The upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) will give the U.S. an opportunity to deepen its ties with Europe, officials and experts said Friday during an event at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies. The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) has largely been in agreement with the U.S. on important and controversial issues set to be discussed at WCIT, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation. For example, in October CEPT rejected the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association’s (ETNO) controversial “sender-party-pays” proposal for Internet traffic compensation that could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission (CD Oct 24 p5).
Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s elections, the FTC will likely focus on consumer privacy in the coming year, those familiar with the agency said. The elections come as Commissioner Thomas Rosch’s term ends and media have reported Chairman Jon Leibowitz is planning on leaving the agency.
Unaffiliated presidential candidate Randall Terry unsuccessfully sought to buy political ads on other Washington TV stations, according to an interview with him Friday and records posted that day on fcc.gov. The FCC Media Bureau last week granted the complaint of the candidate, on the ballot in West Virginia but not states adjacent to the District of Columbia, to buy ad time on Gannett’s WUSA(CBS) (CD Nov 2 p3). Allbritton Communications’ WJLA(ABC) and News Corp.’s WTTG(Fox) also wouldn’t run Terry’s ads, which he said is prompting him to complain to the commission. He said he'll file another complaint against WUSA, because it wouldn’t accept a new request to buy ads that followed the bureau’s order in his favor. The ads depict aborted fetuses and feature criticism from Terry of President Barack Obama including allegations he sides with Muslims against Christians and Jews (http://xrl.us/bnxgh9).
When it is built, FirstNet must take advantage of commercial infrastructure and “public/private partnerships,” the Association for Public-Safety Communications Officials said in a filing at the NTIA, dated Thursday, which has not yet been posted by the agency. But APCO gave a thumbs down to any proposal built around a partnership with a single national wireless carrier. PCIA - The Wireless Infrastructure Association, meanwhile, stressed the role commercial infrastructure must play in support of the national public safety network.
An FCC order that would let Tribune emerge from bankruptcy is expected to circulate after the election, possibly as early as the end of the week and probably before Thanksgiving, industry officials said. Commission approval, as Tribune attorneys and executives have repeatedly reminded commission officials in ex parte discussions, is the remaining holdup to the company’s more than three-year bankruptcy proceeding. CEO Eddy Hartenstein spoke with aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Oct. 26 to press this point, a notice of the ex parte conversation said (http://xrl.us/bnxm4u).
Laws should be updated based on the current state of technology, not the other way around, said Marietje Schaake, Dutch member of the European Parliament and governor of the European Internet Foundation, at a discussion Friday hosted by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus in Washington. “We must, as lawmakers … think about our responsibility to update the laws” to match the evolving development and use of technologies, she said. On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs will vote on Schaake’s report on a digital freedom strategy, she said, and she’s hoping it will be adopted by the Parliament. “For the very first time, the EU will have a strategy for digital freedom in its external actions,” she said.
The Department of Energy will issue a rulemaking notice on set-top box energy efficiency standards, a spokeswoman said Friday. That’s now that talks lasting for most of this year for some multichannel video programming distributors to agree on voluntary guidelines broke down (CD Nov 2 p8). Stakeholders each blamed the other side for why the negotiations ended Oct. 26 at the request of advocates.
Companies that buy special access data services from incumbent telcos made an expansive proposal about how the FCC can regulate transactions for access to lines carrying high-speed data as the industry moves from circuit-switched to Internet Protocol technology. ILECs that sell special access services to these CLECs and other telecom companies have said the market, not the commission, is the place to set norms of behavior for the transition. The CLECs’ proposal encourages a “technology-neutral” approach, and opposes AT&T’s August filing giving the agency a “checklist” of ways to encourage the move to an all-IP telecom infrastructure while minimizing regulation.
Draft resolutions from state regulators charge the FCC the with federal overreach, one hammering home points in a resolution adopted during the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ summer meeting and another weighing in on a case before the Supreme Court. The new drafts, including three on telecom, were released Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnxft5) and are likely to undergo much debate at NARUC’s fall conference, beginning Nov. 11 in Baltimore. They will have to pass through the organization’s subcommittees and committees and can be “substantially modified” before adoption as NARUC policy, the document cautioned.
Negotiations for energy-saving commitments by cable companies for set-top boxes ended, advocates for energy efficiency who had sought rules and the cable and consumer electronics industries that had opposed them told us. They said talks ended last Friday with CEA and NCTA on one side and groups including the Appliance Standards Awareness Project and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on the other. The continuing talks had prompted the Department of Energy (DOE) to delay issuing a rulemaking on such standards until at least Oct. 1 (CD July 6 p4). The notice has not been issued, and a DOE spokeswoman had no comment.