The U.S. is handicapped headed into the World Radiocommunication Conference next week since it proposes only two bands for future studies, 3.1-3.3 and 13 GHz, while China has positions on all five bands proposed for study for international mobile telecommunications, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and other speakers said during an Atlantic Council webinar Wednesday. The WRC starts Monday in Dubai. Among the bands targeted by China for IMT is 6 GHz, where the U.S. is promoting an agreement supporting unlicensed use of the band (see 2310270047).
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President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI (see 2310300056) didn’t include FTC recommendations the agency wasn’t already exploring, Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said Wednesday.
The FCC’s 2022 order further clamping down on gear from Chinese companies, preventing the sale of yet-to-be authorized equipment in the U.S. (see 2211230065), was years in the making and reflected long-term concerns of Congress and the FCC, speakers said Tuesday during an FCBA webinar.
House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and others are hopeful that AI can aid in spectrum management activities, they said during a Communications Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. Rodgers and Pallone also praised the Biden administration Tuesday for releasing its long-awaited national spectrum strategy (see 2311130048). However, Senate Commerce Committee member Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., was far less enthusiastic about the plan, which directs NTIA to study the 3.1-3.45, 5.03-5.091, 7.125-8.4, 18.1-18.6 and 37.0-37.6 GHz bands over the next two years for potential repurposing.
The Biden administration released its long-awaited national spectrum strategy and a presidential memorandum on modernizing U.S. spectrum policy at a White House ceremony Monday. The plan identifies the 3.1-3.45, 5.03-5.091, 7.125-8.4, 18.1-18.6 and 37.0-37.6 GHz bands for further study by NTIA over the next two years for potential repurposing (see 2311130007). But the plan omits other bands thought to be in the federal cross-hairs. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr slammed the strategy.
Existing international space rules are clearly inadequate, but less clear is what to do about that, experts said Tuesday at a Princeton University/Stimson Center space governance conference. Instead of new treaties, the U.S. focus for years has been on implementation and interpretation of existing ones -- a focus numerous countries have echoed, forestalling any push for updating the space governance regime, said Brian Weeden, Secure World Foundation (SWF) program planning director. "It was hard enough to get the U.S. and Soviet Union to agree" on the Outer Space Treaty, and it would be impossible to get new core principles agreed upon today given how many more countries are interested in space now, he said.
Worldwide 5G strategies have differed widely by region, Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading senior principal analyst, said during an Informa Tech webinar Tuesday. 5G deployments really started in 2020 with 1.9 billion subscriptions expected by the end of this year, Brown said. Mid-band deployments have been critical, allowing operators to “effectively double site capacity … very rapidly,” he said.
China on Wednesday pledged to maintain an open dialogue with the U.S., the U.K., the EU and dozens of countries to develop international norms and policies for AI technology.
Broadcasters, wireless companies and alerting equipment manufacturers are concerned about the potential costs of increasing cybersecurity regulations on emergency alerting participants and the burden of potentially duplicated reporting requirements across multiple federal agencies, they told the FCC and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Monday at a public roundtable event on alerting cybersecurity. The event included local government public safety agencies, the FBI and cybersecurity companies and featured discussion of potential threats to alerting infrastructure and the need for transparency around cyberattacks alongside potential regulatory burdens. “WEA is a voluntary program,” said CCIA General Counsel Angela Simpson. “There is a straw that will break the proverbial camel’s back at some point.”
The U.S., followed by China, took the top two spots in the inaugural Broadband and Cloud Development Index, the World Broadband Association (WBBA) said Thursday. It said the index looks at broadband coverage and cloud computing items, quantifying and ranking major countries on their performance. The report said the U.S.'s top score in the index's cloud segment is unsurprising due to the early adoption of cloud services by U.S. enterprises and because the world's largest cloud providers are there. WBBA said some other nations outscored the U.S. in broadband because it traditionally has not been a leader in the global broadband market, particularly for availability and adoption. The association said the index was developed with support from member companies and written by Omdia and China Telecom Research Institute.