Jimm Phillips

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).

Research in Motion sold 7.4 million BlackBerry phones and 130,000 Playbook tablets during Q2, RIM executives said on a quarterly earnings call Thursday. RIM’s BlackBerry sales beat Wells Fargo’s estimate of 6.7 million, but was still down from the 7.8 million phones sold during Q1. RIM’s Playbook sales figure was below Wells Fargo’s estimate of 200,000 and was down from sales of 260,000 during Q1. The U.S. represented a smaller portion of RIM sales during Q2 -- 22 percent, down from 25 percent during the previous quarter, RIM Chief Financial Officer Brian Bidulka said during the investor call. RIM had more success abroad, particularly in Canada, the U.K., Indonesia, South Africa and Venezuela, he said. The company has found its free BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) program to be a selling point in developing countries, Heins said. “It’s amazing when you go into those countries and you see how BBM is just kicking it,” he said. “I mean, it’s everywhere.” The company had a Q2 net loss of $235 million, vs. profit of $329 million in the year-ago quarter. RIM’s BlackBerry 10 operating system remains on track to debut in early 2013, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said during the call. Much of the growth in RIM’s subscriber base has developed in “entry-level” markets, where BlackBerry 7-capable devices are the norm, he said. While BlackBerry 10 will not immediately reach those customers after it goes on the market, Heins said BlackBerry 10-capable devices might reach the entry-level markets within the next year. RIM’s results were “better than feared” for the quarter, Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said in a report Friday, but the company still expects a net loss in Q3. “We expect [RIM’s] business to continue to be under pressure during the rest of the year due to competitive launches and [RIM’s] lack of a competitive high-end smartphone,” she said. RIM shares closed 5 percent higher Friday to $7.50.

Restrictions on Internet freedom continue to grow -- and the threats against it are shifting, said human rights group Freedom House’s 2012 report on worldwide Internet freedom. The report said Estonia had the most Internet freedom in the past year, followed by the U.S. and Germany. Iran was found to have the least online freedom, followed by Cuba, China and Syria. The report, released Monday, assessed events and shifts in the Internet freedom situation in 47 countries between January 2011 and May 2012. Researchers evaluated the situation in each country and assigned a numerical score, with 100 being the worst possible score. Estonia scored 10, while Iran scored 90; the U.S. scored 12, according to Freedom House (http://xrl.us/bnq8xh).The more repressive governments on the list continue to use traditional censorship methods like filtering and blocking content, but they are now supplementing those with “nuanced” tactics, Sanja Kelly, the report’s lead author, said at a Freedom House event Monday. Governments are increasingly engaging in proactive manipulation of online content, including hiring pro-government bloggers to attack anti-government bloggers’ credibility and paying people to bombard anti-government blogs with false information, she said. That tactic had previously only been found in Russia and China, but has now spread into countries like Iran and Belarus, said Freedom House. The report said 19 of the 47 assessed countries had passed new laws impacting Internet freedom since January 2011. Those have included a new law in Malaysia that holds intermediaries like ISPs responsible for “seditious” comments users post online, Kelly said. “As a consequence, in some of the environments we've seen some of the intermediaries almost voluntarily taking down the content they fear will get them into trouble."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski praised Comcast’s Internet Essentials program Monday as a way to help connect underserved communities to broadband. He spoke as Comcast continues to mark the start of the second year of the program, which offers low-cost broadband service to families with children eligible to receive free lunches under the National School Lunch Program, as well as affordable computers and digital literacy training. The program is set to continue through at least the 2013-2014 school year (CD May 19/11 p1) . More than 400,000 Americans -- 100,000 families -- have gotten broadband service through Internet Essentials, according to Comcast. In the Washington market, the Internet Essentials $9.95 monthly product has about 2,000 subscribers. The company agreed to start the service to get FCC okay to buy control last year of NBCUniversal. Comcast was surprised at the number of people who joined the program in its first year, said Executive Vice President David Cohen. The program helps to “level the playing field” for the families it serves, he said. Comcast has recently entered into new partnerships related to the Internet Essentials program with City Year, the Department of Labor and Connect2Compete, Cohen said. The company’s working to promote the product and “digital literacy training” with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, Byte Back, other groups and D.C. public libraries, Comcast said in a news release. Genachowski said his conversations with teachers, parents and students have reinforced for him the need to expand access to broadband technology. When he talked to teachers in low-income areas, they tell him that when they attempt to incorporate Internet-related projects into their curriculum, they run into difficulty when it comes to assigning their students to work on them at home. “They say, ‘half my kids don’t have broadband at home,'” Genachowski said. “'What am I supposed to do?'” During a trip to Nebraska, Genachowski heard the story of a family who had a son serving in the military overseas. They wanted to communicate with him online but were unable to because their part of the state didn’t have broadband access, but friends elsewhere were able to do so, Genachowski said. “That’s wrong.” Continuing to “move the needle” on broadband access is essential, Genachowski said.

