The rest of the world is watching to see whether the U.S. will regulate a portion of the Internet, and FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell finds the idea “a little unsettling,” he said at a Silicon Flatirons conference on spectrum policy Tuesday. The danger, he said, is that a bad idea adopted by U.S. policymakers could get “amplified abroad” as teams at the ITU read everything the FCC writes. McDowell also discussed ideas for getting more spectrum into the hands of consumers, and endorsed the idea of paying federal users to get off their spectrum.
A 911 task force identified the “vulnerability of newer technologies” in a preliminary report about Verizon 911 failures during the June 29 mid-Atlantic derecho wind storm. Traditional hard-wired connections meant power loss didn’t result in loss of a dial tone or service, it said. The report named VoIP and standard Internet Protocol as two very different technologies that, when the power’s out, lose “access to 9-1-1 once the back-up battery contained within the equipment, drains,” the 911 directors said. Cellphones also encounter problems due to network congestion and the possibility of physical damage to cell sites, the report said.
Future low-power FM stations could be two notches away on the radio dial from full-power outlets, if LPFMs make certain interference showings similar to what other types of radio stations must make now. That’s under a draft FCC order tentatively set for a vote at the Nov. 30 commissioner meeting (CD Nov 12 p1), said agency, industry and public-interest group officials. They said the second-adjacent frequency spacing waiver would let LPFMs be two notches away if they won’t create interference in a populated area also reached by the full power.
The FCC’s Media Bureau granted in part and denied in part a petition by Comcast’s NBCUniversal to review elements of an arbiter’s ruling (CD July 13 p11) on the amount of programming it must license to an fledgling online video distributor (OVD) under the terms of an FCC order approving Comcast’s buyout of NBCU. The bureau also denied a request by Project Concord (PCI) to recover its attorneys’ fees from NBCUniversal. The case is the first that has been brought to the FCC under the so-called “benchmark” condition of the Comcast-NBCU merger order that gave certain access rights to OVDs seeking to license NBCU-owned programming.
FCC process reform will likely return as a major tech issue in the next Congress, industry experts said Tuesday at a TechFreedom event, but they were unsure of how effective a legislative solution would be. Continued Republican control in the House means FCC reform measures like those introduced in the last session -- including by Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Steve Scalise, R-La. -- will remain on the agenda when the new House convenes (CD Nov 13 p1).
Federal users need financial incentives to get off their spectrum, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said Tuesday at a conference on the next ten years of spectrum policy. Giving federal users the proceeds from spectrum auctions could be a “catalyst” to get federal frequencies into the hands of commercial users, and let the commission reach the 500 MHz benchmark for new wireless broadband use called for in a 2010 executive order, she said. Rosenworcel urged creating model rules for tower siting, and an “honest conversation” about network reliability after storms like superstorm Sandy. The conference was presented at the Pew Research Center by CTIA, Public Knowledge and the Silicon Flatirons Center.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sought to deflect criticism Tuesday that the Internet Radio Fairness Act (S-3609) hurts recording artists by decreasing the royalty rates they're paid through Internet radio broadcasters. Wyden, who authored the bill, thinks the legislation will help artists in the long run by encouraging investment in the Internet broadcasting marketplace, which will in turn broaden the marketplace for artists to receive more income, he said in a speech Tuesday at the Future of Music Summit in Washington. Pandora founder Tim Westergren agreed lower royalty rates are necessary to encourage investment in Internet radio and argued that passing the bill would give artists a “smaller piece of a bigger pie."
BALTIMORE -- The recent series of natural disasters, including superstorm Sandy and the summer derecho, rattled officials and regulators this week at the NARUC meeting in Baltimore. They brainstormed about the best practices to keep communications networks resilient in the face of what may be increasingly volatile weather and discussed potential 911 innovations and strategies.
Sky Angel alleged that C-SPAN has illegally withheld its programming from the online video distributor, in an antitrust complaint filed Tuesday. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., marks the latest attempt of Sky Angel to litigate whether it has rights to programming controlled by incumbent pay-TV distributors. Sky Angel, which sells a package of family-friendly programming under the FaveTV brand to subscribers who use a set-top box to obtain the programming over the Internet, lost a bid this summer to force the FCC to weigh in on a similar question (CD July 17 p7). It wanted a federal appeals court to compel the commission to act on a pending program access complaint against Discovery Communications, but the court gave the agency more time.
Privacy researchers painted a starkly different picture of consumers’ grasp of privacy policies related to advertising and data-sharing than that of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), in dueling presentations Tuesday. In a conference call organized by consumer and privacy groups participating in the NTIA’s mobile privacy stakeholder proceeding, researchers said consumers had markedly different understandings of common privacy terms than that intended by companies, and barely interacted with the DAA’s “Ad Choices” icon, which when clicked directs users to information about behavioral or “interest-based” advertising. DAA statistics released by the group show millions of visits since the effort kicked off earlier this year.