The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council told Industry Canada it should designate the 700 MHz D-block for public safety use, in response to a consultation by the Canadian regulator. “NPSTC commends Industry Canada’s proposal to designate the 758-763 MHz and 788-793 MHz (D Block) for public safety broadband use, and urges the Department to act expeditiously to ensure that public safety receives the full contiguous 10+10 MHz broadband block of spectrum in the 700 MHz band,” NPSTC said (http://xrl.us/bnyaws). “The public safety market will drive demand for commercial equipment, typically used by consumers, as well as modified commercial equipment and specialized equipment designed to meet specific public safety needs.” NPSTC said if Industry Canada mandates LTE as the standard for the band it will align a Canadian public safety broadband network with the proposed FirstNet in the U.S. “Harmonized 700 MHz public safety broadband spectrum, policies and technical rules and standards are essential for cross-border interoperability,” NPSTC said. Public Safety Canada also endorsed a proposal to reallocate the D-block to public safety. “The allocation of the D block in Canada for public safety would harmonize with the United States band plan, which sets aside a total of 20 MHz for public safety in the same blocks,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bnyaxi).
Notable CROSS rulings
Trade negotiations have to adjust as Internet-enabled communication technologies develop, said Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce Policy Jonathan McHale Monday. Speaking at an event hosted by the FCBA, McHale said the USTR is beginning to approach trade negotiations through the lens of emerging technology and is considering restarting World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations with the same perspective.
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).
Although fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is capable of meeting the EU’s ambitious digital agenda targets, it has had limited rollout so far because of its challenging business case, DotEcon analysts said Monday on an FTTH Council Europe regulatory policy webinar. The EU wants 50 percent of households to have broadband speeds of over 100 Mbps by 2020, but, with only 2 percent having access to such speeds now, meeting that goal is a long way off, said DotEcon economist Christian Koboldt. Europe also lags in FTTH deployment compared to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, he said. The question is: with the public policy case for fiber so strong, why is the business case so difficult? The webinar discussion centered on an August DotEcon report (http://xrl.us/bnwm4x).
An extraordinary General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organization is set to decide the date for a diplomatic conference to approve a treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons and those with so-called print disabilities. Such disabilities can include learning disabilities and make it hard to read. The WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights last week tried to narrow down differences between the 185 member states to prepare for a successful diplomatic conference. Dan Pescod, from the U.K. Royal National Institute for the Blind that’s a member of the European and World Blind Union, said there’s still the possibility of failure. “The most pessimistic reading is that even the extraordinary General Assembly might get canceled; the second most pessimistic scenario is that the extraordinary General Assembly takes place but decides not to call a diplomatic conference,” he said. During last week’s negotiations, some differences were narrowed down, Pescod said. That included the definition of what constituted an accessible format copy and also the definition of “beneficiaries,” he said. Despite the progress, Pescod said “the discussions overall were quite disappointing, [and] member states suggested too many new amendments rather than whittling down the text into nearly final form.” One of the biggest open issues is “a final definition of authorized entities, the rules for cross-border sending of works, as the European Union is worried about piracy as a result of cross-border activities, something which is unfounded,” he said. The EU still firmly supports including a reference to the three-step test, which many stakeholders opposed. At the recent Frankfurt book fair, Anne Bergman-Tahon of the Federation of European Publishers said her organization prefers a self-regulatory approach to facilitate access for blind and print-disabled people, rather than an international treaty. “The discussions on the international level are slowing down the work on ETIN, the European Trusted Intermediary Network,” she said. Allan Adler, vice president-legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers, said WIPO efforts were being slowed by still-arriving new proposals for the text. India has raised the question of accessibility of works that the country calls “interactive,” and that include excerpts of audiovisual works, of sound recordings or computer programs, for example, he said. There’s still a question if a full-fledged treaty is the way to go, he said. “It could be more useful to have a model law, a recommendation or joint statement.” Such actions could take effect more quickly than a treaty. Several draft treaties including the Broadcasting Treaty have sat on the WIPO agenda for many years, Adler said.
CLECs subjected Qwest to “unjust” and “discriminatory” rates, an executive of the telco’s parent told a Florida Public Service Commission hearing Tuesday. Tw telecom and BullsEye Telecom did that for “many years,” said CenturyLink Wholesale Staff Director William Easton. AT&T faced similar circumstances as Qwest, despite AT&T receiving cheaper rates than Qwest, he said: The two telcos should get the same rates.
The FCC should lift its ban on cross-ownership of newspaper and radio assets in the same market, lawyers for Bonneville International and the Scranton Times told FCC officials, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnvo5a). “The Commission has been presented with no factual foundation, or even a serious legal argument, for keeping the newspaper/radio restriction,” the notice said. “Given that current record before the agency, a decision to keep a newspaper/radio rule in any form would” violate the 1996 Telecommunications Act, conflict with proper administrative procedure and “suffer from serious constitutional infirmities,” it said. Separately, officials of the Newspaper Association of America met with FCC officials to push for an end to the same restrictions, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnuqbz).
Europe’s privacy framework could harm the development of a global cloud-computing industry, said U.S. and Japanese business interests in a report last week. It was prepared for a “Director General-level meeting” of the U.S.-Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the Internet Economy in Washington, the State Department said Friday (http://xrl.us/bnvifp). State said “participants concurred” at the meeting last week that the U.S.-Japan Cloud Computing Working Group, set up earlier this year, should “continue its discussions while giving consideration to the balance between free flows of information and personal data protection."
FCC staff members debated whether to “ram ... through” a review of LightSquared’s waiver for an integrated satellite-terrestrial communications network. The waiver that staff gave to the company then drew concerns from lawmakers and the GPS industry that the agency didn’t fully evaluate potential interference issues with the network. Our review of internal emails from FCC officials, released Tuesday by the House Commerce Committee (http://xrl.us/bnui2y), showed they discussed the potential for LightSquared to reap billions of dollars in a so-called windfall profit from the waiver (CD Oct 17 p2). The waiver, which the commission this year proposed to yank, would have let the now-bankrupt company that was led by hedge-fund investor Phillip Falcone use spectrum licensed to be used only with satellites for terrestrial use to start a wireless broadband service.
Career FCC staff, trying to finish media ownership rules, are set to release statistics on ownership of all U.S. radio and TV stations to include those results in the forthcoming draft order, agency officials said. They said the Media Bureau may release, as soon as Thursday, aggregate information on what Form 323 biennial ownership reports say about who holds various classes of broadcast licensees. That data from 2009 and 2011 -- to be presented in aggregate form for the first time and after delays releasing it -- would then update the record, agency officials said. Bureau staff appear to be nearing an end to drafting the quadrennial media ownership order that was due to have been finished in 2010, agency officials told us this week.