As World Trade Organization talks lurch forward in the lead-up to the WTO Bali ministerial summit in December, participant nations may deliver an Information Technology Agreement expansion deal that will eliminate ITA tariffs on a host of new information technology products, said industry officials. The Chinese aim to table a new product list that would fall under the agreement during the next ITA negotiation round in Geneva, the week of Oct. 21, said speakers at a National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) event Tuesday and an Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) official in a blog post that day. The agreement hasn’t expanded since its inception in 1996 despite many IT industry developments.
The potential for progress at the World Trade Organization (WTO) December ministerial summit in Bali lies largely in the areas of information technology tariff elimination and trade facilitation, said roundtable participants at a National Foreign Trade Council event on Oct. 8 and an Information Technology Industry Council industry official on the same day. Participant nations may deliver an Information Technology Agreement expansion deal that will eliminate tariffs on a host of new information technology products, said the officials.
With the shutdown of numerous government websites, public access to government information will be affected in a way it wasn’t during last government shutdown that lasted several weeks in 1995 to ‘96, several experts told us Tuesday. Some significant government resources such as Thomas, the online legislative database of the Library of Congress, pulled about faces Tuesday to stay running, but other major informational sites such as the FTC aren’t accessible. “Times have changed in terms of how agencies communicate with the public, so it is a different ball of wax if a website goes dark than if it had in the ‘90s,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “It will have ramifications for consumers and for small businesses."
A report commissioned by the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute argues that “progressives” should wholeheartedly back efforts to solve the problems caused by abusive patent litigation filed by patent assertion entities (http://bit.ly/151Jx1M). PAE lawsuits are “sucking the lifeblood of innovation out of the American economy,” said Shook, Hardy partner Phil Goldberg, the report’s author, during a conference call on the release the report Tuesday. PAE-initiated litigation has “mushroomed” over the past decade amid the “perfect storm” caused by the rising number of patents that resulted from the increasing economic strength of software and consumer electronics companies, Goldberg said in the report. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has seen a rapid rise in the number of patent applications over the past 20 years, and many consumer electronics include technology covered by hundreds of thousands of patents -- an average smartphone may hold technology covered by 250,000 patents, the report said. This convergence of technologies “has created seemingly endless opportunities for patent holders to allege that others’ products are infringing on their patents,” the report said.
With the shutdown of numerous government websites, public access to government information will be affected in a way it wasn’t during the last government shutdown that lasted several weeks in 1995 to ‘96, several experts told us Tuesday. Some significant government resources such as Thomas, the online legislative database of the Library of Congress, pulled about faces Tuesday to stay running, but other major informational sites such as the FTC aren’t accessible. “Times have changed in terms of how agencies communicate with the public, so it is a different ball of wax if a website goes dark than if it had in the ‘90s,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “It will have ramifications for consumers and for small businesses."
A report commissioned by the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute argues that “progressives” should wholeheartedly back efforts to solve the problems caused by abusive patent litigation filed by patent assertion entities (http://bit.ly/151Jx1M). PAE lawsuits are “sucking the lifeblood of innovation out of the American economy,” said Shook, Hardy partner Phil Goldberg, the report’s author, during a conference call on the release the report Tuesday. PAE-initiated litigation has “mushroomed” over the past decade amid the “perfect storm” caused by the rising number of patents that resulted from the increasing economic strength of software and consumer electronics companies, Goldberg said in the report. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has seen a rapid rise in the number of patent applications over the past 20 years, and many consumer electronics include technology covered by hundreds of thousands of patents -- an average smartphone may hold technology covered by 250,000 patents, the report said. This convergence of technologies “has created seemingly endless opportunities for patent holders to allege that others’ products are infringing on their patents,” the report said.
AT&T said it closed on its deal to buy former Alltel spectrum licenses and other assets from Atlantic Tele-Network, shortly after the FCC’s Wireless Bureau cleared the deal Friday (http://soc.att.com/16CjtaH). The $780 million purchase, announced in January, gives AT&T access to spectrum, mainly on the 850 MHz band, which covers 4.5 million potential customers in rural portions of Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina. The FCC’s Friday order authorizing the deal indicates it still has concerns about the transfer, which “will likely cause some competitive and other public interest harms in several local markets” (http://bit.ly/18Swiha). The agency paused its review of the deal in August because it needed additional details on AT&T’s plans to migrate ATN’s prepaid customers onto its network (CD Aug 28 p11). AT&T has since committed to “undertake an aggressive build-out schedule” to upgrade the ATN service areas to its 4G HSPA+ service within 15 months of the deal’s closing and LTE within 18 months, as well as committed to operate Alltel’s 3G Evolution Data Optimized network through June 2015 to “ensure a reasonable transition for providers who have been relying on CDMA and Evolution Data Optimized roaming through the Allied networks,” the FCC said in the order. Allied is a wholly owned subsidiary of ATN. AT&T also agreed to “certain commitments with respect to customer transition and migration,” notably providing ATN subscribers with a comparable phone for free that does not require an extended contract. AT&T also said it’s “exploring opportunities to monetize some or all of its remaining wireless tower assets. The carrier said it will post its Q3 results Oct. 23.
