Jimm Phillips

The final shape of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association’s (ETNO) proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) remains unclear as the deadline to submit proposed revisions to the ITRs looms. ETNO is reportedly considering withdrawing its controversial “sender-party-pays” proposal, which the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) rejected Monday in a draft report (CD Oct 23 p13). CEPT rejected the proposal because it fell outside of the scope of the ITRs and dealt with specific commerce and technology issues (CD Oct 22 p7).

Other smaller carriers will eventually be purchased or merged with the “Big Four” U.S. carriers, now that T-Mobile and MetroPCS are combining, analysts said. MetroPCS stockholders will get $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the merged company (CD Oct 4 p1), and Japanese carrier SoftBank said Monday it will buy 70 percent of Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion (CD Oct 16 p1). Leap Wireless backs consolidation, the company told us. Also Friday, T-Mobile and MetroPCS made the case for their deal in a filing applying for FCC approval. (See separate report above.)

The U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) includes representatives from top U.S. technology companies, including AT&T, Apple, Facebook and Verizon, according to a list of 95 members of the delegation released at delegation leader Terry Kramer’s request (http://xrl.us/bnup6h). Delegates to WCIT, which is set to begin Dec. 3 in Dubai, will decide how to revise the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which have not been updated since they were first adopted in 1988.

So-called patent trolls and the patent wars are high-profile indicators of problems in the way the U.S. handles its own technology patent process and resulting litigation, industry experts said Tuesday. While the experts said at an Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus event that such problems exist, they did not agree about how severe those problems are.

The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) is likely to withdraw its controversial Internet traffic compensation proposal from consideration at the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), but is now considering another proposal the U.S. also finds problematic, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation, Friday. ETNO’s current proposed revision to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) would, among other things, establish a “sender-party-pays” model for Internet traffic compensation that could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission.

T-Mobile USA’s proposed merger with MetroPCS is unlikely to have a significant impact on U.S. tower companies if the U.S. government approves the deal as expected (CD Oct 4 p1), industry officials told us. Any carrier consolidation is likely to lead to concerns because the tower companies end up with fewer customers -- but those concerns are mitigated by the carriers’ network build-out plans, Benchmark analyst James Dobson said. “With MetroPCS forming up with T-Mobile, it gives them a stronger parent company, more of solid capital base with which to roll out their next-generation network,” he said. “Everyone’s going to these LTE networks, and if T-Mobile’s going to compete on a national scale, they're going to have to be aggressive in building out their LTE network. That’s going to ensure that the MetroPCS will also build out."

The U.S. government and American companies shouldn’t do business with Huawei and ZTE, a House Intelligence Committee report “strongly” recommended Monday. Rather than those two China-based telecom equipment makers, it said U.S. companies should consider seeking other vendors, because there are long-term security risks associated with doing business with the companies. Huawei and ZTE failed to provide sufficient information during the course of the committee’s 11-month investigation to assuage concerns that the Chinese government could influence the companies to use their equipment to spy or start cyber attacks on U.S. entities, the report said (http://xrl.us/bns9tg). “Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems.” Both companies have said the Chinese government has no influence on their business, and Huawei said the report reached a “pre-determined” conclusion.

The “on-the-ground” reality of revising the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) is more mundane than many press reports indicate, but there are still plenty of proposals the U.S. remains concerned about, said Kathryn O'Brien, FCC assistant International Bureau chief. ITU members are to revise the ITRs at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which begins Dec. 3 in Dubai. “You may have seen some references in the press to this U.N. conference in Dubai in December, and concerns about the U.N. ’taking over the Internet,'” O'Brien said Wednesday at a Federal Communications Bar Association forum. “There is no sort of U.N. takeover of Internet governance, the specific functions of [the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)] at this particular conference. … But there are still huge, huge areas in this conference for the U.S., for the government and private sector, to worry about."

When Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto takes office Dec. 1, there could be an opportunity to effect change in the country’s approach to Internet connectivity and speech issues, officials said at an Aspen Institute forum. Aspen’s Communications and Society program and Grupos Salinas and Caminos de la Libertad released a report Monday detailing what the groups believe are “critical deficits” in Mexico’s current policies on those issues (http://xrl.us/bnr7x8). Alec Ross, senior innovation advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said the challenge Mexico faces is the same one the rest of the world faces -- how to make the business and academic environments as data-rich as possible.

The African Telecommunications Union’s meeting to prepare for the World Conference on International Telecommunications produced a mixed set of opinions on the U.S.’s position and on a proposal the U.S. opposes as allowing Internet regulation, said Terry Kramer, the head of the America’s WCIT delegation. The U.S. has opposed a proposal by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) that would establish a “sender-party-pays” principle for Internet traffic compensation that could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission. Kramer made the case for the U.S.’s position on the possible revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) during the ATU’s meeting in Accra, Ghana, which ran Tuesday and Wednesday of last week (CD Sept 24 p5).