Democratic cybersecurity hawks in the Senate renewed their call for President Barack Obama to issue an executive order to secure the nation’s critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., told us Wednesday at the Capitol that “the threat of a cyberattack is so real, we are so vulnerable, that I'm encouraged that the administration is doing work on an executive order and I think they should get it out as soon as it is ready.” John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, confirmed last week the White House is considering an executive order to secure critical infrastructure (CD Sept 18 p13). The White House had no comment Wednesday.
Telco executives and technology researchers expressed enthusiasm with the results of the FCC’s broadband measurement projects, and ticked off their wish lists for experiments to come. Speakers at a Broadband Breakfast Club panel Tuesday morning said they were pleased with the results of the voluntary measuring project, and looked forward to the commission’s new wireless broadband measurement project, set to be explored in a public meeting Friday (CD Sept 6 p3). Panelists also said trust and collegiality between ISPs and Measurement Lab (M-Lab), once strained, has been restored.
Dish Network will launch a branded satellite-based broadband service by Q4, focusing on bundling it with video to avoid competing with EchoStar’s Hughes Communications and ViaSat, said Vivek Khemka, Dish vice president-product management.
Three factors matter in managing cyber risk -- a system’s vulnerability, the likelihood of threats and the attack’s consequences, said Miles Keogh, director of grants and research at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “Really, cybersecurity is a function of understanding risk,” he said.
Shifting some spectrum Dish wants to use to start a wireless broadband network would cause so much interference from TV station and government use that S-band receivers couldn’t be protected, the company said in a study it commissioned and filed at the FCC. As Wireless Bureau staff work toward an order expected to let Dish use the 40 MHz of mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum for terrestrial service, moving the uplink part of it up 5 MHz is getting attention at the agency and by industry, satellite officials told us. No order has circulated for a commissioner vote, though one’s still expected to (CD Sept 12 p6) soon, agency and industry officials said Tuesday.
Three public interest groups served notice on AT&T Tuesday that they intend to file a formal complaint charging that AT&T’s decision to block customers from using Apple’s FaceTime application on an AT&T mobile device unless they subscribe to one of its recently launched “Mobile Share” plans is a violation of the FCC’s December 2010 net neutrality order. The complaint is the first major challenge filed since the rules took effect last November, public interest group officials said.
Telecom officials are concerned that sequestration will hamper federal regulatory policy and create marketplace uncertainty, said industry officials and others. Groups denounced the negative effects of an automatic 10-year, $1.2 trillion across-the-board budget cut set to begin on Jan. 2, following the release of an Office of Management and Budget sequestration report last week (CD Sept 17 p4).
Pay-TV providers wanting to carry networks owned by cable operators that aren’t being licensed to competitors may still bring complaints to the FCC after Oct. 5, when the agency’s ban on exclusive contracts among vertically integrated cable programmers expires, industry and commission officials said Monday. They said a draft order allowing the ban to sunset that circulated last week (CD Sept 17 p2) lays out a way, similar to the FCC’s 2010 “terrestrial loophole” order, which would let aggrieved distributors bring complaints to the commission under Section 628(b) of the Communications Act. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.
The FCC will forbear from applying Section 652(b) of the Telecom Act to cable acquisitions of CLECs, it said in an order Monday (http://xrl.us/bnp6sw). As expected, the order was unanimously approved (CD Sept 6 p4). “By granting limited forbearance from section 652(b), we harmonize the rules that apply to transactions between competitive LECs and cable operators regardless of which entity acquires the other,” the order said. The section prohibited cable operators from acquiring more than a 10 percent interest in CLECs in the same region. NCTA had sought the forbearance, which local franchise authority (LFA) representatives opposed because it would limit their role in cable/CLEC deals.
Common misconceptions and “paranoia” on how the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications could affect the scope of Internet governance and censorship have distracted from important telecom issues that delegates to the WCIT will deal with when it meets in December, ITU officials said Monday. They called a news conference in Geneva with accompanying videoconference to “dispel the myths” about WCIT and proposed revisions to the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs).