The FTC said it would propose to add a new section to the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that would impose fees on entities accessing the national “do-not-call” registry. The amendments, if adopted, among other things would: (1) Require only sellers to pay the annual fee for access to the national registry. (2) Propose an annual fee of $29 per area code, with a maximum annual fee of $7,250. (3) Allow free access to up to 5 area codes. (4) Set Oct. 1 as the effective date for the “do-not-call” provisions of the Amended TSR. The Commission said additional revisions in the Amended TSR “would allow more entities to access the ‘do-not-call’ registry” while limiting access only to telemarketers, as currently defined by the rule, would prevent parties that were exempt from the FTC’s jurisdiction from obtaining the information necessary to scrub their lists in case they decided to do so for customer-service reasons. Limited access also could prevent sellers from fully complying with the rule, and “may unnecessarily hinder the services provided to the telemarketing industry by list brokers and others,” the FTC said. It stressed, however, that the information in the national registry could be used for no purpose other than to stop unwanted telemarketing calls. The FTC asked 3rd parties for comments.
SES Americom is “trying to sneak in the back door” by using license granted by Gibraltar to place DBS satellite at orbital location that wouldn’t be permitted if license were authorized by FCC, DirecTV Pres. Roxanne Austin said. Citing possibility of interference to DBS subscribers, DirecTV and EchoStar filed opposition at FCC to SES application to launch satellite for competitive DBS service(CD April 26 p3). “Our opposition to SES Americom’s FCC petition isn’t about competition -- we welcome the competition -- it’s about interference,” Austin said. Proposed DBS service offered by SES at 105.5 degrees would cause customers to “suffer significant service interruptions and impede our ability to deliver local channels,” she said. DirecTV said SES satellites would be only 4.5 degrees from DirecTV satellites at 101 degrees and 110 degrees, which would violate 9 degrees spacing established by ITU and FCC.
Boeing is “confident it will be able to correct” problem in BSS 601 satellites by mid-April, spokesman said. NASA also remains hopeful Boeing will be able to fix problem in Tracking & Data Relay Satellite (TDRS)-1, which is based on 601 bus and is in useless orbit while company attempts to move it into orbit without exhausting fuel reserves. However, satellite insurance expert said concerns over Boeing satellites were severe enough to cause increase in insurance rates.
Surge in demand following terrorist attacks probably will help slumping transponder prices, industry analysts and officials said in interviews. Before attacks that brought on widespread boost in sales, global prices for satellite capacity had decreased 10% and there were concerns that it might drop further, according to London Satellite Exchange (LSE) which brokers transponders online (e.sax.com) and tracks pricing trends. LSE blamed overcapacity on privatization of Eutelsat and Intelsat, which led to sale of some capacity owned by smaller stakeholders, and on downturn in economy. Others blamed glut of fiber cable capacity. Extra business following attacks “may put industry over hump” but won’t necessarily stop trend, one analyst said.
Transition of voice traffic to Internet protocol (IP) is expected to take years, but one company, Performance Technologies of Rochester, N.Y., already has applied IP technology to underlying Signaling System-7 (SS-7) control network. Company’s SEGway product is SS-7 to IP internetworking device that enables wireline and wireless carriers to offload SS-7 traffic to shared packet networks rather than use dedicated circuit for each link. Link Concentrator, 2nd product due next month, reduces need to add links to Signal Transfer Points (STPs) by concentrating SS-7 traffic onto fewer shared IP links. Both products use Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) to transport SS-7 messages over IP networks with same reliability as dedicated links, company said. Developed specifically for signaling data, SCTP is transport protocol operating on top of IP -- at best potentially unreliable connectionless packet service. SEGway product is transparent to SS-7 network and messages are transported without need for new SS- 7 point codes (addresses) or network reconfiguration upon installation, company said.
It’s “too simplistic” to question whether FCC Chmn. Powell supports telecom competition just because he also advocates deregulation where appropriate, he said in interview with Communications Daily. “Of course we favor competition,” he said. “The policy of the entire country is to favor competition.” What has been misunderstood is more “subtle” question of when intervention is right and when it isn’t, he said. Powell said he didn’t believe in jumping too quickly into new regulations or keeping old ones that no longer are necessary. Telecom Act requires FCC to review regulations periodically and determine whether they still are appropriate, so this isn’t new concept, he said: “There are appropriate places for regulation, but they should be carefully scrutinized and one should be hesitant to interfere with those operations without clear and demonstrable reasons for doing so.”