The FCC approved AT&T’s proposed buy of 39 Verizon Wireless lower 700 MHz B-block licenses and related spectrum agreements the two carriers are pursuing through Grain Management, said the Wireless Bureau Tuesday night (http://bit.ly/14rrnmG), as was expected (CD Sept 4 p9). The deal, announced in late January, gives AT&T licenses that cover 42 million people in 18 states, including the Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Oklahoma City markets. Verizon will receive AWS licenses in western markets, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Fresno, Calif., and Portland, Ore. (CD Jan 28 p9). The deal won’t result in AT&T exceeding the spectrum screen in markets affected by the deal, said the bureau, saying it did a deeper study of AT&T’s spectrum below 1 GHz in four markets because of public interest groups’ concerns. Although that study found that AT&T’s spectrum in the Lake Charles, La., and Texas 18-Edwards markets raised some potential competition issues, the bureau decided the deal’s benefits outweighed those concerns. The order required Verizon Wireless to meet the AWS buildout conditions it agreed to in a previous spectrum transaction last year: providing coverage to at least 30 percent of the total population covered by its new licenses within three years, and to 70 percent of each license’s area within seven years. The licenses AT&T is buying in the deal already included similar rules. Public interest and small-carrier groups had asked the FCC to impose conditions on the deal for roaming, interoperability, handset exclusivity, early termination fees and special access rules. The suggested conditions weren’t narrow enough to fix harms the groups claimed the deal could cause, said the bureau. Commission scrutiny of AT&T’s spectrum holdings below 1 GHz is “a sign that FCC staff at least could be receptive to the calls by Bell rivals/critics for imposing further limits on carrier spectrum holdings below 1 GHz, including in the planned broadcast/wireless two-sided ‘incentive’ auction,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Christopher King Wednesday in an email to investors. The FCC’s review of AT&T’s proposed purchase of former Alltel spectrum licenses from Atlantic Tele-Network remains paused after agency officials asked for more information on AT&T’s plan to migrate prepaid customers affected by the deal onto its network (CD Aug 28 p11). Although AT&T has since provided a response to the agency’s concerns, “we suspect the FCC will need a little longer to finalize that review,” King said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau’s decision to temporarily halt its unofficial 180-day clock for review of AT&T’s bid to buy former Alltel spectrum licenses from Atlantic Tele-Network was criticized by AT&T, but is consistent with past practices, other industry observers said. The delay was criticized by pro-free market interest groups. The FCC paused its review in order to seek further information from AT&T on its plans to migrate ATN’s prepaid customers onto its network (CD Aug 28 p11).
Link Hoewing is stepping down from Verizon, where he spent the last 29 years, most recently as assistant vice president-Internet and technology policy, he said in a blog post Wednesday (http://vz.to/1dQJt8z). “Making good policy is not easy,” he said, and requires a careful balancing of different interests and ideas. Reacting quickly is less important than thinking deeply, he said, citing the storied habit of Abraham Lincoln to write out letters in the heat of the moment, but put them in his desk for later reflection. “We don’t live in a paper and pen world anymore, but it would not hurt us to pause and reflect more often than we do in thinking about policy or reacting to the ideas of others,” Hoewing said. “Constructive criticism often helps move the ball forward. Quick, reactive commentary can sometimes do just the opposite.” Good policy also depends on defining the problem correctly, he said. “In far too many cases, we debate issues that are not really important to solving a real public policy problem because we are not asking the right questions and hence not really defining the issue that needs to be addressed.” It’s also crucial to respect the people involved in policy making, he said. “The vast majority of those participating in policy debates have good motives and have principles that are at the heart of what they support and say,” Hoewing said. Although there may be an “occasional bad apple,” it’s important to focus on opponents’ ideas, rather than attack their motives, he said. Hoewing told us his biggest accomplishments at Verizon were helping lead the effort among then-RBOCs to push through the Telecom Act; managing a real-life transition to a non-regulated environment in Telecom New Zealand; and helping work through rule changes at the FCC that helped spur investment in fiber.