The Democrats and Republicans agree on most fundamental aspects of Internet policy, industry policy experts said Thursday night at an Internet Society event hosted by Google’s Washington office. That lack of fundamental disagreement has mostly kept Internet issues on the backburner over the course of the parties’ 2012 campaigns for president and Congress, even though Internet issues continue to infiltrate other areas of national policy, they said. The Internet Society had intended to bring in surrogates from the campaigns of President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, but eventually decided to bring in former members of the Obama and George W. Bush administrations to articulate their parties’ positions, said Georgetown University professor and panel moderator Michael Nelson. None of the panelists were speaking on behalf of the Obama or Romney campaigns, he said.

The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) agreed with the U.S. earlier this month on many core components of how the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) should be revised at the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications, Terry Kramer, head of the U.S.’s WCIT delegation, said Friday. CITEL met in San Salvador, El Salvador, to determine its position ahead of WCIT, which begins Dec. 3 in Dubai. The U.S. delegation has been meeting with regional groups like CITEL and other ITU member nations to get them to adopt the U.S.’s position on the ITRs, which it outlined in formal documents filed with WCIT in early August (CD Aug 6 p2). The U.S. is likely to file an updated set of documents on its position in mid-November, Kramer said.

Verizon Wireless has enough spectrum to meet its needs for four or five years, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said Thursday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. The carrier received FCC approval in late August for its purchase of 122 AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and an additional 30 from Cox Communications (CD Aug 24 p1). “This was an absolute strategic acquisition for us,” he said. Verizon Wireless expects to complete its deployment of LTE in its current 3G coverage footprint by the middle of next year via its 700 MHz spectrum. Once that happens, the carrier could start using its newly acquired AWS spectrum for LTE coverage, Shammo said.

Mobile phone technology can help developing communities improve access to healthcare information and improve education, said Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations during a Time magazine event Wednesday. There’s “enormous” potential for mobile to improve and increase global health, she said.

Comcast’s Xfinity Wireless Gateway is the U.S.’s fastest in-home Wi-Fi router, the company said Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnqbkh). Comcast cited the results of speed tests by Allion Test Labs that found the Xfinity Wireless Gateway, manufactured by Technicolor, could deliver about 155 Mbps through Wi-Fi. Allion also measured speeds for AT&T and Verizon devices. They found two of Verizon’s wireless routers, made by Actiontec, could deliver about 84 Mbps. An AT&T router made by 2-Wire achieved 22 Mbps, Allion said in its results report (http://xrl.us/bnqbkq). It’s not typical for broadband speeds to be measured over Wi-Fi, Verizon spokesman Bob Elek said, saying the FCC has measured broadband speeds via hardwire connections for its “Measuring Broadband America” reports. The most recent report, released in July, found Verizon’s FiOS service was one of the top two Internet service providers in terms of ability to deliver above advertised speeds; it and Cablevision each achieved an average of 120 percent of advertised speeds. Comcast also did well, achieving an average of 103 percent of advertised speeds, according to the report (http://xrl.us/bnhgkk). Wireless routers, by their very nature, will diminish the connection’s speed capacity, Elek said. “There are a lot of different things that can impact the connection,” he said, including the distance from a router and the number of devices sharing the connection. Verizon’s own findings on the average speed of its FiOS connection over Wi-Fi fall in line with the Allion speed test -- Verizon finds FiOS has an average speed of 85 Mbps over Wi-Fi compared to up to 300 Mbps over hardwire, Elek said. “What we're seeing is that satisfies a majority of our customers,” he said. Verizon recently introduced a new GigE Wireless N router for FiOS customers that can achieve up to 130 Mbps, Elek said.

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).