Hawaii’s false missile alert stemmed from lack of safeguards and human error, including a Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee who repeatedly confused drills and real alerts, said reports from the Public Safety Bureau at an FCC commissioners' meeting and later Tuesday from Bruce Oliveira, the retired brigadier general investigating for HI-EMA (see 1801250061). That staffer was fired and other employees were disciplined. Members of Congress told us they continue to be concerned, as are FCC members.
Democratic Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel dissented Tuesday on an order creating a new Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) within the FCC, which was approved 3-2 (see 1801230066). Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the order was strengthened since it was circulated to ensure the office plays a major role in policy formation. Officials told reporters after the meeting the office likely would have under 100 staffers.
ICANN plans to choose an interim Whois model that complies with the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR) were delayed to mid-February to allow more discussion time, CEO Gðran Marby blogged. Earlier this month, he proposed three approaches and asked for input. ICANN had intended to settle on one model by the end of this month, but it's clear more time is needed, he said Thursday. NTIA's head also had Whois GDPR concerns (see 1801290041). Meanwhile, responses to an ICANN consultation showed interest in some form of layered access to domain name owners' information.
Cord cutting, declining cable-TV subscribership and consumers using DVRs to skip commercials are "a triple threat" leading to cost cutting at cable networks trickling down to production companies, said John Ford, general manager of nonfiction video content trade group Npact, Monday at the Realscreen Summit. Ford said series, when renewed, often see budget cuts not bumps, while contending with pushes for smaller casts and shorter editing times.
The U.S. government under President Donald Trump remains committed to upholding tenets of multistakeholder internet governance, said NTIA Administrator David Redl and U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy Rob Strayer separately during the State of the Net conference (see 1801290054 and 1801290034) Monday. Redl didn't respond to reporters' questions after the event, including about a report last week that he promised Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, during his confirmation process last year that he would pursue convening a “panel of experts to investigate options” for reversing the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition (see 1801240048).
The odds of the Supreme Court taking up the complaint by Dish Network designated entities (DE) SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless about the handling of the AWS-3 auction bidding credits aren't clear, experts and interested parties told us. The DEs filed a petition Friday with the Supreme Court for writ of certiorari appealing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's August ruling that upheld the FCC withholding AWS-3 auction bidding credits due to their too-close connections to Dish (see 1708290012). The FCC didn't comment Monday.
The federal government, not just the FCC, has been hit with a wave of fake comments in rulemaking proceedings, and the government needs to go after bad actors and find a way to make sure feedback is real, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said Monday at the State of the Net conference. Critics of the overturn of the 2015 net neutrality rules alleged many comments were fake (see 1712130051), but Rosenworcel said the problem goes much deeper. “There is a concerted effort to exploit our openness,” she said. “It deserves a concerted response.”
The House Commerce Committee's top telecom priorities to begin 2018 include the Spectrum Auction Deposits Act (HR-4109), boosting funding for repacking reimbursements and a spate of broadband infrastructure bills set for a Tuesday hearing, committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said Monday during the State of the Net conference. The House Communications Subcommittee's Tuesday hearing will examine more than a dozen Republican-led bills filed in recent weeks laying out Republicans' vision of a broadband title in omnibus infrastructure legislation, along with Democratic and bipartisan legislation (see 1801110058, 1801160048, 1801170055, 1801180058 and 1801190048). The hearing will be before President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, which is expected to touch on his administration's infrastructure legislative proposal (see 1801170054).
Broadcasters believe the estimated cost of the repacking is closer to $3 billion than the $1.86 billion figure last announced by the FCC, and that it won't be clear how well the repacking plan is functioning until late in 2018, when the process begins moving from one phase to the next, broadcasters and industry officials told us. The transition between phases of the repacking will demonstrate whether tower crews, manufacturers and broadcasters will be able to adhere to the FCC's repacking timeline. If broadcasters start missing their phase deadlines as the repacking goes on, it could have a cascading delay effect, said Gray Television Deputy General Counsel Robert Folliard. The first transition between repacking phases will be “a very telling day,” said PBS Assistant General Counsel Talia Rosen.
All five FCC commissioners, other officials and industry slammed a memo by a “senior National Security Council official” proposing the U.S. build a national 5G network, selling access on a wholesale basis to carriers. Axios published the leaked memo Sunday. Monday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said it's a bad idea. The memo compares 5G to the push under President Dwight Eisenhower to build a national highway system in the 1950s and warns that China could otherwise build a network first.