to move forward in next-generation technology and missions, it’s critical for government and commercial entities to work together, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., vice chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. It’s critical that “we do not create regulations in the absence of the data that we need to know if those regulations are going to be effective,” he said Wednesday at the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington. “It’s critical that we don’t limit the activities of these private sector companies without clear and compelling reasons to do so,” he said. But “it’s just as critical that the FAA and these companies communicate in very clear ways about safety, design, about the development within the industry and about the future,” he said.

National Emergency Number Association CEO Brian Fontes encouraged the FCC to keep pressing public safety, carriers and others to move to next-generation 911. Fontes was speaking on the fourth Superstorm Sandy panel Tuesday. The panel on “new ideas” in communications closed out a day of hearings on Sandy (CD Feb 6 p1).

The U.S. is engaged in a cyberwar “and we are losing,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., during a speech at the NARUC conference in Washington Wednesday. He said it was “shameful” that Congress failed to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and said it’s “absolutely critical” that Congress act this year: “We are absolutely under siege and we are fooling ourselves if we think we don’t have a problem.” White House Senior Director for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment threw cold water on Roger’s cybersecurity approach during a subsequent speech at the event and said baseline industry cybersecurity standards are required to stop most of the cyberattacks.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Maryland lawmakers questioned potential inconsistencies between the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule and HB-316, a state bill that would extend the rule’s protections to Maryland children. The bill was introduced by Chairman Dereck Davis, a Democrat, of the House of Delegates Committee on Economic Matters, which held a Wednesday hearing on the legislation. It and its companion bill in the state Senate, SB-374, are supported by Doug Gansler, the state’s Attorney General, who testified that he suggested changes to the bill based on feedback from opponents. The bill would make COPPA violations illegal under state law and would require that “advertising on the Internet targeted to children under the age of 13 be clearly labeled as advertising,” Davis said.

Preparation for Superstorm Sandy’s landfall was key to New York-area broadcasters’ efforts to disseminate news and information to the public, said executives from Clear Channel Media and WABC during the FCC’s second hearing Tuesday on the storm’s communications impact. Others testified how Google and Twitter helped to fill the void left by outages in the area’s wireless and wireline communications networks.

A order on circulation at the FCC grants several unopposed items in USTelecom’s request for forbearance of several “outdated” legacy telecommunications regulations, FCC officials told us Tuesday. The Wireline Bureau will put out an order in the next day or two granting an additional 90 days to decide on the other items in USTelecom’s petition, the officials said. In its 73-page petition, USTelecom sought relief on an industry-wide basis from more than 150 rules, some of which the commission had already identified as unnecessary in its Biennial Review report (CD Feb 17p14).

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he hopes the FCC’s open Internet order falls when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the FCC’s authority to impose the regulations, he said at the NARUC conference Tuesday. If they do, Walden said he will block any legislative efforts to reinstate the rules. “Let me be clear, not on my watch,” he said.

"There is significant room for improvement” in how wireless carriers are able to keep their systems up and running during and after disasters like Superstorm Sandy, Jack Schnirman, city manager of Long Beach, N.Y., told FCC officials Tuesday during a full day of FCC hearings on Sandy held in New York and New Jersey. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the first and last speaker of the morning, said the kind of communications outages seen in the aftermath of Sandy were “simply unacceptable.”

NARUC telecom committee commissioners voted Tuesday to ask the FCC to safeguard against the possibility of unacceptable spectrum interference. The question of such possible interference from a company called Progeny dominated NARUC the last several days as the association weighed a resolution pushing for more testing. Progeny CEO Gary Parsons defended the public safety service, poised to launch in about 40 markets and promising to deliver better technology for locating 911 callers, down to within about 25 meters and to the floor of the building the caller is on, Parsons told regulators.