TAC Proposes Changes to FCC's Measuring Broadband America Program

The working group also stressed the importance of making sure that all data that goes across the Internet is encrypted, and suggested that the FCC promote a consumer awareness program and fund research on how to best measure QOS. It recommended that measurements should be as automated as possible and based on measurements rather than a new data request to ISPs.

TAC member and Dyna Chairman Marty Cooper, known as the father of the cellphone, said in response the council should keep in mind that the Internet is still evolving. “Most of the recommendations we make now are based upon our view of what the Internet is today,” Cooper said. “There are going to be some huge changes over the coming generation. We're going to find that education, healthcare, collaboration are going to be not only the bulk of the Internet traffic, but the most important Internet traffic.”

Cooper said the idea of selling megabytes per second to consumers as carriers do seems ridiculous. Someone who goes to the movies doesn't get billed based on paying the projectionist’s or the ticket taker’s salary, he said. “You pay for the experience of the movie,” he said. “When the Internet grows up, that's what we're going to be doing. We're going to be paying for specific experiences.”

TAC had a busy schedule, wrapping up a year of work, starting the meeting early to give the group extra time over its already marathon four-hour-long quarterly meetings. “We felt like we were crossing a new frontier by adding a half-hour,” said TAC Chairman Dennis Roberson, Illinois Institute of Technology vice provost. “Then we started lining up the time that we allocated and we decided we should have added two hours.” Roberson said he will schedule more time for the final meeting next year.

The working group on game-changing technologies concluded that the FCC needs to ramp up its expertise on programmable networks, in which the behavior of network devices and flow control is handled by software that operates independently from network hardware. “Within the telecom industry, these technologies are permeating everything that’s being done,” said TAC member Kevin Sparks of Alcatel-Lucent. Rules were set up for “today’s much more static, stable world” and have trouble adapting to the changing world, he said. “The dynamics of how FCC processes and rules and policies operate need to be looked at very closely with this in mind.”

TAC member Adam Drobot of OpenTechWorks said comments by Cooper also apply. “This is not a static world,” he said. “In a nonstatic world, the mindset of the FCC should be looking forward and not looking backward essentially. It's very important to understand what it means to have that mindset.”

TAC unanimously approved a white paper, which, like other documents, is still to be released, on basic principles for assessing compatibility of new spectrum allocations, which it asked the FCC to approve where practical. The principles include that interference always exists and no one should expect a completely clean spectrum environment. The paper finds that even under ideal conditions, the electromagnetic environment is unpredictable and operators should expect and plan for occasional service degradation. It finds that neighboring services should be good neighbors, and that to do its job properly the FCC needs as much information as possible on a particular use of spectrum. The report said if services cannot or do not want to make full disclosure, they may prevent the FCC from helping them when interference occurs.

The TAC also approved a white paper on assessing spectrum interference risks. It finds that the standard Monte Carlo analysis works. It recommends that the FCC use risk analysis more frequently in assessing sharing of spectrum bands. The two papers will be posted by the FCC on the TAC website, council officials said.

TAC will next take on a report on interference resolution and enforcement in a dynamic-frequency-sharing world. TAC member Dale Hatfield, at Silicon Flatirons, is heading up that effort. Hatfield said changes to technology are prompting a change “in the sort of threats that you have to address in the enforcement area.”

TAC will also publish white papers on IoT cybersecurity and security of mobile phones. The IoT paper stops short of recommending steps the FCC should take, TAC officials said.

David Simpson, chief of the Public Safety Bureau, said he has deep concerns that companies are promoting IoT devices without addressing security concerns. Simpson noted that one of the hot new products of the year was a doll that used the Internet to interact with a child through a Wi-Fi connection. The company later recalled the product because of “the ease with which a hacker with malicious intent could get in and be part of that child's discussion,” Simpson said. “I don’t think we’ve covered this area if that’s what happens with toys.” Industry must not leave “treatment of this risk out there blowing in the wind,” he said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, former TAC chairman and frequent attendee, wasn't at the meeting. An agency spokesman said he was in London at the plenary meeting of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications. Wheeler “really is paying attention,” Roberson said at the close of the meeting.

Wheeler’s biggest recent push at TAC has been for the group to take on mobile device theft (see 1406200065). Brian Daly of AT&T, who has led those efforts, reported that the U.S. is turning the corner on cutting thefts. But he said a working group on the topic is calling for additional work, including an additional study by CTIA on the trends on smartphone security and a look at why consumers are or are not choosing to make their devices more secure. The FCC also needs to do more to educate consumers, the mobile working group concluded.

Wheeler released a statement saying he is pleased the group wrapped up the report. “While much work remains, the working group’s report establishes the critical components of a holistic effort to eliminate smart phone theft," he said. The report "describes a clear pathway to the implementation of a single data portal to enable real-time assessment of whether any particular device is stolen," he said.

Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, said TAC did good work in 2015. “We take all of the recommendations seriously and we are going to see what we can do to make them happen,” he said.