Russia export controls and sanctions

EU and Russian officials talked spectrum and international roaming issues in Brussels Thursday, a spokeswoman for Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes told us. Kroes and Russian Telecom Minister Igor Schegolev want to strengthen areas of cooperation in information society matters, she said. The two regions have set ambitious broadband targets which must be met, she said. The face-to-face meeting was part of an EC meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other members of the Russian government. Russia is Europe’s third largest trading partner and the EU is the largest market for and investor in Russia, EC President Jose Manuel Barroso said. One key topic was innovation, scientific and technical cooperation, where, he said, “we are speaking the same language.”

There are “surprising new developments” in the latest global fiber deployment rankings, the Fiber-to-the-Home Council said at its Milan conference Thursday. Turkey made the list for the first time, and the United Arab Emirates popped up fourth in FTTH market penetration, ahead of all European and Americas economies, the council said. Russia is about to overtake the U.S. in fiber connection penetration, it said, but European deployment remains slow and patchy. European Commission Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes blamed regulators, saying their uneven enforcement of next-generation access rules is hampering investment.

GENEVA -- Mobile satellite service proponents are pressing administrations to wait for crucial feasibility studies on possible sharing arrangements in some of the six bands under consideration for allocations at WRC-12. ITU-R studies on providing broadband MSS service to land, maritime and aeronautical users using small directional antennas showed the need for much more spectrum than is currently available, the draft WRC-12 report said. The spectrum would ensure broadband availability in most areas, it said.

Europe’s satellite navigation systems are making progress but face “fresh challenges,” the European Commission said in a midterm report on Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System. The programs have been slowed by cost overruns, price increases and lack of competition in some contract awards, it said. The economic situation of the EU and its members has led the EC not to ask for additional money in the current budget, but that decision, too, is causing delays and increasing costs, the EC said. And political decisions on the governance and financing of the projects are needed, it said.

China again topped the list in total broadband subscribers in Q3, followed by the U.S., Point Topic analysts said in their latest world broadband statistics report. China had more than 124 million subscribers, up more than 5 percent from the previous quarter, while the U.S. had nearly 86 million, an increase of 1.5 percent, they said. China’s subscriber base is growing so much faster than the U.S.’s that China’s likely to stay in the lead for the foreseeable future, they said. Together, China and the U.S. have more than 41 percent of worldwide broadband subscribers, the analysts said. Other “top 10” countries were India, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Russia, Mexico, France and Italy, they said. There were 509 million broadband subscribers globally in Q3, up nearly 12 percent from the year-ago quarter, the report said. DSL remains the most common technology, followed by cable and fiber, it said. China has the largest DSL market, North America the most cable modem subscribers and Asia the lion’s share of the fiber market, it said.

GENEVA -- U.S. plans to make available 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband in the next 10 years shouldn’t depend on L-band frequencies considered crucial for weather and space agencies, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites wrote Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. The Jan. 3 letter was sent on behalf of NOAA, NASA and 13 other meteorological and space agencies in the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites.

GENEVA -- The ITU Radio Regulations Board backed satellite frequency assignment and network cancellations and delays for certain networks administered by France, Russia, Tonga, Cyprus and India, earlier this month, according to the board’s report we obtained. The board told the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) to keep an Iranian network on the books. Italy and Slovenia are moving toward partial resolution of interference troubles, the report said, and Cuba continued to report U.S. transmissions as harmful interference. Questions about possible discrepancies between reality and information in the master register persist concerning more than three dozen satellite networks, according to a separate report by the Radiocommunication Bureau director to the meeting.

Despite interest from distributors in the U.S. and around the world, 3D’s future “is hard to tell,” David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications, said at the UBS conference in New York Monday. “It’s very expensive,” he said, adding that Discovery chose to work with Sony and Imax to minimize the costs of developing a 3D channel and to share information along the learning curve.

Telecom ministers Friday preliminarily rejected a European Commission call for all EU members to make the 800 MHz band, freed by digital switchover, available for wireless broadband by 2013. The proposal is part of the EC’s first multiyear radio spectrum policy program (RSPP). Government officials -- who discussed the plan but didn’t vote on it during a Telecommunications Council session in Brussels -- said they generally favor the EC effort, but the timetable for rollout of “digital dividend” spectrum is one of several provisions that raise national sovereignty concerns.

Britons are among the earliest adopters of new communications technologies, the Office of Communications said Thursday. Its international communications market report compared take-up, availability and use of broadband, landlines, mobile phones, TV and radio in 17 countries. Findings included: (1) U.K. households are among the best connected with regard to landlines, mobiles and fixed broadband, but they're behind other countries in use of VoIP services. (2) Although in most places the desktop PC is still the most popular way to access the Internet at home, followed by the laptop, the situation is reversed in Britain. The percentage of users who access the Internet via mobile phones at home in the U.K. is second only to that of Japan. (3) The U.K. had the highest growth in smartphone take-up, with a 70 percent rise in subscriber numbers from January 2009 to January 2010. However, Italy has the highest number of smartphone users overall in European countries compared. (4) Britons use their mobile phones for social networking more than those in other countries, with the number of users highest among 18-24 year-olds and the 55-64s. The U.K. and Spain lead in digital TV use, Ofcom said. Fifty-nine percent of British households have HD-ready TV sets, followed by the U.S. (57 percent), but fewer subscribe to HDTV services, it said. The U.S. had the highest number of homes with digital video recorder subscriptions at the end of 2009, followed by the U.K., it said. Apart from Ireland, the U.K. has the lowest number of local and regional TV services compared with other European nations and the U.S. U.K. digital radio take-up was the highest among the countries surveyed, and lowest in Japan and the U.S., it said. The Internet accounted for a larger proportion of advertising spend in the U.K. than in any other nation surveyed, but Japan leads the world in mobile advertising spend per capita, it said. While TV and radio advertising has declined, TV and radio subscriptions went up despite the economic downturn, Ofcom said. Telecom revenue fell in seven of the 17 countries surveyed, it said. In broadband, the U.K. was the only nation where fixed broadband revenue fell in 2009 due to increased take-up of lower cost, local loop unbundling-based broadband services as part of double- and triple-play bundles, it said. Other countries studied were Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Sweden.